A workhorse developer is someone who is an exemplary coworker and a dependable coder. \u00a0 They are the ones who may not get into the design fray because they find it too stressing, they may not have the talent to design, or they may just look on their work as JAJ (just a just). \u00a0Either way, though, these people show up on time, carry out designs, and make life pleasant. \u00a0They rarely, if ever, have egos and always hit deadlines. \u00a0The excelled at talking to business people or asking questions. \u00a0Usually they weren’t up on the latest greatest, but, they didn’t have to be.<\/p>\n
I do not consider myself a “workhorse” type although I have aspects of this in me. \u00a0For instance, I produce a lot of working code, I will go the extra mile, and I can look at things from the big picture without letting my ego or need to have *my* design put in. \u00a0I have a great appreciation for workhorses and anyone who does not should reconsider what they think a developer is. \u00a0The Mythical Man Month lists several types of developers in it, after all, and that book is what 30 or 40 years old?<\/p>\n
One workhorse I admired at a gig was an EE by trade (electrical engineer) and he didn’t code with inspiration but he got you 80% of the way there and left good room for a proper refactor. \u00a0He was invaluable. \u00a0He was awesome at laying patterns into reality once they were figured out, open about his code and unselfish.<\/p>\n
Another workhorse I had the pleasure of actually managing was fabulous at producing Oracle code. \u00a0I loved coming into work to talk with him; his home country was Tanzania. \u00a0 I remember him teaching me some Swahili (that I can’t remember) and I would bring him in things from Trader Joes like salted chili dried mangos because he had a palette — which is a *lot* to say in Minnesota. \u00a0 \u00a0He produced. \u00a0I remember a few of the more motivated developers getting on him, but it was wrong. \u00a0The manager I took over for spoke highly of him as well. \u00a0Great developer.<\/p>\n
Irony?<\/strong><\/p>\n When I look at the original agile manifesto, it states “individuals and interactions over processes and tools.” \u00a0 \u00a0I think that workhorse developers epitomize this. \u00a0Admittadly I have departed from this in my philosophy of agile, coming to believe that agile itself is actually a set of tooling now. \u00a0But boiling it down, software doesn’t get done without people — its the people, dammit.<\/p>\n The great irony I see is that may leaders and speakers of “agile” and “lean” are the ones who simply write off workhorses, like second string quarterbacks writing off the offensive line. \u00a0 You can’t write off your implementors. \u00a0Toyota has used a model of feedback from the assembly line to improve products for as long as anyone can remember, and look how successful they’ve been. \u00a0Also, in development, most managers cannot write code at the level of, or at all (considering that project management is a separate track alttogether now); the workhorses can.<\/p>\n So anyway, give your workhorse a hug today. \u00a0They’ll be there delivering steady ROI and making life good at work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A workhorse developer is someone who is an exemplary coworker and a dependable coder. \u00a0 They are the ones who may not get into the design fray because they find it too stressing, they may not have the talent to design, or they may just look on their work as JAJ (just a just). \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/10kdev.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/727"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/10kdev.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/10kdev.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/10kdev.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/10kdev.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=727"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/10kdev.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/727\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":752,"href":"http:\/\/10kdev.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/727\/revisions\/752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/10kdev.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/10kdev.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/10kdev.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}