The Wannabe Developer’s Manifesto
Posted by Davy Brion on August 10th, 2008
UPDATE: don’t take this post too seriously… i am not targeting any specific individuals or groups of people or anything like that, it’s just a commentary on a ‘career approach’ that i’ve unfortunately seen more than a few people get away with in past experiences.
I’m sure most of us have been confronted with a ‘Wannabe Developer’ at least once, probably a lot more even. The Wannabe Developers are such a large group that i think they should have their own manifesto.
I dislike Wannabe Developers as much as anyone, but i’m in a generous mood today so i’ve taken the liberty to write that manifesto. I can only hope they find it useful.
The Wannabe Developer Manifesto
We are continuously searching for new and improved ways to increase our visibility within our environment, for that is our ultimate goal. We will strive to trick as many people as possible into considering us as experts in our field. In order to achieve that, everything (and we do mean everything) goes. We will lie, cheat and deceive if that is what it takes.
We will never be around once the code goes into maintenance mode, so we do not waste time learning how to properly develop software. If anything, any maintenance problems that occur once we’ve left will actually improve our standing with the client because everything went great while we were there. Surely, whatever problems that may occur must be related to the inferior capabilities of the people who are currently working on the code.
We will actively engage in Buzzword Driven Development. We have discovered that using many popular buzzwords to convince clients of our capabilities is an extremely effective way into duping managers to think the world of us. This allows us to charge extremely high rates, which leads to bigger cars which in turn increases our standing and visibility among our peers.
When confronted with Real Developers, we will try to fool them by using as many software development pattern names that we can think of. If necessary, we will invent pattern names and then look at the other participants in the discussion in disbelief, as if they should be ashamed because they don’t know what we’re talking about.
We will take advantage of every chance we get to discredit the Real Developers, in order to convince management to reduce their responsibilities, and assign them to us.
And last but not least, we will accumulate as many software development certifications as possible. Real Developers know that certifications are meaningless, but managers and clients still believe in them and are willing to pay extra for people who have them.
There’s a lot of money to be made in this field, and it is our responsibility to get as much of it as possible.
Cheers,
The Wannabe Developers
August 11th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
Davy, that’s awesome.
August 11th, 2008 at 7:04 pm
Please tell me you are not writing this becauase you are stuck in an environment where you have to deal with these types of people. That would be horrible.
August 11th, 2008 at 7:24 pm
not anymore
but i was stuck in such an environment for a couple of years
August 11th, 2008 at 8:30 pm
It seems to me, these people don’t wanna be developers at all:). Maybe you should call this the ‘Money Grubbing IT Consultants Manifesto’
I feel your pain though, was stuck in a similar situation for a couple years myself.
August 11th, 2008 at 8:44 pm
Hey, some of us consultants/contractors know a thing or two about developing sofware properly.
Wannabees and dinosaurs are everywhere, as is glimpes of serious competence.
August 11th, 2008 at 8:49 pm
i’m certainly not talking about consultants/contractors in general
August 11th, 2008 at 11:26 pm
This is soooo true and the so called “developers” who create these kludge codebases remain blissfully unaware of the havoc and destruction thay have wrought on the entire team due to their hopelessly broken code.
August 12th, 2008 at 8:30 am
Monday Linkblog…
Stuff in my backlog from last week:
Pragmatic Progressive Enhancement – Thanks Matt
Dot – The Userguide – Watch this blog for an upcoming project related to dot/graphviz!
Arguing with Users – I was one of the many user…
August 12th, 2008 at 10:33 pm
[...] The Wannabe Developer’s Manifesto [...]
August 14th, 2008 at 9:38 pm
Amen
Its amazing how obsessive these Wannable developers are with performance by doing stored procedures and also they focused so much in performance on little details such as syntax of the language ahhggg no cool to work on this kind of environment.