Management

Samurai Developers

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There are software developers much more skilled than what is usually called “guru”. I call them “samurai” developers.

While junior developers like the beauty of code they write, intermediate developers like the beauty of system architecture they design, and senior (guru) developers like the business effectiveness of market products they roll out, samurai developers like the beauty of doing nothing. Literally.

By the end of the 12th century, samurai became almost entirely synonymous with bushi, and the word was closely associated with the middle and upper echelons of the warrior class. The samurai followed a set of rules that came to be known as bushidō. /Wikipedia/

So here is a code of conduct of the samurai developer. It is definitely not bushidō direct adaptation, but mostly a poetic interpretation of what is associated with samurais.

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Lower EQ is better for you

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Brain and masksEmotional intelligence (EQ) is considered to be much more important than usual intelligence metrics, such as IQ. We use IQ only to solve logical problems. And we use EQ to solve every other problem we meet in our life: at work, at home, in family, with friends, on the streets, so on. This is EQ that defines our everyday behavior, not IQ.

Once in a while, 13 months and 13 days ago I did an EQ test. 13 months and 13 days ago my score was 61 out of 100. After 13 months and 13 days of training my EQ by observing and noticing others’ emotions, taking others’ emotions into consideration, introspecting my own thoughts and emotions, so on, I’ve ended up with 77 out of 100.

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Family and Corporation

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I noticed that bigger companies have more married employees.

Some time ago, I had an interview with Yandex: all six interviewers (two times by three) were ring-bearing diligent family men. So evidently diligent and so evidently “family men” even in their image, their outfit, that this has caught my eye. Even if some of them were not “family men”, they successfully simulated as the ones.

This dependency is very obvious: to support a family one need money, and not just money, but stable money flow, even when crisis or wars happen; and personal ambitions of growing and improving go to the background. And only the big corporations have such stability. Also, all personal energy goes to supporting the family and to raising the children, so there is nothing left for self-improvement.

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Latent Evil of Coherent Teams

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On one hand, coherent teams with everyone being a friend to the others are cool, especially if you are part of such a team. These teams can move heaven and earth when their members’ skills and talents are properly fit. Self-organized, self-managed, self-controlled, so on. Perfect form of “human capital”.

On the other hand, such teams are atomic and indivisible. And that is terrible if you are a business owner; or a manager of some level outside of the team. Firing a team member — firing the team leaders — firing the whole team — failing the business. Bus factor = 1.

It turns out, that the perfect form of human capital is the worst evil.

Based on the story of www.lenta.ru in March 2014.