POCP Chapter 10: Motivation, Training, and Experience

[David Cressey]

This chapter closes out Part 3,  Programming as an Individual Activity.  It's by far the most interesting chapter in this part, IMO.

These are the factors that can most easily be varied both by the programmer himself, and by the manager.  

Here's a quick quote, from the intro to the chapter:

Quote:It could very well be that if someone is not motivated, there is no easy way to make him learn,  and if someone is motivated, there may be no way to stop him from learning.

You bet!

[Richardk]

Yes but I think that payment for services, in large part drives that motivation unless of course you're financially set and just like to program.

Isn't that a large part of those commercials where you can attend some tech school and within 6 months be well on your way to making $60K / year?

I really like the computer gaming commercials where I'll soon be raking in the big bucks for playing / designing video games (oh, in 6 months too!)

With all smart comments aside, if you don't have a desire to program, I don't think you'll stay in the profession for very long. Most people are consumers of technology, they don't care how something works, they just want the end result. Be that an ATM transaction, listening to their iPod or even driving down the street in their Hummer.

[David Cressey]

Weinberg opines that programmers, as a group, are generally overmotivated.  When an overmotivated person is exposed to additional external motivation, such as promises or threats from managment, his performance drops  sometimes quite dramatically.

I confirm this from my own experience, and from the bulk of discussions here in OpenITforum.

He also makes a second reference to the ambiguous nature of additional money as a motivator.  Those of us who would like to have more money (which is just about all of us)  don't like to talk about more money as an ambiguous motivator,  but Weinberg is convinced,  and pretty convincing.

[David Cressey]

It depends on what you mean by "financially set".

In the late sixties, a lot of people considered themselves financially set if they had an ffordable mortgage, a late model car, a color TV, and a backyeard BBQ.  Nowadays, there are a lot of people making six digit incomes who regard themselves as a few paychecks away from destitution.  

I think that programmers back in the 60s through the 80s were far more financially secure than most programmers consider themselves today.  I wonder what others think.

[John Masterson]

Quote:I think that programmers back in the 60s through the 80s were far more financially secure than most programmers consider themselves today.

The operational word here is "consider".    

But I do think the profession is completely different. Back in the 80s the work was about invention. Everybody invented their own solution, their own database, even.

Programmers were inventors, and I would have loved it.

Gradually the best/better programming practices were put out as packaged software. Less invention, more configuration.

That's going to continue, and the work today is a whole different job, with the same title.

...and less salary due to more competition from Bangalore and Greater Elbonia thanks to the Internet.

So they are worse off, or at least will soon discover they are, when they hit 30...

[codger]

Quote:Gradually the best/better programming practices were put out as packaged software.

"best/better"  This could be argued.

[John Masterson]

Quote:"best/better" This could be argued.

I agree, but I was thinking of the advantages of Oracle compared to a roll-your-own file-based record storage system.

Also, all the new object oriented development environments like .NET do a lot of useful and sophisticated things with objects and classes that lesser programmers didn't know how to do. At least not the ones I rubbed shoulders with in the 1990s.

These things save a lot of debugging time, since you don't reinvent the wheel, and thus code at a higher level, but can drop down and change a class when you really need to.

Of course, as I said, "inventing the wheel" is what makes programming the most fun...but too bad employers don't want to pay for it.

Heck, *I* didn;t want to pay for it when I was a development manager and had a programmer who spent a week coding when we could have bought a tested, working library for $249. And he was making $1500 a week at the time.

[codger]

Quote:Heck, *I* didn;t want to pay for it when I was a development manager and had a programmer who spent a week coding when we could have bought a tested, working library for $249. And he was making $1500 a week at the time.

Imagine how many less savvy managers pay for tools that are readily available. Let's face it, a lot of so-called "technical" managers either don't know a lot of the minutia because they simply don't have the experience. Or worse yet, no nothing about the technical aspects and tools used by their staff. Sad, but true.

[The Gorn]

Mainly, over-motivation becomes a questionable competitive advantage when you go into business for yourself. Over motivation - to learn and to technically achieve - can differentiate someone as a star performer, but it can also cause them to make somewhat reckless decisions in contracts they take on.

That someone could be me, and has been, too.

The temptation exists in programming to make decisions in favor of taking on business because you are qualified to do it and/or because it appears to be the "highest" use of your talents, rather than taking on business because it makes sense to your business development.

It's best to not care so much about the subject matter when you bid projects and negotiate work to be delivered. Enthusiasm for the subject matter can cloud business decisions.

[Richardk]

Wasn't that kind of a mantra some time back where we're all "inventors" but providing "solutions" is what puts food on your table?

I too have seen the over-motivated take a huge plunge when the heavy hand of management came in to help.

Also thinking of GB's example, I think we're all old enough that we were all employees in the 'invention years' but today as some of us run our own business's we've moved into solutions instead.

I wonder what role motivation plays now, with our new business model & role in life?

[David Cressey]

In this section, Weinberg outlines what learning experiences can contribute to somebody picking up knowledge and skills,  and doing so faster than mere trial and error.

Here's an interesting quote, regarding education on the job:

Quote:The striking factor is always the same -- several years of working together on real projects under a formidable leader.

Which of your leaders has influenced you the most and the best, in terms of making your skills and knowledge broader and deeper than it had been?  What feature of that person made him/her a good leader?  What features of your relationship to that person made learning easier and more productive?

On the difference between "education" and "training" or "schooling",  I want to throw in my two cents.  

One of my biggest problems in terms of learning material on the web is that so much of what's written on the web is targeted at "dummies".  In many areas of computing I am just as ignorant as a "dummy".  This is particularly true of programming languages since the 1980s.  But when I go to a website devoted to teaching Javascript, for example,  to beginners,  I find that I have to read through mountains of material that introduce concepts like "if...then...else".  It would be much more efficient if they could simply say... "if you already know Pascal, C, C++, or Java,  here's the condensed version."  At the other extreme,  material targeted at programmers makes too many assumptions about what I already know.  There has to be a better way to go from the general to the specific.

Counterexample:  when I went to learn HTML,  there was a website entitled "bare bones outline of HTML".  This was fantastically well targeted at me.  I knew of text formatting systems like TYPESET/RUNOFF and I understood record pointers stored in records a la CODASYL.  From there to hyperlinks was a small conceptual jump.

Another side note of mine on the section.  Much of the section is devoted to Weinberg's attempt to teach JCL syntax, as a precursor to teaching operating system concepts.  My attitude towards JCL has been poisoned by the fact that I learned Digital's interactive command language fot TOPS-10,  and then DCL for the VAX, instead of learning a language like JCL.  

The only information I have about JCL is that a lot of people who moved from batch oriented JCL environments to Digital timesharing represented a peculiar training problem.  Initially, these people were more resistant to learning about DCL syntax and sematics than beginners.  However, for most of them, there came a moment when they realized that JCL was much more "difficult"  than a command language really has to be.  From that moment on the JCL converts were ethusiastic and effective learners.  

Converts are the most fanatic supporters.  

I expect that the desktop revolution, some 15 years after the timesharing revolution,  affected millions of non interactive users of computers in much the same way.  Weinberg tends to worry about such people floundering away at an interactive terminal using trial and error instead of organized learning.  While Weinberg's alarms have  some basis in reality,  I've found that, with just a little  direction,  people can learn how to interact with computers just fine.  

This is all in the distant past, today.  When my grandchildren learn interaction with computers,  their parents cannot reacall a time when they didn't have a computer available to them.  My middle daughter learned the difference between the "zero" key and the "oh" key before she was out of diapers.  She now has three little ones of her own.

[The Gorn]

In reference to some of your points:

Quote:Which of your leaders has influenced you the most and the best, in terms of making your skills and knowledge broader and deeper than it had been?

I've never really worked under a strong technical leader. In general I've been given projects and told to run with them. In a few circumstances I was mentored into the correct approach by a more senior engineer or developer, but in general, not.

I credit my engineering degree program with developing the confidence to take on projects independently and to complete them. In general, I've observed that most of the workforce requires more guidance than I would have ever been comfortable receiving.

On the other hand, most of these early career experiences did not train me very well to be a collaborator.

Quote:One of my biggest problems in terms of learning material on the web is that so much of what's written on the web is targeted at "dummies". ... At the other extreme, material targeted at programmers makes too many assumptions about what I already know. There has to be a better way to go from the general to the specific.

I really wonder what that way is.

I have the same problem. I think the general problem represented by this is that the population of those who call themselves "programmers" is exceptionally diverse in terms of skill level, specific expertise, and past experience. Some working programmers are unquestioning button-pushers. Others are highly specialized workers in niche technical areas.

IMO there are no good ways to reach all of them. So that's probably why the majority of books start at such a ridiculously low level of grounding.

Even the language being used to describe technical details can be a hassle. Given what I have experienced in my SW contracting days, it's quite probable that a phrase like "for loop" or "pointer", which to me sets off "it's JUST so obvious" bells in my own head, will be distractingly foreign to some so called "programmer" who has used some weird thing out there.

And I have tried to communicate with the mis-educated or maleducated in a professional setting and to set up a common language just to go forward. When you're working on a C++ project with a "programmer" who has no knowledge, say, of "class" or "pointer", that is exceptionally challenging.

Now, try to accomplish that kind of progression in book form, and it's probably an unwinnable battle.

There happen to be texts on new programming languages, such as "C# for C++ programmers". But that's how they are presented: "X for those with Y experience." As my own past expertise becomes more legacy in nature, I find that finding an appropriate "X for Y developers" book becomes more difficult. That is, there is not a significant body of Y programmers to market to.

[David Cressey]

Quote:There happen to be texts on new programming languages, such as "C# for C++ programmers". But that's how they are presented: "X for those with Y experience." As my own past expertise becomes more legacy in nature, I find that finding an appropriate "X for Y developers" book becomes more difficult. That is, there is not a significant body of Y programmers to market to.

Good point.  Unfortunately, "Javascript for Lisp Programmers" is unlikely to be found.  The nearest thing I've found to something targeted at me is something that might have been called "LUA for Scheme programmers".

And this brings up my favorite ironic title:  Datatrieve Programming.  Datatrieve was one of dozens of programming languages that initially were designed to make programmers unnecessary,  at least for a certain class of applications.

[David Cressey]

Quote:To a surprising degree, the only time we fail to learn is when there are negative forces set up against it.

I think that most of us spend nearly all of our waking hours learning things.  (One could argue that we spend our sleeping hours reorganizing what we have learned).  Unfortunately,  what many people learn most of the time is how to better conceal their own ignorance.   People engaged in concealing their own ignorance are preventing themselves from overcoming it.

Quote:First and foremost, in order to learn we have to acknowledge that there is something we don't don't know that might be worth knowing.  For a professional programmer, this acknowledgement represents a lowering  of status -- unless he is perceptive enough to see that a true professional, a person with true strength, loses nothing by admitting to weakness.

I include this quote to highlight the difference between Weinberg's world view and the prevailing view in this forum.  To a remarkable extent,  the view of "self as victim" has taken hold in OpenITforum.  A person's status is seen to be subject to the whim of small minded and malevolent petty tyrants.  When I compare Weinberg's world with this one, I'm inclined to ask myself whether Weinberg's world never existed,  whether it existed but faded away over the years,  or whether it continues to exist,  but freelancers (most of the active participants in OpenIT)  are prevented from experiencing it.  

My own experience very much agrees with Weinberg's assessment,  up to about the age of 38.  Past that age,  or at about that time,  people began to see me as less and less, instead of more and more.  To some extent,  specializing in a niche skill,  such as databases in my case,  prevented me from having to engage in head on competition with "the young turks".  That got me from about 38 to about 58.  

But the biggest bulwark I've had against being at the mercy of those who are prejudiced against me is my self esteem.  The operative word in "self esteem"  is "self".  If one doesn't esteem oneself,  no one else will.  But I digress.

[The Gorn]

Quote:To a remarkable extent, the view of "self as victim" has taken hold in OpenITforum.

I agree with that comment. I would suggest that this change coincides with the diminishing status of the employee - equivalent in the US workforce.

Since most of us here are working as some form of staff augmentation (really - just not mincing words) or employee equivalent, our fortunes have diminished with the lessening clout of the worker in the general workforce.

Quote:up to about the age of 38. Past that age, or at about that time, people began to see me as less and less, instead of more and more.

To be blunt and honest, I have seen the same thing happening in my own career, and that age 38 is pretty close to when I started to observe the same thing happening. For me it was closer to age 42. That's about when the resistance to my being considered for meaty roles increased greatly, and projects I was offered more resembled a steaming plate of shit and doomed to failure, or, really productive things that I did for clients were warped into "it was just self evident drivel that he did, and we didn't have a college intern around to do it."

Less civil and more arrogant types will tell me and you that we slowed down on learning, or started to value our past laurels more than what we could do now, and that we deserved to fall behind.

I've observed kind of a self justifying recursiveness in the way that employers and many techies talk down or talk up some people. It's mostly perceptual - if one asserts "that old guy is washed up and a loser" then anything he says or does is tainted by the "flipped bozo bit". Solid achievements are often downplayed as something "any lame asshole" could do. Same with characterizing someone a superstar but in the opposite direction.

This has eaten at me quite a bit, as I have observed that perception in some clients and it's gotten extremely personalized and direct. It's very toxic stuff, if you have taken pride in your work.

This is one of several reasons why I made a conscious decision to leave IT. This industry literally doesn't deserve me, and the effect was eating at me to the extent that almost every facet of negotiation and collaboration with clients was feeling like a big confrontation.

On learning: I have probably increased my computer science specific knowledge at a much steeper gradient in the past 5 years than in any similar time frame in my past. Yet available opportunities seem to have dwindled in inverse correspondence.

Examples: In the past couple of years, I have created several public facing web sites. I have added several differnt types of complex real time image manipulation to a digital video application.  I have developed a real time Internet speech transmission/reception application and successfully demonstrated. I also run my own Linux server, and last night, I upgraded the Linux distribution, remotely, from one Debian distribution to another. The move broke just about everything on my server (web, a CMS, email service) due to startup conflicts. I diagnosed and fixed EVERY problem independently in about 3 hours of work.

Plus I'm an accomplished C++, Win32 and Delphi geek.

I have large "reach". My skills resemble those that would require two or three separate staff people in most businesses.

But I CAN'T FIND A F*CKING JOB that I would be happy with. That doesn't make a bit of sense.

And that's another reason I left IT. When you put more of yourself than you ever imagined you would into the work and you get less out of it than you ever had before in your life, something is out of whack.

And I don't know what that "something" is. I do know that my attitude has degraded proportionately. That probably has shown to clients.