Ugh... back end programers... what to do? — OZONE Asylum, home of the Mad Scientists

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Ugh... back end programers... what to do?

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Your Text: Insert Slimies » Insert UBB Code » Close Last Tag \| All Tags UBB Help	Well, as one of those crazy developer people, I can tell you this: subcontracting is a bad, bad thing to do to anyone. First it places you into the situation of having to manage a project when you obviously have no interest in doing so, and it puts an unnecessary strain on the client relationship, in that they hired [b]you[/b] to do work, and you end up hiring someone else to do part of it. Now, I can understand winning a project that you are under-qualified for (I've done that on one or two occasions over the past decade), but the trick is to use the situation as a reason to learn something new. The very first web site that required programmatic development I won back in '97, and I didn't know a damn thing about PHP, but won the project because I said I did. I turned around and, over the weekend, learned as much about the language as I possibly could. Then I did the work. And I was paid. I was paid to learn stuff. That's a good feeling. Now, I can understand the certain reticence in learning the guts of PHP, but there are myriad benefits. First and foremost, you won't have to subcontract ever again. All that said, let me remind you that we developers are notoriously bad at deciding how long systems will take to code. I've been off by [b]weeks[/b] before, and I've had to own up to that. My rule of thumb now is to come up with my estimate, and then doubling it. Generally keeps me safe. It could be that this guy you've hired to do the work simply got caught up in the mire of that situation and didn't want to own up to it. That's fine. But programming, despite its name, is not all that programmatic. It's got creativity requirements, critical thinking, problem solving--all that good stuff. And two bad experiences in the past two years isn't half bad. -[url=http://www.brokenhattrick.com]steve[/url] Loading...
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