I’m a big Tom Peters fan. I’ve read a few of his books and read his blog regularly. He had a radical approach to the business life and I find that comforting in my current world of commutes and cufflinks.
One of the things that Tom Peters often says is (I’m paraphrasing only slightly) “Only in business do you see the best salesperson promoted to sales manager.” In a symphony, the best violinist does not become a conductor. The best managers in major league sports were often very average players when they played.
I’m finding myself in the position where I do more code reviewing than actual coding. I look at timescales and can’t believe someone would think such a trivial bit of work would take so long. I often find myself aghast at someone’s lack of javascript knowledge or how they rely on WYSWIG editors for page design. In the .Net age, do we really think we can drop basic HTML and javascript knowledge?
A few weeks ago I gave someone a task that would have taken me three hours to complete and he took over two weeks. I know it would take me three hours, because I had to redo the bit of work afterwards anyway.
It’s difficult to move from coder to code reviewer/developer manager when the coding always seemed so easy. In baseball, I’m sure managers where were very talented players probably had the most difficulty with players who struggled to perform basic actions. A manager who was a mediocre player would be able to give a struggling player better advice.
It’s difficult moving to the next level. But God knows I had enough people help me when I was struggling. Now it’s time for me to be one of those people.
