tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23912478.post1767766735961400473..comments2024-01-03T12:45:39.815+00:00Comments on peripatetic axiom: Seduced by the drama?keithbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14314542307822401015noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23912478.post-65450313567996430312009-04-01T19:48:00.000+01:002009-04-01T19:48:00.000+01:00Interesting post.It reminds me of the Special Air ...Interesting post.<BR/><BR/>It reminds me of the Special Air Service selection process. SAS team members would die for each other and generally they're neither stupid nor evil, but are certainly macho.<BR/> <BR/>It also reminds me of something in Cialdini's book "Influence" where he talks about initiation ceremonies for fraternity and sorority groups and how they persist despite all attempts by the authorities to stop them. Although the ceremonies are horrible they act to bind the group strongly together and people value things more when they have expended effort or suffered hardship to achieve them.David Petersonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03475136061061572446noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23912478.post-4471468180665952692009-03-31T21:15:00.000+01:002009-03-31T21:15:00.000+01:00@ Scott,Thanks for following up. Someone once said...@ Scott,<BR/>Thanks for following up. <BR/><BR/>Someone once said something along the lines of "success comes form good judgement, good judgement comes from experience, experience comes from failure and failure comes from bad judgement" Probably haven't got that quite right but I think the sentiment is clear.<BR/><BR/>I'd tend to prefer the team member who's been through the mill, too, especially if they've learned when cut their losses and walk away.<BR/><BR/>Meanwhile, the story about how the IE 5 team was healthy and good despite the preceding train wreck would have been a much more useful (if less dramatic) one. It's a shame that the essay as published has 9 paragraphs on the train wreck and only 1 on the better world. <BR/><BR/>I remain confused as to how the title, and the claim that "Ugly teams are bulletproof, die-hard work machines, [...] what does not kill the ugly team makes the ugly team stronger." does not constitute a glorification of suffering.<BR/><BR/>Other comments here and on the O'Reilly FYI site seem to suggest that I'm not the only one confused by this.keithbhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14314542307822401015noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23912478.post-36783731349761115702009-03-31T18:12:00.000+01:002009-03-31T18:12:00.000+01:00This is a good critique - thanks for posting it.Cl...This is a good critique - thanks for posting it.<BR/><BR/>Clearly I missed the mark for you as i did not intend to glorify the horrific mismanagement I and my team suffered. I would never advocate those parts of the story as a model to intentionally follow.<BR/><BR/>However, when a team does fail there are great things to be learned. And I do believe that masters of a craft become masters in part by experiencing things not going well and learning from them. Give me two equal candidates, one who has never experienced a project gone wrong and one who has, and I'll hire the later every time. <BR/><BR/>Where i failed you in this essay is I neglected to talk about the the true heroes of this story: the people who lead IE 5. They transformed the team and gave all the people like me who had been treated poorly an entirely new, and healthy, environment to work in. *That* should have been the focus of the essay. How that environment was created in the wreckage of what happened before. <BR/><BR/>-<A HREF="http://www.scottberkun.com" REL="nofollow">Scott Berkun</A>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23912478.post-69192780623624421832009-03-31T03:56:00.000+01:002009-03-31T03:56:00.000+01:00"Macho bullshit" just about sums it up. Having wor..."Macho bullshit" just about sums it up. Having worked as a manager I've seen developers go through all sorts of heroics. Some motivated by fear, some a strange type of ego, and others just plain old fashioned conscientiousness and a sense of personal responsibility. <BR/><BR/>Meanwhile the "management classes" happily dictate this is how life has to be, whilst taking no responsibility themselves, and when in reality such trauma imposed on others is always totally avoidable. Usually it boils down to someone in management wanting to avoid telling someone else "the truth". Very often this other person would love to hear the truth, rather than being told lies and becoming the victim of broken promises.<BR/><BR/>The Craftsmanship label is just another label I agree, but it does raise the question of ethics and professionalism. <BR/><BR/>If we could raise the ethical bar, and say causing trauma is unacceptable, telling lies is unacceptable, ducking responsibility and hurting others is unacceptable. Then we would go along way to solving the root cause of a lot of our problems.Paul Beckfordhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16046651614960778254noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23912478.post-34691567712051763102009-03-30T03:03:00.000+01:002009-03-30T03:03:00.000+01:00I definitely agree with you, the moral of Scott's ...I definitely agree with you, the moral of Scott's story isn't that ugly teams win, it's that Ugly teams make more interesting stories. The winning team was the one that wasn't riddled with scar tissue and covered in food. I can never figure out how or why people work for Microsoft; every time I hear a story from that place it sounds equally as dreadful. They figured out how to milk the world for cash, but they're pretty hopeless at building things.Paul W. Homerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02349253120538728302noreply@blogger.com