Yeah, it's a long term problem that I see with our society. We've moved away from craftsmen to contracts. I saw it happen within my own job several years ago.
I was a programmer who was solely responsible for a particular system. There was nobody else. If users wanted a feature, they came to me. If something didn't work correctly, they came to me. I was the craftsman, and I could create new abilities for them if they came to me with hand-scribbled notes on wrinkled paper (and they did).
But then the legalese started. We wanted to become ISO certified, and that meant signatures and oversight and documents about terms of service and sign-offs by people who had no real contact with the system. I was a slave to contracts instead of being a craftsman. *sigh* I was not at all disappointed when they eventually shut down my system (after paying a 7-digit dollar figure to contractors to build a new system and then leave) and end my job.
I think craftsmen are better. Responsibility to go with skill. Leave people to do the things that they're good at, and they'll perform better than any micro-managing contract can require them to do.
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Re: WPA
Date: 2009-Feb-25, Wednesday 03:42 am (UTC)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_Progress_Administration
Yeah, it's a long term problem that I see with our society. We've moved away from craftsmen to contracts. I saw it happen within my own job several years ago.
I was a programmer who was solely responsible for a particular system. There was nobody else. If users wanted a feature, they came to me. If something didn't work correctly, they came to me. I was the craftsman, and I could create new abilities for them if they came to me with hand-scribbled notes on wrinkled paper (and they did).
But then the legalese started. We wanted to become ISO certified, and that meant signatures and oversight and documents about terms of service and sign-offs by people who had no real contact with the system. I was a slave to contracts instead of being a craftsman. *sigh* I was not at all disappointed when they eventually shut down my system (after paying a 7-digit dollar figure to contractors to build a new system and then leave) and end my job.
I think craftsmen are better. Responsibility to go with skill. Leave people to do the things that they're good at, and they'll perform better than any micro-managing contract can require them to do.