Development approach definition

Yeah, there is good and bad to everything. The trick is getting more good than bad out of anything.

Scott

 

I believe that there certainly are bad first world developers, but most of the people I have worked with and dealt with have been motivated and easy to get along with. Some haven't quite "gotten" the development process and how to think like a programmer (I'll confess, I'm about 2/3 of the way there, but I have to stop myself sometimes and think of a better approach to a problem). That said, I don't think that it is fair to say that this is many or most cases for developers in the US at least. I will say that there is a bad habit of job jumping, but that is a function of there being such a high demand for developers currently. Frankly, if you can get paid significantly more at another company, and your boss isn't willing to pay you that rate, then the free market says you should move to the higher paying job.

When you need to worry is when your developer isn't creative, doesn't have a dozen side projects rolling around in his brain, and doesn't seek innovation. Why? Because they are not seeing the potential....they will find something that works, code it, and be done. They will not try to make it better, they will try to fix it quickly. Sometimes that approach works, but it more often than not leads to fixing the same thing for a similar issue 3 months later.

I know our team isn't subcontracted, we have direct communication with all of the team members. They are just lazy, and do the bare minimum they can to solve the problem. They are the no side projects/no innovation developers i mentioned earlier.