The Show

Episode 20 of Oddly Influenced, Brian Marick's podcast, is concerned with Julian Orr's book, Talking About Machines.

Orr makes much of war stories, the tales that colleagues tell each other about work they've done to help solve a live problem, commiserate about something that's gone wrong, or build culture.

I recognise this from the teams I've been part of, communities of practice I've participated in, and meetups and conferences I've attended and run. Those stories establish our credentials, and to an extent our status, in our peer groups.

Almost as an aside, the podcast mentions another kind of story, this one aimed not at the peer group but at those who are asked to assess their performance.

The group of technicians followed by Orr in his book were evaluated in part by account managers at the companies they were assigned to; people usually very distant from the technical work. This lead the technicians to go out of their way to make the outcomes of their work, their virtues, and their value visible to those account managers.

Edited rather heavily from the show's transcript:

... while there’s showmanship to this, it’s not fakery. The qualities the technicians display ... were the same qualities they thought made good technicians. They just made sure other people noticed the qualities they knew they had. ...

I think a lot of programmers are in the position of the techs: being judged by people who can’t judge what we do ... Software testers have it even worse: is this person not finding bugs because bugs aren’t there to be found? Or because many bugs are being missed? ...

In the early days of Agile, Agile was frequently called undisciplined ... I made a big deal about how Agile requires more discipline than conventional coding, and how techniques like pair programming and no code ownership were in part ways of enforcing discipline through peer pressure.

But it never occurred to me that people should present as disciplined, not just be disciplined.

Earlier this week, in Granularity Familiarity I talked about the way I share my work, and its impact, with different people in different parts of the company, to be consumed by them in different ways. I also said that I think I get to operate the way that I do because I've earned the trust of the people I work with and for.

I care about doing a good job, and I also care to show that I'm doing a good job because, amongst other benefits, it gains me that trust, that credibility, independence and flexibility. And these are valuable commodities.
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