Did not like this post. Like many others over here, I also have read all the great posts by him over the years, on joelonsoftware. But, honestly, this one just does not cut it for me.
He is over simplifying everything. And his extreme view ends demoting the "top" of an Organization's chart. Heck I won't want to start a company to just move furniture around.
And you can not have a binary classification for a CEO - Steve Jobs or not. In reality there will be lot of people who are perhaps very skillful, experienced and work very hard at the top. So their skill level might be closer to Steve Jobs than your average Joe. So you have to treat it like a spectra.
He makes a very fair comparison of developers and similar in a software company with that of a toothpaste company. But his fairness goes for a toss, when he compares the people at the "top". IMO just administrators should have no place being in a software product company in the first place.
He makes a good point, that its best for the organization that if all the brains are used rather than just one brain. But he goes to the other extreme to make this one point.
Experience does have a role after all. A fresh bright programmer might want to code everything up in the latest shiniest thing, if you _know_ that its a wrong decision. Then is it not your duty to explain him and convince him.
In such a situation, who has the luxury of acting like a university Chair, and setup a committee to take the right decision? :-)
So the comparison with university is wrong. I see another comment in this thread referring to 'architecture astronaut' in the context of this post. IMO, this is more of 'architecture polish' ... just skims the surface :-)
He is over simplifying everything. And his extreme view ends demoting the "top" of an Organization's chart. Heck I won't want to start a company to just move furniture around.
And you can not have a binary classification for a CEO - Steve Jobs or not. In reality there will be lot of people who are perhaps very skillful, experienced and work very hard at the top. So their skill level might be closer to Steve Jobs than your average Joe. So you have to treat it like a spectra.
He makes a very fair comparison of developers and similar in a software company with that of a toothpaste company. But his fairness goes for a toss, when he compares the people at the "top". IMO just administrators should have no place being in a software product company in the first place.
He makes a good point, that its best for the organization that if all the brains are used rather than just one brain. But he goes to the other extreme to make this one point.
Experience does have a role after all. A fresh bright programmer might want to code everything up in the latest shiniest thing, if you _know_ that its a wrong decision. Then is it not your duty to explain him and convince him.
In such a situation, who has the luxury of acting like a university Chair, and setup a committee to take the right decision? :-)
So the comparison with university is wrong. I see another comment in this thread referring to 'architecture astronaut' in the context of this post. IMO, this is more of 'architecture polish' ... just skims the surface :-)