A few people have commented to me recently that I don't write enough stuff that is useful for the average programmer; it's either abstract or written more for managers than people in the trenches. I'm a good hearted and humble soul who always aims to please and is loved by children, dogs and old-people so I feel it's time for me to write something that will help the lowly programmer, even if she writes code in VB. Let me start out with the following code segment.
if (u == currentCode.reader()) {
location = diagram.after();
u.skipTo(location);
} else {
u = manager;
u.stopReading(article);
}
Now, given this code, and considering the implications of the sum of the digits of its Godel number, it can be seen that relativistic interpretations of the underlying modular forms will produce unstable empiricism in non-linear hyperbolic spaces. In systems that utilize supernatural numbering algebras these limitations can be overcome via cyclical-determinism (we shall not consider either silly or impish numbering schemes). The following diagram should make this perfectly clear.
There, that should guarantee that any managers who stumble upon this article will not still be reading it. I shall now share with you the secret of my amazing success as a programmer. This is the key to the kingdom so guard it well grasshopper.
Just modify the email below appropriately and send it to your boss. It's always worked for me!
[Manager's name] I've seen that a lot of the companies around town are really starting to implement this ridiculous metric of word-counting. Yesterday a friend of mine in the IT department accidentally saw this in an email from [your CEOs name].
> The McKenzie consultant we brought in has suggested we push for a word-counting
> metric across the development organization. They say our word-count
> numbers are very low compared to others in the industry. Companies using word
> count have seen their numbers go up as much as 30% to 50%. This is the hot new
> measurement tool and we need to get on it. I hate it that we're behind in this
> important area. If someone in one of your teams is using it already put them in
> for a promotion. If not, let's start asking the hard questions about why not.
Sure I know how to do word counts, but I want to state clearly and unequivocally that this is an unfair metric that places our organization at risk. Not all code is the same. Our work is more complicated than other people's work. If you implement this people will be working late nights trying to keep up.
---[Your name]
The amazing-mind-blowing power of this plan is that now you control your company's metrics. After your manager switches to word-counting as the basis for progress tracking, bonuses, etc you can add as much arbitrary success or failure to your apparent progress as you want. This means you can refactor when needed and do whatever else is required to make the code better, all the while placating your manager with meaningless data. Your workload will drop 50% and your ability to get important technical work done will go up 200% (metrics courtesy of BCG).
One of my managers hired consultants to come in and do training on word-count. If you think they told him that word-counting is a bogus metric you would be wrong; they had two weeks of process re-engineering meetings and skill-building exercises and then we went back to business as usual but with word-count as the official new corporate standard. It was even discussed prominently in our ISO certification. We still see the consultants annually for about a week of process improvement meetings.
Now how's that for PRACTICAL advice?
[P.S. some of you may be worried that I may in fact be a manager. That's ok I stopped reading before I got to the diagram.]
