Programmers are brain surgeons

In the last post, i forgot to tell you how i reached that post, it was actually from this blog entry....checkout this one as well

http://blog.saush.com/?p=157

I sent out a mail recently to some managers in my company (before you start rolling your eyes, I’m a manager too) about project scheduling, something which I’ve been very frustrated about for a long while. In that mail I quoted something from the book “The Art of Project Management” by Scott Berkun — “Programmers should be trusted. If your brain surgeon told you the operation you need takes five hours, would you pressure him to do it in three?”.

Craig was quite amused at this quote, asking if I compared myself with a brain surgeon. While it was friendly banter, I thought that this was one of the problems with the software industry. Maybe it is the naming/association with the construction industry where architects design the building, engineers oversees the construction and anyone doing the actual work is considered menial laborers. Maybe it is the thousands working ’software factories’ for outsourcing body-shoppers. Maybe it’s the large software projects that suck up thousands upon thousands of man-days with huge teams of programmers that gave rise to the myth that only large teams of programmers can produce software of any significance.

Whatever it is.

I believe programmers are not given enough respect that we deserve....

Read the rest at the actual blog