The Healthcare IT Guy - Latest Comments in Resume Driven Development (RDD)

Re: Resume Driven Development (RDD)

Andrey — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 23:22:13 -0000

Well, good approach "shut up and code, biatch. Forget about the career!" Nobody worries about my career except me, so I monitor job market and choose to improve resume instead of to be useful for customer.

Re: Resume Driven Development (RDD)

Shahid N. Shah — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 09:30:33 -0000

Great point, David :-) Anytime developers make decisions based on what they like or know instead of what will service the customers and the business development becomes a tough row to hoe.

Re: Resume Driven Development (RDD)

David — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 08:10:09 -0000

Ever come across "Magazine Management"? Where a Senior Face decides that a new project should be implemented in Z where Z is the subject of an article in his favourite magazine.
Never mind that Z is new and unproven and that there are no tools or resources, and nobody has any experience working with it. It's the new thing and that's the way we are going.

Re: Resume Driven Development (RDD)

Josh — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 18:00:35 -0000

an Old post, but it still help to improve my knowledgebase.
Healthcare plus IT is a great job

Re: Resume Driven Development (RDD)

Cyril K. — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 08:22:22 -0000

It's really problem, it's big problem for companies where it take place. But it's rather complex problem than only management or development organization.

When teams work by model you call RDD, it's mean that they only not motivated as well, they not feel their relation to the product and result, and probably not stay in company for a long time.

Re: Resume Driven Development (RDD)

Chalam — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 09:24:35 -0000

Shahid,

I got your point, but you can't summarily put the blame on the programmers. Managers are equally responsible in amassing ridiculous software junk in the organizations that are no way relate to each other and then one fine day will start looking for a programmer to fill a position

"who has hands on development with Java, ETL, Cobol, Python, C# and ..... my ass.... able to work independently..... with minimal supervision...."

This kind of job market makes the programmers becoming "Jack of many trades" and "Master of none".

If i don't get a job and sit on bench for months due to this "Jack of many trades", whose fault is it?

Re: Resume Driven Development (RDD)

Praveen Jhurani — Wed, 28 May 2008 14:19:57 -0000

Though this is an interesting article and I like the acronym, I would like to resonate the statement that this is more market driven and one of the factors of fast pace/growth in new tools/technologies. In my experience, most of the times good developers are able to embrace new tools and technologies and deliver if business requirements are clear and well defined. Decision maker should have the insight/experience and depth and breadth to do pros and cons analysis, understand the risk/reward and be able to ask insightful questions. Beyond that its like any other business decision.

My 2 cents.

Re: Resume Driven Development (RDD)

MLO — Sat, 12 May 2007 01:35:02 -0000

Hrm... I have been in the IT field for nigh onwards of 10 years and have never seen this coming from experienced and competent developers. More often, it is Marketing or Senior Management who have read the "buzzword of the day" coming and saying "I must have this!"

I have worked in academia, manufacturing, banking, and publishing - and it has been the same in all of those fields. Technology decisions are never driven by what is best - rather, they are decided by someone in the chain of command reading an article in Info World, Computer World, or CIO (if tech chain), or even The Wall Street Journal. Often, these so-called "new technologies" are already in place.

But, the developers who are complaining have a valid point. I actually had a recruiter who had had a customer looking for someone who knew XML, HTML, SGML, and databases. Um... if the person knows SGML and databases they are qualified to do what the person was asking. Of course, the rate quoted was ridiculously low since there is a dearth of people who know both. However, the search was unnecessarily narrowed by insisting on having several keywords show up in the resume that are just subsets of knowledge within the main field - which anyone who truly knows the field already knows.

Honestly, since the dawn of outsourcing the situation has gotten much, much worse in every field - not just IT. Oh, and the dawn of the MBA. I have managed both MBAs and non-MBAs and with very few exceptions, I have always wanted to fire MBAs because they showed an incredible arrogance and unwillingness to learn. Give me a hardworker with experience and the proper technical knowledge any day.

RDD is something the MBA mentality and outsourcing created. Guess what, you have to eat that which you have sown.

Pax,

MLO

Re: Resume Driven Development (RDD)

David T — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 13:22:11 -0000

Great post Shahid!
As a development manager, one of your key roles is to help the team focus not only on your customers' success, but also on your customers' customers success.
But there is also a pendant to RDD at the customer level: when customers buy into fads and are convinced they need something they really don't - see my post on Britney Spears and Software Product Development
[http://softwaresurvival.blo...]
There are just many ways to justify bad technology decisions.
Cheers,
-David

Re: Resume Driven Development (RDD)

Andrey — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 19:34:55 -0000

Your article doesn't have point at all, because I can answer on that questions and I see most of programmers can, see posts, but it doesn't matter for old boss, he just doesn't want change anything. I only have a hope on my own, what else?

Re: Resume Driven Development (RDD)

Andrey — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 19:21:01 -0000

I think the employer should compensate for working with boring old tools.

Re: Resume Driven Development (RDD)

BuggyFunBunny — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 11:52:04 -0000

The problem, has been for years, is that the 'decision makers' almost always don't have direct experience with the competing technologies.

How else to explain the au courant ecstacy with all things XML? How many understand that it is superior for neither data transmission (almost anything else is better) nor data store (IMS, anyone?). Other examples: EJB1/EJB2/EJB3, CORBA, SOA, Applets.

Point Haired Bosses are the root of it. Or, to put it another way, the MBA mentality which posits that A Real Manager is a skill set independent of the work being done. How many people know that the Web is structurally just a block mode disconnected interface: aka 3270 talking to OS/VS1? How many people know that AJAX is just a way to get back to what we had in 1988: Unix databases talking to character mode VT-220s?

There is more RDD in the Executive Suite than there is in CubeLand; although there are enough knuckleheads there, op cit XML.

By the way, I did once work for Optimed. What we did with character mode Progress still can't be done today with any technology. Well, if you can live without the pixel dust.

Re: Resume Driven Development (RDD)

Shahid N. Shah — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 10:14:11 -0000

Excellent point, Dharma and I love the KDH acronym.

Re: Resume Driven Development (RDD)

dharma — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 10:10:59 -0000

RDD is developers' response to KDH (keyword driven hiring). When developers are hired based on the list of tools and latest technology hypes on resume, instead of their intelligence and understanding of design/development, what you get is RDD.

Re: Resume Driven Development (RDD)

Shahid N. Shah — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 07:02:13 -0000

Good points, Bobbie and Shafi. Technology and tools modernization is requirement in all forward-looking companies. The main issue is whether the new tool selection can be justified based on business requirements and return on investment or only because a developer wants to do the upgrade.

Re: Resume Driven Development (RDD)

Shafi — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 05:24:09 -0000

Nice articale. What about if developer thinks that the technology he wants to use (like .net) will be good for client in comming future since the technology he is using in past soon to die (like vb6) than if he suggests new technology to adopt; will he be right or wrong?Nice article. I have one question to ask:
What about if developer thinks that the technology he wants to use (like .net) will be good for client in coming future since the technology he is using in current is soon to die (like vb6) than if he suggests new technology to adopt; will he be right or wrong? Because he might not have any other suggestion that how it will help client for now but he knows that the software will run for a very long period.

Re: Resume Driven Development (RDD)

Bobbie The Programmer — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 11:11:56 -0000

How about companies that use the exact same development tools year after year? What does that mean for the programmers who work there? They will watch their skills grow more obsolete while the world marches past them.

And let me tell you, based on my own sad experience, "home projects" get you almost nowhere looking for work.

Re: Resume Driven Development (RDD)

Tahir Akhtar — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 05:46:53 -0000

Nice post.

IMO, that's how many service industries are run. All these industries are characterized by a large information asymmetry [http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...]

We can talk about ethical considerations but i think more important aspect is market health.

In some cases, like domestic software development market in developing nations, such behavior on the part of software developers and development firms seriously limit the growth of market.

All this theoretical stuff aside, I believe nature of Software Development business, job market pressures on software developers to acquire latest skills and rapid pace of change in software technology creates a uniquely complex situation.

You can view this issue from software buyer, seller, industry or developers point of view.

You definitely have triggered my train of thought and i would like to say a lot more but unfortunately I have to go back to learning new technologies. No one is going to hire me for such rants ;)

Re: Resume Driven Development (RDD)

Andrey — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 16:08:37 -0000

You are lucky guys. I have to work with 10-year's technologies (ASP, Access) and I never that put on my resume. I work at home in my evenings and use the last technologies and that I will put at my resume.
Developer may quit because he see that his success will better in another place. I don't understand what's wrong with him. It's a manager fault. If I can I will quit at soon as possible.

Re: Resume Driven Development (RDD)

dev danke — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 03:16:23 -0000

RDD, great acronym!

Here's another view on this topic.

RDD is forced on developers by the market place. It is ommon for a developer to not even be considered for a position just because they lack experience with a particular app server, such as WebLogic.

This is odd because a major idea behind JEE is that if you develop against a standardized API, like JEE, then your skills and the app you write will run with minimal or no changes on any JEE compliant app server.

However, when businesses seek developers, the development manager, the internal HR person, and the external technical recruiter forget this reality about JEE. Instead they usually only consider applicants with experience, not only with a particular app server, but sometimes only when the applicant has experience with a particular version of that app server.

This is the common case in the software/IT industry when hiring developers. Developers don't usually make these rules, but must live by them or not get hired.

Developers who do not steer their careers towards using mainstream tools and technologies, may find themselves unemployable, especially when the economy is slow and many devs compete for a few jobs.

Re: Resume Driven Development (RDD)

raveman — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 17:56:28 -0000

If you love client so much, why don't you marry him? in development someone has to lose, why developer has to waist time to maintaining/using old/bad technologies ? old/bad because they are dead, if they werent dead they would be good for RDD.

Its funny that your against RDD since your Java/.Net guy. Maybe you should also learn php :>

Re: Resume Driven Development (RDD)

JavaDonkey — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 22:51:56 -0000

Maybe RDD will become the latest buzz. I think I will put that on my resume.

Re: Resume Driven Development (RDD)

Alexander Ryan — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 09:41:04 -0000

You are absolutely 100% correct and I love the catchy acronym which sums up the problem very nicely.

IMHO this is a part of the so-called "Business-IT" divide.

Some IT people pursue their own best interests at the expense of their customers. This reflects badly on all software development professionals.

Never putting our best interests ahead of our customers should be a part of a software developers code of ethics.

I wish their were an organization out there that established such a code of ethics so that those of use who abhor this practice can differentiate ourselves from the RDD crowd.

Re: Resume Driven Development (RDD)

SeOdom — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 16:51:50 -0000

Good point. RDD is certainly more likely to happen on small teams without significant architecture guidance.
Healthcare careers

Re: Resume Driven Development (RDD)

Dmitriy Kruglyak — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 06:49:34 -0000

I think the most important thing is for development managers and senior execs to recognize the issue and make the decisions accordingly.

Recognition of "RDD bias" should be only one of the factors in the choice of technology, but of course not the only one.