The zombie developer saga - when a zombie is fired

In one of my previous posts, I made some observations on a kind of unmotivated developers that I simply call zombie developers.

Well, two weeks ago, one of these kind of developers was fired in a company in which I work. It was not a pleasant thing, believe me, expecially under christmas.

BUT, WHAT HAPPENED ?

I think that something bad has been grown up during months: a developer starts to get lesser and lesser motivated and feels very frustrated about his job, his professional results, the relationships with the boss and other teammates.
On the other side, the management of a small software company gets lesser and lesser results and feels frustrated about project results and the relationships with one the employees.
When a break point is reached, something must happen.

WHAT WAS WRONG WITH THE COMPANY ?

They monitored the results of this developer and, when something wrong was very obvious, they tried some fixes:

1. Physical shift: the company believed that in some way, the physical placement of the developer was not good. Too much far from the team, too much hidden from eye-to-eye contact. So he has been moved to a more central desktop, but the change was not useful.

2. Another chance: different kind of tasks were assigned to the developer, hoping to find an area (GUI programming, non GUI programming, different languages) in which he was more confident. It didn't work: results were constantly worse.

3. Explicit warnings: the developer was not fired without any sign of what was happening. He was warned by the boss, and asked to change his behavior.

The worst error, I think, was the fact that the company has taken a lot of time to detect a real problem with this developer. It seemed that some bad results on a project were due to the difficult of the project itself, not on the developer motivation. When the developer was moved to another, simpler project, the new team leader immediately complained about the bad results of the zombie, and this time the problem was clear.

WHAT WAS WRONG WITH THE DEVELOPER ?

1. First (and lethal) error: when the boss warns you, you have to seriously choose what you want to do. You can (professionally) do self-criticism and change your efforts on your job or you can (professionally) answer to the boss critics and try to defend or explain your position.
It is not acceptable to get the critics from the boss and continue to do what you were doing last day. You can't be found playing Solitaire or Minesweeper after you have been explicitly warned, unless you really want to be fired. Period.

2. Second error: the lack of communication with the entire team. This is a development team brought together, where people help each other. It is a natural evolution due to the stressfull projects in which they work. If the zombie had a real communication with the rest of the team, he would probably have received some help from them. Instead, the approach of the developer was to isolate himself, and to blame or give annoyance to other teammates.
Such an error can have dramatic effects: developers are not expected to be lonely cowboys riding in the sunset of a dusty desert. Developers are expected to be social and to work together on a target. It is not a matter of beying shy or boring. You can be shy or boring, but if you want to be a good developer, you need to learn to work in a team.

WHY WE TURN INTO ZOMBIES ?

If you watch the comments on the Zombie Developers post, you will find several descriptions on ways to produce zombies: projects got cancelled, developers moved around (as you can do with furniture), excess of bureaucracy and creativity killing.
Most of the times, zombies are just created by simple lack of respect for the employee.
I think that each company has the responsibility to create and maintain an healthy working environment. Even a company that do not believe in motivation needs to do something, because lack of results or the excess of turnover can be a serious problem in productivity. A software company, too, depends heavily on developer's creativity, healthness and motivation.

A team of zombies can't produce profit.

WHAT SAVES ME FROM THE ZOMBIE VIRUS ?

I am talking about zombies, but I was, sometimes, very near to turn into a zombie too. Some projects really suck, and sometimes companies use programmers really as objects, not human beings.

Still, I love this job and I always try new ways to motivate myself, instead of waiting the company to do this for me.

Much bloggers (The Retrospector, Angry, HBS, TechRepublic) have posted rich lists of suggestions to motivate geeks (or at least to avoid to un-motivate them): most of them are really talking about ways to avoid turning development teams into zombie flocks.

The most of these posts is simply great, but I don't like when they suggests futile stuff like gadgets, food or things like this. It does not seem to be realistic. I am a professional and I don't expect that the office in which I work is changed into a theme park or a bistro. I am just expected to produce results. The company is just expected to pay me, and to put me in the right conditions to do the job (with the right tools, a right environment and the information I need).

I don't want geek gadgets or snacks.

Well, some small features in a project give me more motivation than usual:

1. When I see my name in the project credits or in the project web page I am more motivated because I want that my name is only on successfull projects.

2. When I can propose or discuss solutions, instead of receiving closed designs choosen by others, I am more motivated because I can put my experience into the project.

3. When I can talk with other developers, and discuss things instead of having sterile 'ball passages', I am motivated because I can contribute to the evolution of a better team.

4. When the development team is a real entity, and has direct communication with the outside world, I am motivated because this is a team to work with.

That's all. If you have some comments on motivation, zombies and development I will be very glad to read and discuss them. Today I am a little tired and not very clear, so I recognize that the english quality of this post is very poor. I apologize about it.

See you (unless you are turned into a green zombie - mmmmgrhh)