Speaking of leadership, Joel Spolsky has a good idea. His view of a software development manager kind of jives with the Servant Leadership idea that I was talking about in "What type of leader is best'".
This manager's primary role is to simplify life for the developer. I certainly like the idea and try to live it as much as possible. However, there are always the difficulties of real life that you have to live with:
- How do you grow your junior developers without fear of them crashing the ship'
- How do you grow your junior leaders into senior leaders'
The answers for most of these questions usually ends up boiling down to the same truth: if you give your people trust and ownership then they'll reward you by going to unusual lengths in order to get the job done. There are dozens of stories coming out of Microsoft every week that apparently prove this.
However, experience has taught me to also worry about a quote that predates software development: if you give people enough rope, they just might hang themselves with it.