G'day all. On Mon, May 26, 2003 at 08:39:11AM +0100, Sarah Thompson wrote:
Unfortunately, it probably *is* just you, which is a pity. As and when you get into management, you'll have a queue of people longing to work for you, believe me! :-)
:-) [horror stories deleted] Since I wrote this, I realised that part of the issue is what field of development you work in. I work on a 2MLOC database server. This is a very complex piece of software, and it's just not enough to "know C++" to maintain software like this. It's far more important to hire someone who can handle that much complexity. I can envisage that software fields like real time, embedded and safety-critical systems areas (e.g. avionics, biomedical etc) or commercial operating systems/compilers/etc probably have related (though distinct) problems. When you get beyond a certain level of complexity or risk, it's far more important to get the right person than to get the currently correct skill set, because the right person can learn the right skills along with all the other stuff they have to learn. Cheers, Andrew Bromage