Comment by fabricode | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fabricode | Hacker News Reader

> The Starter, the Architect, the Debugger, the Finisher

and the Stereotype.

These articles aren't very informative if they don't have some new insight into how to maximize the output of the team by exploiting the traits of the stereotype. The roles outlined in this entry really only fall into two categories: get things going (starter & architect) and get things working (debugger & finisher).

If I had to take a wild guess, I'd say that what the article is really trying to say is that it's easy for people to start projects (I've yet to meet a "debugger" that can't start their own), but it's hard to complete them. It's often even harder to keep something working than when it was put together given the nature of changing requirements.

So my take on the article would be to add the advice: if you consider yourself a "starter" or an "architect", go live in the world of maintenance for a while. Learn to complete your projects. And if people tend to curse a project when your name was on the design doc, perhaps you should spend a bit more time learning about practical programming, design, and algorithms... or mentor with someone who is well regarded.

Next week's article: What happens when the boss is a Sagittarius and the team lead is a Gemini?

> What happens when the boss is a Sagittarius and the team lead is a Gemini?

I don't know, will you write it?

If you missed the message on what you could do to 'meximize the output of the team', without taking a wild guess, it is there in the next-to-last paragraph.

Whether that's a novel insight or not is up to you, it is novel enough to me that I chose to write about it. I'm still trying to work around my tendency to start stuff and not finish stuff and having been tossed into the role of debugger/finisher lately has helped me to be both better at starting stuff and to get more appreciation for the people that work on later stage code.

I did catch your conclusions in the penultimate paragraph. However, I don't believe that "assigning [a] quality control role to the next person downstream" is a workable solution. This is a form of passing the buck, saddling someone else with your problems, etc.

In your reply here, you say that you've learned that by working as a debugger/finisher you've learned how to start stuff better. That is worthy of further exposition as so many people suffer from the exact same problem.

And as much as false categorization & naming hurts your best point, it sure seems to have caught HN's attention, so marketing may be where your true genius lies. That's cool -- there's lots of money in marketing :)

> This is a form of passing the buck, saddling someone else with your problems, etc.

No, you still have to fix it yourself. But at least there is a feedback element.

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