The Career Programmer: Guerilla Tactics for an Imperfect World Excerpt

‘The Career Programmer: Guerilla Tactics for an Imperfect World’ Excerpt

Getting your message across to management is always tricky, and it can be doubly challenging when you are dealing with veteran software programmers who have climbed the corporate ladder. This book chapter offers pointers on how to “manage up” and enact change in a top-heavy environment.

Author Christopher Duncan sums up his frustrations with middle and upper management by simply asking, “What planet are these guys from?”

From there, Duncan goes on to suggest some pointers on handling the other-worldly frustrations of “Managing Your Management,” the book chapter excerpted here.

Among his kernels of wisdom:

• If you make an emotional argument based on the amount of sleep you’re losing or the number of times you’ve had to rewrite the code, it will fall on deaf ears.
• When it comes to making proposals, where is just as important as what.
• Regardless of where you get your foot in the door, you absolutely, positively must be perceived as a success if you wish to continue doing things your way.

This book chapter is an excerpt from “The Career Programmer: Guerilla Tactics for an Imperfect World,” published by Apress.

Included in this zip file are:

• careerprogrammer.pdf
• Intro Doc.pdf
• Terms and Conditions.pdf