Ayende picked up on Jeremy Miller's latest post and commented on the whole idea of "trusting the developers in your team". I think it's safe to say that Ayende is right on the money: If you can't trust them, and you don't want to coach them and help them become better developers, what's the purpose? Why have you hired them in the first place?

However, it's not just a trust issue. I think I've said it in the past; but this issue it's also one of business and understanding of the world of software development. I've voiced my concerns to this line of thinking to people before around here, and one counterclaim I've seen brought up time and time and again by project managers and even owners of IT shops here is that they need the untrained, less skilled, less trusted developer.

It's not that they don't trust them; it's that they hire them to be untrusted and kept with low-skills because some tasks don't require "special" skills. Invariably, I hear stuff like "why would you hire a top-notch developer to create the web UI of the application?" Well.... in my experience, that's usually one of the places that a) is the most visible part of the application, b) is one that can take a lot of time during development, c) is easy to get wrong and others. Besides, this is definitely along the lines of the Mort issues discussed a while ago.

Software Development