The Definitive Guide To Making Your Developers Hate You
…and becoming the best tech company there is, like no one ever was.
Loyal developers and fanatic staff members are a thing of the past! Besides, the key metric for any company’s performance isn’t the number of employees, but the the number of monthly active employees, right?
There are too many developers out there and too little jobs to accommodate them all, so rotate and refresh your developers to ensure productivity and continuous flow of $$$. It literally pays to have a fresh set of eyes for every project every single month — that’s trickle-down economics in action for you!
Follow this guide and you’ll be replacing employees faster than Taylor Swift replaces partners in no time.
Step 1: Get rid of free coffee
Or — better yet — serve your employees bad coffee. Aside from cutting office expenses, getting rid of that dangerously addictive substance from your pantry ensures that your developers are focused only on the right stuff. No more walking to the coffee machine every 15 minutes to get high. Have your developers glued to their seats and writing code — and doing only that — for good!
Step 2: Limit vacation leaves. Or get rid of ‘em.
I know that Joe from recruitment has been constantly telling you that “unlimited vacation leaves” is the hip-n-trendy new practice in Silicon Valley, sure to attract the local talents. Well, let me tell you what: Joe is a liar! Paying your developers real money for time they don’t spend working hard on their desks? Unspeakable! Instead, limit their vacation leaves to a small and cost-effective amount — 6 should be more than generous — and keep them dedicated and away from worldly distractions. And, when they use one of those 6 leaves, enthusiastically remind them that they’re still obligated to answer calls since ‘leave’ is just another term for ‘working away from the office’.
Step 3: Don’t bother too much about project specs
Let’s get right down to business advice: when storyboarding your project, no need to bother with the nitty gritty and just slap the project description right at your developers. They’re intelligent people, so they should be able to figure it all out for themselves anyway. Aside from making project managers unnecessary (sorry, Matt), it also unleashes your developers’ inner creativity and allows them to call the shots. Make JIRA your own, and write every ticket like an Epic!
Bad: “Implement OAuth2 authentication with Google for tier 1 users”
Good: “Make login easy”
Step 4: Buy the cheapest plan for your office internet
No need for expensive and fad gigabit internet speeds. Your developers don’t need them anyway. A 1MBps uplink/downlink connection should be more than adequate to browse StackOverflow and Google Groups. Remember: faster internet speeds offer more distractions! It’s all in the psychology: if it’s too painful to load YouTube and Imgur, your developers will learn to just not load them at all. Just look at how well Kim Jong Un is running his country — smooth and speedy like well-oiled enterprise clockwork.
Step 5: Don’t issue a company laptop
I don’t even need to explain this one. Developers work best when they feel right at home working on their machine. There’s a reason why Neil from Operations is lugging around that decade-old Acer laptop: he’s customized every nook and cranny that using anything else will feel subpar. Instead of spending $2000 on a new MacBook Pro with TouchBar™ for the new hire, make him use his personal laptop and see 100% productivity right off the bat. In the rare event that the new hire owns a desktop, make him use one of your old laptops instead. He’ll love the challenge of making Ansible work on Windows when everyone else is on Mac and he’ll thank you for it.
Step 6: Team building is for kids, not developers
Why spend tons of money for a company team-building when nobody will be around long enough anyway? Just think of how much you can cut on costs when you stop taking the front-end team bowling on Fridays. The requirement for keeping healthy relationships in the office is like a unicorn — it’s childish and unrealistic. You hire these people to write code and design stuff, not to make friends and make their kids friends. Geez.
Step 7: Cubicles are great!
Open desk layouts are for fledgling startups with no direction. Compartmentalize every developer in their own cubicle and see higher output in just 10 days! With the advent of newer messaging services like Yahoo! Messenger and MSN, there’s really no need for your developers to talk to each other face-to-face. Everyone will appreciate the privacy and will enjoy the personal space provided by their very own cul-de-sac. Plus, the noise coming from Francis’s headphones won’t bother his teammates anymore.
Step 8: Ask Francis to stop using headphones
Seriously. It’s rude. He’s probably just using it for Spotify anyway (which you should disallow in the office, because it’s unprofessional), so there’s no need for it. If he wants to use a headset to talk to someone over the internet, tell him that Conference Room A is available to use and that’s what he should do instead. Just tell him to book it with Les at the front desk a month prior.
Step 9: When giving a pep talk, always show a positive revenue chart
There’s no harm in lying every now and then, as long as ‘every now and then’ means the bi-monthly town hall meetings. Never ever tell your developers the real deal about your missed revenue goals since it will surely cause a drop in morale. Instead, tell everybody that you outsold your competitor in subscriptions just to make them all feel better. When Jerry asks for details, give him the trusty old pat in the back and tell him “you’re doing a great job, buddy”. Remember ‘How To Be A Good CTO 101’: false hope is still hope! There’s no use telling everyone about the actual problems of the company, you’ll figure it all out tomorrow anyway.
Step 10: When somebody threatens to resign, offer them a raise. But just a small one.
Let’s skip the complicated quantum astropsychology of this one, since it all just boils down to this: always show ’em who’s boss. Show ’em that you don’t deal with terrorists. The key here is understanding that threatening to resign is a direct threat to the well-being of your company, and as such should be considered as nothing short of terrorism. If the resignee is crucial to finishing this week’s sprint, offer them a small raise: enough to make them reconsider, but not too much to cause a dent in your golf allowance. Nothing else makes a developer feel more valued than a hearty “no” to “can I get a raise”. This method is 100% tried and tested and is what made companies like ZettaBytes and Guava Software world-famous.
Bonus: Don’t pay overtime
If somebody argues that they have to work, counter-argue that it’s their own fault for not keeping up with deadlines or that their overtime is completely unnecessary. This instills the value of working on-the-clock on your developers, and makes them realize how much you value their time on their jobs. Explain that it’s the reason why you’re only in your office from 1 to 4pm: three hours is more than enough for you to achieve your daily goals and you’re being generous giving them nine hours and that they should follow suit.
This ‘guide’ is inspired by many of my real-life experiences in dealing with various employers. Unless it’s not painstakingly obvious, it’s satirical (but may very well be the mindset of some people). No references to actual people or groups were made, and if any, should be considered purely coincidental. :)
