« TV viewing habits | Main | RSS Feeds »
April 06, 2003
Working Programmers
Kate sent me a copy of a paper today entitled Collectivism, Individualism, and Cohesion in a Team-Based Occupation by Michael Workman (available through the Idea Library Journal of Vocational Behavior 58, 82-97 (2001). The main research on the paper revolves around group interaction and inter-group interaction, typically not very exciting or entertaining reading for me. The interesting bit is that the researcher choose to use computer programmers within an unnamed company as the groups, providing a sample near and dear to my own heart.
The three groups broke down to a Real-Time, Open Systems, and Mainframe group respectively. My first instinct being that this paper would be stating the obvious to someone within the realm of programming. That individualism is encouraged, and collectivism is encouraged. A paradox of ideals yes, but exactly part of the problems seen today in engineering. My initial assumption believed collective group work would be done towards identifying a problem and solution. While once identified, the team members would be allowed to implement and solve the problems each their own way. Thus providing a unified view on how a system was to work as a whole, while the nitty-gritty details of each part were not needed. From this paper it seems that idea was wrong with more programmers preferred to identify a problem and solve it on their own.
The interesting bits came from the data retrieved in how each group identifies itself. Within the Real-Time group (6 members) they felt themselves to be more (majority in each case) as part of the organization. While the Open Systems (9 members) and Mainframe (11 members) groups felt themselves to be associated more with their respective groups rather than the organization as a whole. WIth a little thought, I began to realize that in my last job, I too, did not feel as part of the company, but rather part of the engineering group I was working with. I did have interaction (although minimal) with other parts of engineering, but I never associated myself with them and I always felt like an invader when entering into their physical domain (cubes farms).
The follow up interviews with the Realtime group reviled that 4 out of the 6 members did have interaction with groups outside of their domain. Could this be why that group in particular felt itself to be part of the organizations while the others felt they were only an engineering group? It didn't go into the detail on this point, but isn't this typically the goal a company? To make the employee feel like part of the company, almost an essential part of it? I do know that one of my biggest problems with a previous employer was that I didn't feel what I did mattered to the company. That despite the many long and hard hours put in, no one but my teammates recognized this effort. Once many of them were laid off, it really left no one to acknowledge this (read: group identity theory).
The paper does enforce the idea that yes indeed programmers search out the non-confrontational means for showing disrespect for each other ("I'm busy now, can you come back later?") or the occasional flame email.
All in all an interesting read for it made me think about previous employment and the social interactions I never considered.
Posted by Dan at April 6, 2003 05:10 PM