Would you fire a developer if he/she does not follow the coding conventions of the team?
Thursday, February 14, 2008
There is a very interesting discussion about how good or bad are code reviews in Martín Pérez's Blog (sorry, in Spanish!). Most of us think that the biggest problem of coding convention is the ego of the developers. But here comes something very difficult to manage, specially when adopting code reviews for the first time: what if some developers reject to follow the coding conventions? How can we enforce developers to follow coding conventions? And finally: is the replacement of the rebel developer by a new developer an option?
2 comments:
@Charles, I think you are right. We had exactly this problem time ago and he put the developer in 'isolated mode'.
But what if more than one developer failure to follow the standards? We can't put them all in isolated mode! What would you do? (Firing the manager is not an option ;-) )
Fire? Probably not. It's very hard to justify firing someone on such shaky grounds as coding standards.
On the other hand, failure to follow such standards is a sign that the developer is more interested in himself than in the team or the project. People like that are poison for a team that might otherwise be trying to pull together.
As such, it would make sense to manage that developer out. Put him on some isolated part of the project where his non-conformity can do little damage and he doesn't have to work with anyone else, make sure his performance reviews (and salary) reflect his unwillingness to be a part of the team, and wait for him to either get a clue, or leave.