This winter I'm celebrating 25 years in the software industry. I'm also facing the arrival of a mid-life crisis as my 40th birthday approaches this spring. Yes, it's 25 years since a young group of 14 year old school boys (the linked article dates from 1985) launched an advertising campaign in the classified ads in the back of Sinclair User magazine advertising games for the Sinclair ZX81. In exchange for a cheque in the princely amount of 3.50 GBP we would mail you a set of listings of games written in BASIC. You had to type them in to your computer in order to play!!! :-O

Back in those days motivating geeks to write great software was easy - just feed them pizza and cola and let them work all hours of the night and don't worry about all that homework that wasn't being done.

The conventional management wisdom is that the software industry is different. Software programming geeks are different. Motivating them is different. You don't manage them. You herd them. The idea goes that you hire smart people, usually as young as possible, with as little social life or social skills as possible, stick them in an open plan office, let them decorate their cubes any way they like, bring toys in to the office, provide a ping-pong table, fussball table, fully stocked kitchen, free juice, and a budget to order in food after hours, and just leave them alone. The result will be fantastic innovation and don't worry about the quality, the bugs can always be fixed in a future version. This wisdom has prevailed ever since and here on the west coast of the USA it's a formula that has made many executives and venture capitalists rich. So they would see little reason to change a winning formula.

But have you noticed anything recently? Perhaps, when your sitting in a meeting providing status on your latest project? Grey hair perhaps? Balding heads? Bifocals?

As a manager are you noticing that staff need a lot more time out of the office for medical appointments? and other real life events? engagement? marriage? birth of child? death of parent? illness? injury? kids stuck home on a snow day?

When you're recruiting have you noticed how carefully the applicants read the benefits package literature and negotiate for flexible spending plans and childcare facilities? and how disinterested they have become in the location of the ping pong table? Have you been asked whether prostate screening is covered under the medical plan?

The 80's young gun geeks are still here. They are still producing great software. They still love their jobs and love the profession. They take a pride in what they produce. BUT...

They have kids to get home to. If a project runs in to trouble, they'll still pull an all-nighter and brag that they've still got what it takes as they feel a proud burst of nostalgia for the old days, but 3 days later they'll be out sick struck down by the latest flu variant and you'll lose a week of productivity as a result.

The industry is aging!

We need new management rules for old geeks (like me). These rules mean establishing processes to insure a good work life balance. Old geeks want their capacity to produce balanced against the demand from the business. They won't be death marched. They already regret missing out on their 20's. The gallus geek of yesteryear who talked disdainfully of process, carried his compiler in a holster slung low from his hips and treated management as the pointy haired boss to be ridiculed, now sees process as his friend and his boss as the facilitator of professional success balanced against the demands of real life.

The challenge for us managers is to give management a good name by putting in place lean processes that facilitate rather than hinder, that deliver productivity and work life balance, that lead to great code and healthy coders, that continue to delight customers without the all night code merges and death march schedules.

Old geeks need new rules. Old geeks are great software engineers, they still have a lot to offer. The successful organizations of today will learn how to provide a well managed environment that delivers on the needs and wants of the middle-aged greying developer population. The others will continue to play by the old rules and will suffer continual churn and turnover as they burn out an increasing intolerant workforce. Technorati tag: Agile, David+Anderson, Software+Engineering, Management, Aging+Workforce