Recently, we have a new CTO and a new Head Of Development. Like all new managers with power, they want to make their own changes.
In The Changes #1, I explained changes to job titles of Testers. In Changes #2 I explain that Developers are also affected.
Our previous management decided our upcoming software would specifically use the cloud service AWS, whereas the new managers want a “cloud-agnostic” approach (work with all the clouds!). So they want us to have the possibility of using one, or a combination of: Azure, Google or AWS – although the emphasis seems to be moving to Microsoft’s Azure.
Currently, I don’t think there is much rationale for this. Everyone specifically learned how to use AWS, so will need some time to adapt to the differences. When people started learning about Cloud Technologies, the problem of “Vendor Tie-in” was raised and instantly dismissed by the previous management. It makes sense to ensure you have that flexibility, because if your provider increases their costs, then you can easily migrate if you had the architecture for it.
Another change is that they want every product to have their source code in GitHub. Maybe it does make sense to have all our products in the same place. The reason we have them scattered is mainly because our products were acquired by a series of acquisitions, so the original companies had chosen their own languages and technologies. However, our core, flagship product is already in Azure DevOps, and given that the main cloud provider is going to be Azure, surely it makes sense to keep it all in one place?
These changes to jobs, processes and technologies seem to have solely been decided by the CTO and Head Of Development. I feel like they haven’t discussed these ideas with the Development staff at all. I’m intrigued by what other arbitrary changes will be forced on us. With any change, I think you always have to ask yourself “what is the problem we are trying to solve?”. If you can’t explain the problem, then it shows you are making changes just for the sake of it.
Recently, I have been reading Sir Alex Ferguson’s “Leading” book and came across a great quote:
“There is no point suddenly changing routines that players are comfortable with. It is counterproductive, saps morale and immediately provokes players to question the new man’s motives. A leader who arrives in a new setting, or inherits a big role, needs to curb the impulse to display his manhood.”
Sir Alex Ferguson (ex Manchester United football manager)
I thought it was a very relevant and appropriate quote for this situation.
Stranger Coding Tings 