Quote:
Originally Posted by pdurrant
True. But adding another programmer to the project is likely to reduce the amount of time the current programer spends in productive work in half (because of helping the new programmer get up to speed), ...
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Yes, but the training part of your quote is a relatively short-term effect. They have had this problem since the original G3 release two years ago. If they had added programmers back then they should have been productive by now.
As a former manager, my take is that it is a manager problem not a programmer problem. It always is. For example:
1) You may have incompetent programmers. By now you should have identified that, hired the talent, and fired the other folks.
2) You may not be letting your programmers do their work. You have a small company and you keep pulling the programmers off the job to help ship the new product, handle customer service, etcetera. Hire folks to do the other stuff and let the programmers program.
There are many other possible issues, but the bottom line is that Michael and his staff of managers need to manage -- not just watch the problem.
The scariest (for Bookeen) alternative is if they are truly stuck. Perhaps, they simply can't justify as large a staff as the job requires given their sales volume. Perhaps, their programmers are founders with substantial stock ownership and can't be fired. The reason this is scary is that Bookeen was a good choice when they were the only alternative. If Bookeen hasn't gotten big enough to grow their way out of this problem yet, it isn't going to get any easier. I'm afraid the company faces extinction if it can't compete.