This post originated from an RSS feed registered with .NET Buzz by Darrell Norton. Original Post: You don't need an ego to own the product Feed Title: Darrell Norton's Blog Feed URL: /error.htm?aspxerrorpath=/blogs/darrell.norton/Rss.aspx Feed Description: Agile Software Development: Scrum, XP, et al with .NET Latest .NET Buzz Posts Latest .NET Buzz Posts by Darrell Norton Latest Posts From Darrell Norton's Blog

Jeff Atwood has an interesting post where he states that developers have to own the product. While I agree with it, his reasoning to get there seems a little off. He starts of by saying that developers should have an ego (and a big ego is somewhat implied), and he quotes Robert Glass from Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering:

"Consider the notion of an egoless manager. That idea, of course, is preposterous! The ego of the typical manager is the driving force that makes him or her effective."

Robert Glass makes this statement with nothing substantial to back it up. The whole proof is the absurdity of the thought of it. Galileo ran up against the same argument, roughly paraphrased here, "Consider the notion that the sun is the center of the universe. That idea, of course, is preposterous!" Where are the facts? Don’t get me wrong, the facts part of Glass’s book is good because it has all sorts of, well, facts, but this fallacy is 100 percent opinion. The same argument can be used for whatever you don’t want to consider. “Consider the notion of college without beer. That idea, of course, is preposterous!” People that had fun in college are nodding their heads right now.

From there Jeff derives an ego-driven ownership. Somehow that’s confusing ego with ownership. Having an ego, even an inflated ego, is not the same as being the owner of something important. Although there is often correlation, there is no causation. And the idea of egoless programming in no way diminishes ownership of the end product. I think the problem is taking egoless programming to the extreme, which I agree does not work. Of course, most things taken to the absolute extreme don’t work too well in practice, but they do serve to counterbalance the opposite extreme.

So while I agree with Jeff, his argument doesn’t really work for me.