How to recognize fake developers, and why most of them get away with it
You manage a team and you want to separate the wheat from the chaff. Developers in the team can see who is who — but how can you see it from the outside, without reading their Git commits? Turns out fakes share some common traits.
What are fake developers
Fake developers are found in every company. Unlike real but inexperienced developers, fake developers don’t find amusement in programming. They actually despise the work in general, thus they contribute very little and/or low quality. They are in the business strictly for the money.
How to recognize them
The questions you need to answer before locating fake developers in your team are: “Do you really want to locate them?” and “What are you going to do about it when you do?” But worry not, more on that subject in the next part, “Why most of them get away with it”.
They talk very little about their project, but know a lot about the latest tech news and use a lot of buzzwords
When they want to look like real devs, e.g. when they want to impress their manager, they will talk about something they read on Twitter yesterday, some new API call coming out, or some company acquisition. Obviously they need a lot of free time to catch up with all those Twitter news, but that is not a problem if you don’t spend time working on your product.
While they are scrolling status updates with their cool headphones on, recording buzzwords in their brains, productive devs are discussing the 13th level of the execution stack in their workflow, trying to understand their bug and make their product better.
They hang out together and say nice words about each other
Not only because they want to, but also because good developers told them to get TF away from them, because they are not helping. So they quickly team up, go to coffee sessions together, play PC games together, have lunch together.
They help each other if one missed the latest Twitter news, which always comes handy. Their connection also means a lot because they will tell the manager nice words about each other.
They are always nice to everybody and always easy-going
It is easier to be nice when you don’t work hard. You are in good mood, why wouldn’t you — life is easy, salary will come, no problems in your life, can you hear the birds? Chill man…
And you have a lot of time to walk around and socialize, making good connections.
Hey Boss — How are you doing man! … All right? Yeah, all is grand over here too! Thanks, you’re the best!…
Hey man from another team! Going for a coffee? Me too, how’s the project? … Really? O wow, that’s amazing!…
They aim for the managerial roles
Unless they are completely dumb and their aim is to just “chill” all their life, they will aim for the managerial roles. After all, they are too smart to do actual developer tasks, they are more for the “big picture”.
By being experts in nodding their heads and able to push their team into a big task in little time, an incompetent manager can easily mistake them for “constructive”, “positive”, and “with organizational skills”.
By doing so little on their project, they have a lot of time to hear what happens in other teams or in the future, so they start using those news flashes on various meetings, providing an image of an “informed” person.
Why and how they get away with it
Of course there can be many reasons, but here are a few:
The company is big, has a lot of money and nobody cares
Like in many state-owned companies and some capitalist corporations with monopoly, the quality of the product does not really affect the business.
In this atmosphere the only politically correct thing to do is watch your own business, avoid conflicts and keep your job.
It is an outsourcing company mostly counting the quantity
Short-sighted managers keep fake developers even when they know who they are, when they charge the client per head. But on the long run, good developers will leave and fakes will stay. That affects the quality of teams and takes the company’s reputation down.
The manager of the fake developer was also a fake developer
Such managers have never had the quality and productivity as their main values anyways and they achieved their title as described above in points 3. and 4. of the previous chapter. Therefore they won’t judge a fake developer and can even help him move up too. They hang out together. They gossip in smoking areas and happily parasite on their team together.
Conclusion
There you go, life is easier for some than for the others. It is the same with people like with animals — lions chase their gazelle, bears catch the fish in the cold water, but chameleons and sloths also love life, and must use the tactics they were given.
And just like an actual sloth has nothing to be ashamed of, and may have his own purpose, so do people have many forms. It is only important to know how to distinguish them, so you don’t hire a Sloth, when you really need a Lion.
