Unusual Role - how would you handle this?

[billybiro]

It's not your company or career, let the permies make the decisions.

And consider walking away once you have done all you can for the evaluation work. Sitting there for three months is not doing anyone any favours.

For the same reasons above, simply parrot the permies. Agree with everything they say, after all, it's not your company or career, so you shouldn't care. Do this, and it'll keep you under the radar. Mal thinks sitting there for 3 months isn't doing anyone any favours, except it is. It's doing you, your accountant and your bank account a lot of favours.

Remember, keep calm and carry on invoicing!

[Big Blue Plymouth]

Walk away. It's never going to end well. How can do any kind of evaluation if nobody knows (or is capable of formulating) something to be compared against? Let the external "consultant" carry the can.

I won't be booking any long term accommodation ;-)

[SueEllen]

Thats half the problem. There's no framework for providing any metrics. There's a spreadsheet with various categories that gets filled in as a team in a meeting every afternoon detailing the overall feelings of the group as a whole. These meetings are led by a delivery manager who has been brought in from an outside consultancy. The only other point of contact is the chief architect - also not a fan of low code.

You develop code yes?

So you know how to translate BA requirements and some cases have to gather them yourself?


Well then if the metrics they have are insufficient for you to report back then "gather" your own metrics and provide a detailed report on the pros and cons of the tool using your previous experience.

You have worked with testers/QA yes?

Then you know why they frequently throw stuff back? So remember to add metrics for this to your report.

[malvolio]

Thats half the problem. There's no framework for providing any metrics. There's a spreadsheet with various categories that gets filled in as a team in a meeting every afternoon detailing the overall feelings of the group as a whole. These meetings are led by a delivery manager who has been brought in from an outside consultancy. The only other point of contact is the chief architect - also not a fan of low code.

Walk away. It's never going to end well. How can do any kind of evaluation if nobody knows (or is capable of formulating) something to be compared against? Let the external "consultant" carry the can.

[BlasterBates]

Thats half the problem. There's no framework for providing any metrics. There's a spreadsheet with various categories that gets filled in as a team in a meeting every afternoon detailing the overall feelings of the group as a whole. These meetings are led by a delivery manager who has been brought in from an outside consultancy. The only other point of contact is the chief architect - also not a fan of low code.

Don't offer any opinions on "your feelings" unless you're specifically asked, and then wrap it up in copious amounts of jargon making it unclear about how you do actually feel, i.e. think "politician" don't answer the question he asked, say something diplomatic and meaningless that sounds clever.

If everyone is against it, it will in any case fail.

[Cirrus]

It might 90% of the code but the last 10% keeps you all occupied

Been here a week now and I am not going to be writing any code

I've never seen any framework where you don't have to write code, and I've seen things come and go for over forty years including being initially seduced by both Erudine and Mendix. Lots of things can be generated but no product can read a BA's specification and turn into a living system. Then again no project has a specification that describes functionality correctly and completely. So you will finish up writing exactly the same amount of code (ie a day's worth per day). What will happen is you'll get more function points per line of code (per day of work).

Well, that's the hope.

For a lot of my developer career I dealt with end-user tools. Being a professional in that space was a nice little money maker. My mate specialises in things like Business Objects, and that's kept him contracting nearly into his 70s.

[BlasterBates]

Your evaluation should be written in a report and if possible submitted to the PM only, not distributed to your colleagues. Don't use emotive terms like good or bad, focus on what the code can do, i.e. "you can produce header pages like this, it has the following shortcomings ...."etc. Only reply when spoken to in meetings, keeping the information very technical. In other words remove yourself from the politics. Don't get into arguments with other permies and defend this automated approach, just allow them to air their views unchallenged. If you're objective and you don't become the personification of this new automated approach you shouldn't have a problem.

[Big Blue Plymouth]

Don't render an opinion and what the client should do. Carefully and fully perform the evaluations between old and new, work out time and cost differences (don't use the "savings" word) and long term impacts (for instance, do they want to de-skill a core resource...) and stay resolutely neutral. It's not your company or career, let the permies make the decisions.

And consider walking away once you have done all you can for the evaluation work. Sitting there for three months is not doing anyone any favours.

Thats half the problem. There's no framework for providing any metrics. There's a spreadsheet with various categories that gets filled in as a team in a meeting every afternoon detailing the overall feelings of the group as a whole. These meetings are led by a delivery manager who has been brought in from an outside consultancy. The only other point of contact is the chief architect - also not a fan of low code.

[malvolio]

I've been brought in ostensibly as a developer to work on a proof of concept to assess some 3rd party vendors' low code tools for generating web pages.

Been here a week now and I am not going to be writing any code () . All I have to do is learn to use these tools with 4 other devs and provide feedback in daily meetings.

The problem is that the 4 other devs are permies and are completely against any low code solutions as it's like turkeys voting for Christmas from their perspective so any positive input from myself in these meetings is going down like a lead balloon.

On one hand, I'm more than happy to sit aroud doing f all for the next 3 months and get paid for it but I'm conscious of the fact that I have to give objective feedback without upsetting the permies otherwise I'm going to get skewered.

Anyone been in this kind of role? Be interested to hear your thoughts.

Don't render an opinion and what the client should do. Carefully and fully perform the evaluations between old and new, work out time and cost differences (don't use the "savings" word) and long term impacts (for instance, do they want to de-skill a core resource...) and stay resolutely neutral. It's not your company or career, let the permies make the decisions.

And consider walking away once you have done all you can for the evaluation work. Sitting there for three months is not doing anyone any favours.

[Lance]

convince them that as programmers their only point is to make other people redundant by automating things. So get with the programme, man-up and work themselves out of a job with a smile.

It grates me that IT people can be such Luddites.
Finding another job because "I was so good that I setup systems that meant I wasn't needed any more" is a good thing.

[Big Blue Plymouth]

I've been brought in ostensibly as a developer to work on a proof of concept to assess some 3rd party vendors' low code tools for generating web pages.

Been here a week now and I am not going to be writing any code () . All I have to do is learn to use these tools with 4 other devs and provide feedback in daily meetings.

The problem is that the 4 other devs are permies and are completely against any low code solutions as it's like turkeys voting for Christmas from their perspective so any positive input from myself in these meetings is going down like a lead balloon.

On one hand, I'm more than happy to sit aroud doing f all for the next 3 months and get paid for it but I'm conscious of the fact that I have to give objective feedback without upsetting the permies otherwise I'm going to get skewered.

Anyone been in this kind of role? Be interested to hear your thoughts.