Herding Cats

Note: This was written in honour of Post pictures of your cat to Javablogs Day.

They say managing software developers is like herding cats. Looking at my two cats, I see the wisdom in this. It’s a bit of stretch, please bear with me…

Over many, many years, we finally taught our cats not to sit on the lounge. It was a long process, involving simple rules, constant discipline, and a much used trigger squirt bottle.

Here is a picture of number one cat, DJ, not sitting on the lounge.

As you can plainly see, DJ is not—technically—on the lounge. Instead she has found a place to sleep on the headrest. This is better than the lounge because it gets more sun in the mornings. At least when she is up there she doesn’t groom herself, which leaves great gobs of fur to stick to people’s clothes. Plus, sometimes when she wakes up suddenly, she loses her balance and falls off the back of the lounge. Then we can say, “Serves you right, young lady.”

Here is a picture of number two cat, Oscar, also not sitting on the lounge.

Oscar is not on the lounge—he is on a blanket. As usual, Oscar pulled the blanket off the back of the lounge onto the seat so that he could lie on it. We let him get away with this because we can at least wash the fur off the blanket. That, and the fact that we just can’t bear to be continually yelling and squirting him in the face.

Programmers are similar. Given any rule—code reviews, unit tests, getting in before 9:00am, or wearing a tie—we find out exactly how little we can obey it.

I hope my manager doesn’t decide to get a squirt bottle.