At my office, we are currently going through a period of growth, and are looking at our organizational structure & culture, and trying to make sure we are set up for success. There is a debate as to whether our developers should rotate through different projects, and get a wide range of experience on the different things our office works on, or should the developers stay on one project. I'm curious how it's handled at WaPo: do developers rotate through different teams, or do people generally stay on one team for long periods (i.e. multiple years)? Does it seem to be working for you, or do you think there's a better way?
I am a developer at The Washington Post and I help build newsroom facing tools. I also am the Chair of the DC chapter of ACM and produce a podcast called DC Tech Stories.
People do change teams here but TBH we are too large I am not sure that would work. I like that idea in theory, keeps your documentation up to date, and your code clean and readable OR if standards aren't followed you could have angry devs and messy ass code... kinda depends on if you leave your devs time to ramp up, clean code, and enforce standards, or if you are highly deadline driving and are going to force devs to work as a faster pace to get up and running, learn the environment, and standards ignored b/c of a deadline - i suggest being honest with yourself about the business culture :)
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Jessica,
Thanks for doing this AMA.
At my office, we are currently going through a period of growth, and are looking at our organizational structure & culture, and trying to make sure we are set up for success. There is a debate as to whether our developers should rotate through different projects, and get a wide range of experience on the different things our office works on, or should the developers stay on one project. I'm curious how it's handled at WaPo: do developers rotate through different teams, or do people generally stay on one team for long periods (i.e. multiple years)? Does it seem to be working for you, or do you think there's a better way?
People do change teams here but TBH we are too large I am not sure that would work. I like that idea in theory, keeps your documentation up to date, and your code clean and readable OR if standards aren't followed you could have angry devs and messy ass code... kinda depends on if you leave your devs time to ramp up, clean code, and enforce standards, or if you are highly deadline driving and are going to force devs to work as a faster pace to get up and running, learn the environment, and standards ignored b/c of a deadline - i suggest being honest with yourself about the business culture :)