Comment by mgaunard
2 years ago
The worst programmer I knew never had any productivity problem; if anything he produced too much code, outpacing the others' ability to maintain certain levels of quality.
He ended up promoted; in many organizations, people that hack the code rather than properly design and build sustainable solutions are highly valued.
Yeah, that must have been my collegue. Usually he was in charge of implementing all the new stuff, because he was able to deliver fast. And then I had to refactor, or usually just rewrite and redesign the whole thing, because it was immediatelly unmaintenable. I didn't mind, since at the end of the day, he was really good and doing these prototypes and selling them to management. I was good at making the application last and stable, so it kinda worked out.
Was he promoted to a job where he did more of that, or a job where they could make him stop writing code and do something else?
I ended up leaving, as did most of the other senior developers, so I wouldn't know the details.