As a developer, is it worthwhile asking anonymous feedback from colleagues?

Question

G'day,

I'm always trying to improve my performance as a developer and, after listening to this interesting podcast on the topic, I was wondering if people think it is worthwhile asking for feedback from colleagues.

I am thinking of obtaining feedback anonymously in the manner suggested in the podcast by using the Rypple site. And by asking one single, short question that directly addresses a specific aspect of my work or behaviour. For example, I'm looking at questions such as:

• What can I do to improve the way in which the development team and the operational work together?,
• How can I help you be more effective in your job interfacing with our major client?,
• What parts of my technique could I improve based on the presentation I gave today?
• etc.

Edit: I am not talking about general aspects, but specifically about how my performance as a developer can be improved. Communication and working with others is a large part of working with others in a company.

Edit: These additional questions are in response to a comment to my original question by JB King.

Further examples of possible questions that could provide useful feedback to help you improve as a developer are:

• Am I becoming too focused or obsessive in my solution toolset?
• What technology do you think I should learn to expand the team's capabilities?
• What technology do you think I should focus on to improve the team's overall capabilities?

All of these directly address my personal progress as a developer.

cheers,

Answer 1

Yes, asking for feedback from colleagues is worthwhile. Often you don't know what you are doing great and where you could improve without getting at least a second opinion, if not a third, fourth, and so on.

Anonymity gives the benefit that those answering don't have to fear retaliation. Sometimes this works well and the result is honest feedback and sometimes people may enter stupid things trying to be funny. Que sera, sera.

Answer 2

If you want to get honest feedback about what you are doing, you may want to find someone that observes what you do, and just ask their opinion, perhaps while having a beer. :)

But, it is important that you don't get defensive in any way, as you are asking for honesty.

And, you should consider making changes based on what they say, as that will help others to see that you are not only open to criticism, but willing to adapt, to become a better developer.

But, ultimately, you need to get an idea what type of programmer you want to be. Then it is useful if you have someone that you work with that exemplifies those qualities, then you can develop a relationship to see if they can help you become a better programmer.

For example, I knew an architect who would always pull a chair over and sit down when answering a question, so he was always on the level of the developer. That little action was so impressive to me, as it was a simple action, but it showed a willingness to bring himself to the level of others. That is how I want to be seen as I mentor others.

I think asking for anonymous feedback is bad, in part because it shows that there is a communication problem on the team, where people are not willing to be open with their feelings and opinions. The team lead should deal with that, as it could eventually be damaging to the team, if people keep their true opinions bottled up rather than expressing them, in order to help the team to be better.

Answer 3

I'd actually recommend not being anonymous when asking for criticism. One of your stated goals is to improve communication with colleagues; I think you might improve this better by actually talking with them instead of using a tool.

Being able to take criticism in person will show people you are confident and serious about improving. Face time is unfortunately underrated in our industry.

Answer 4

I am not sure much good will come of it. I kinda agree with James on this one.

What might be better is to have some development workshops in your team. You could do it in such a way that each week 1 developer has the floor for an hour. Find a meeting room and a projector (if you have one) and let this developer present his / her discovery to the rest of the team.

At any point in time there are huge changes happening in the industry, so there should be a lot of areas to cover, for example - one week a certain developer could talk on up and coming changes in .net framework v4 (just an example), while another week yet another developer can talk about the benefits of shorter scrum iterations (again just an example).

The idea is the developer shouldn't be forced into presenting, and he/she should decide his or her own topic of interest.

This exercise might help strengthen communication in your team, and in this way the whole team is geared towards improving development skills.

This is the good idea, bad idea which I've seen is to take this idea too far, and expect developers to go away for weekends to so called coding dojos - yeah how fun (not).

Make sure these presentations are happening during normal paid business hours, or you'll have a riot.

Answer 5

"How can we do our jobs more effectively?" is a great question, and well worth asking!

But you should always discuss it openly. It's about as innocent a question as one can ask in the professional world, so if you tell people to discuss it anonymously, they'll think something funny is going on, even if that's not the case. And if you can't discuss such an innocent topic openly, your organization has serious problems.

Also, if you're going to ask questions like that, you need to pay attention to the answers, and either act on them or explain why you won't. People can handle, "Good point, but we're not going to do it that way, here's why." But it's pretty demoralizing to answer a question like that - especially if you made a lot of effort - and then feel like you've been ignored.