We are not assembly line workers. We do not as a rule clock in and out on a shift rotation. Some days, we work long and hard to prove that we are awesome and can fix that production bug and make all our users happy. We expect a great deal from ourselves, and we thrill at teamwork and all delivering beyond expectations. After working our arses off to deliver the seemingly impossible, we may take a little extra time getting in the next morning, or come back from lunch a little later. We do the impossible for you, and all we want in return is happy users, and a tiny bit of recognition of what the team has achieved.
Don't snap at your development team if a few people are in a little later in the morning every once in a while. Don't scream and yell if some people come back from lunch a little late after a gruelling morning of frantic coding. If we stop delivering, you can get up tight about it. While we continue to achieve the impossible against all odds, then afford us the flexibility to take mental breaks when we are strained, and to have an extra 15 minutes in bed after spending 4 hours the previous evening researching ways to crack the current insoluble problem.
Most of all, we are all individuals. If I mess up, it's me you want to confront. If my team mate messes up, then confront them. When you punish the whole team like naughty school children because of a few late lunches, even though we continue to deliver time and time again, then expect us to be majorly pissed off. When we're pissed off, you can guarantee we will find it harder to solve those impossible problems within those impossible deadlines. You can expect us to find it harder to see the problems as our problems rather than your problems. Give us some respect, because I'm damn sure we've earned it.
