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Can having too many senior programmers in one team turn out to be a bad thing?
Having like say, 4-5 senior programmers in a team of 6-7 people. What is the optimal number/ratio in these kind of situations?
Can this lead to too much philosophy and arguments about ideas?
Has anyone had such an experience, that can share it with me?
If I could choose I would have 6-7 seniors on a team ( assuming the project needs that many ).
The only time I can see this being a problem is if the seniors are only senior in self perception and not work ethic.
There is nothing better than working with a group of people who appreciate that every piece of software development is important - the documentation, the planning, the code, the coffee, it all matters and it takes mature ( real senior ) developers to be "above nothing" and get the job done properly.
EDIT: Many other answers have said that too many leaders is a problem - but why is there a perception that a senior must lead? A senior should be mature enough to pick a leader and follow. It is the project that matters - pick / get a role and rock it silly !
The biggest problem I see with loading up a team with senior programmers is that it might weaken other teams. If you have junior developers on other teams that need mentoring and guidance, then you might need to shift people around.
Can this lead to too much philosophy and arguments about ideas?
Sure it can, but they should be mature enough to know what differences matter and what ones just don't. If you've designated a respected team lead, these sorts of philosophical arguments should be kept to a minimum with little effort.
Can having too many senior programmers in one team turn out to be a bad thing?
Definitely.
I'm a big proponent of Fred Brooks' surgical team pattern.
And with that being said, if the seniors on a development team don't know who the "chief surgeon" is, then they'll clash over important architectural decisions and will be pulling in different directions to the detriment of the team.
P.S. A development team's need for a "chief surgeon" is similar to an orchestra's need for a conductor. In either case, you'll likely have many veterans; but you'll have a fine mess without one person who is undisputedly in charge.
It depends on how responsibilites are distributed. If ALL of the Sr. Devs are supposed to have equal responsibility wrt design, code review, etc... then it could become a problem. If they are given different responsibilities such that they can work without fighting over control over each others' domains, then it shouldn't be a problem - for example, one Senior Dev gets main responsibility of project design, another gets to be in charge of setting up and maintaining source repository, another gets to be in charge of unit testing, etc...
Can having too many senior programmers in one team turn out to be a bad thing?
Not necessarily. I have worked on small teams of senior developers that were highly productive. The level of discourse was very high, and there was no rancor.
With TDD, there are very few big commitments to software architecture, so there's little need to argue about them. Design decisions can be resolved by simply implementing both approaches and seeing which one works out best. Since the developers are very fast, the cost of these trials is very low.
Yes, there can be the problem of having too many cooks in the kitchen for one metaphor that may apply. It could also be quite costly if they are all expecting high salaries. Note that this is just verifying the existence of a bad case and says nothing about its probability.
Optimal depends on a number of variables that you aren't disclosing. What metric do you want to use realizing that there is a good chance of some gaming the system here. Similarly, what constraints do you have within your world that may make it different than what Google or Microsoft may have in contrast.
Too many senior developers can have the problem of either no conventions or too many conventions I'd think. While some senior developers may be good at adapting, if none of them are likely to introduce a convention, where would a team start? Conversely, there may be some senior developers that are die hard fans of some conventions that may require some conflict resolution to resolve.
I think it depends on the personalities of the seniors. If they're arrogant and argumentative, then it can be a bad thing. But if they're all respectful, open to other viewpoints, and willing to learn from each other, then you have a great team.
I currently work on a team of 8, where 5 or 6 are senior, and it works really well for us. We get along well, learn from each other, and it's a great mentoring environment for the newer guys we have.
I worked in a team where there were 1 lead developer, 4 senior developers, and 1 middle developer. And because of the reason that one "senior" member of the team was not a really mature person (good developer though), it turned out to be a nightmare. He tried to prove all the time (implicitly or explicitly) that other team members are not senior enough. Also he failed to understand basic principles of software development and specifics of our product, and, therefore, arrogantly and stubbornly tried to prove that he's right. As a result, it seriously affected effectiveness of the team. The sad part is that it even was not too much argument about ideas/solutions - it was argument about nothing. For example:
But I admit it was rather an exception. I want to believe that seniors behave properly most of the time :)
