Believe it or not, not all software designers are team players.

That's the key finding of research from Enno Siemsen of the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (shown left), who writes on  “The Hidden Perils of Career Concerns in R&D Organizations” in the latest issue of the journal Management Science.

The article explains that many software designers purposely make products more complex than they need to be just to show off their programming skills in an attempt to further their careers. On the other hand, less talented developers also sometimes choose complex designs to hide the fact they lack talent, the article says.

And of course software development only becomes more involved with the emergence of service-oriented architectures (SOA) .

Siemsen suggests one way organizations can address such problems is by compensating developers based more on short-term goals, to ensure that projects are done right -- and fast.

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