So one day, the build was broken. The guy that was running the project freaked the fuck out. He said the client needed to have a nightly build or really bad things would happen.
Now, to manually produce a build of this project was an intense undertaking. It usually ran overnight and it was a long, fiddly process that took several hours. I proposed to him that I just fix the builder instead, and they’d get a build tomorrow. No, he said. It has to be today.
I spent the entire goddamned day making a new build. Finally, at the end of the day, I got a build. We could give it to the client.
He said, good news, I got you some extra time. I told the client we’ve got some new features we really want to show you, and they’ll be in tomorrow’s build.
You can see where this is going.
Four days in a row this happened. Four days of making a new build by hand, never with the time or permission to just fix the builder. The client never received the build they kept getting promised, because there were always new features waiting, tantalizingly close, that they absolutely had to witness for themselves. But alas, these features had just been implemented, brand new, and we had to make a build that would include them. Tomorrow. It was always just in the works, tomorrow. And yet… tomorrow, when everyone came in, the build was broken! This was a surprise to no one, except the guy running the project. He seemed genuinely not to grasp the idea that if no one fixed the autobuilder, the autobuilder would continue not working. He lived in a perpetual state of fear and anxiety, driven to wild agony by the prospect of an unhappy client. I wasn’t privy to the conversations, but I suspect the client was genuinely unhappy with whatever he was telling them. I have no idea.
Finally, on the fourth day, I happened to talk with one of the higher-ups, and filled him in one what was going on on my project. His conversation about it with me was fairly brief, but it was fairly clear that he wasn’t happy.
Within a few minutes, I was officially told that I had permission to take some time to fix the autobuilder. Oh joyous day it was.
Once the project was over, there was a very, very short delay before the guy who’d been running the project had been offered an exciting new opportunity at some other company and we all wished him the best.
the guy who’d been running the project had been offered an exciting new opportunity at some other company and we all wished him the best.
Must be nice to be so privileged he can be a complete fuckup and not even get fired for it. Everybody agrees to use euphemisms to not hurt his feefees because he’s just too rich and special to have to be embarrassed.
I mean, generally speaking, I do think it’s better not to publicly humiliate anyone if you can avoid it. The fact that some people think this doesn’t apply to “underlings” doesn’t make it any less true as a general rule.
Yeah, I left my last company after almost the entire dev team was poached. And a coworker of mine who moved to a much better position at a much better company got me an interview to run their mobile app team. And it was a no-brainer to take the offer. But I never burned bridges. I spent my last two weeks documenting all the things I had built that were living inside my head. And 6 months later the CEO of my previous company sent me a video begging me to come back, with a “name your price” salary to be director of engineering. I could have taken it for more money, but it was an ad agency, and incredibly stressful. So I kindly turned down the offer in person because burning bridges is just never a good idea
So one day, the build was broken. The guy that was running the project freaked the fuck out. He said the client needed to have a nightly build or really bad things would happen.
Now, to manually produce a build of this project was an intense undertaking. It usually ran overnight and it was a long, fiddly process that took several hours. I proposed to him that I just fix the builder instead, and they’d get a build tomorrow. No, he said. It has to be today.
I spent the entire goddamned day making a new build. Finally, at the end of the day, I got a build. We could give it to the client.
He said, good news, I got you some extra time. I told the client we’ve got some new features we really want to show you, and they’ll be in tomorrow’s build.
You can see where this is going.
Four days in a row this happened. Four days of making a new build by hand, never with the time or permission to just fix the builder. The client never received the build they kept getting promised, because there were always new features waiting, tantalizingly close, that they absolutely had to witness for themselves. But alas, these features had just been implemented, brand new, and we had to make a build that would include them. Tomorrow. It was always just in the works, tomorrow. And yet… tomorrow, when everyone came in, the build was broken! This was a surprise to no one, except the guy running the project. He seemed genuinely not to grasp the idea that if no one fixed the autobuilder, the autobuilder would continue not working. He lived in a perpetual state of fear and anxiety, driven to wild agony by the prospect of an unhappy client. I wasn’t privy to the conversations, but I suspect the client was genuinely unhappy with whatever he was telling them. I have no idea.
Finally, on the fourth day, I happened to talk with one of the higher-ups, and filled him in one what was going on on my project. His conversation about it with me was fairly brief, but it was fairly clear that he wasn’t happy.
Within a few minutes, I was officially told that I had permission to take some time to fix the autobuilder. Oh joyous day it was.
Once the project was over, there was a very, very short delay before the guy who’d been running the project had been offered an exciting new opportunity at some other company and we all wished him the best.
Must be nice to be so privileged he can be a complete fuckup and not even get fired for it. Everybody agrees to use euphemisms to not hurt his feefees because he’s just too rich and special to have to be embarrassed.
I mean, generally speaking, I do think it’s better not to publicly humiliate anyone if you can avoid it. The fact that some people think this doesn’t apply to “underlings” doesn’t make it any less true as a general rule.
Yeah, I left my last company after almost the entire dev team was poached. And a coworker of mine who moved to a much better position at a much better company got me an interview to run their mobile app team. And it was a no-brainer to take the offer. But I never burned bridges. I spent my last two weeks documenting all the things I had built that were living inside my head. And 6 months later the CEO of my previous company sent me a video begging me to come back, with a “name your price” salary to be director of engineering. I could have taken it for more money, but it was an ad agency, and incredibly stressful. So I kindly turned down the offer in person because burning bridges is just never a good idea
This comment triggered my project milestone PTSD