My theory is this. You never really know what's going to succeed, so you do as much as possible with as much energy and brains as you can muster. You might be inconsistent, but that's life. Run all hedges all the time. Opportunity is fickle.
I've been working in a new gig incrementally assimilating a hodload of information from 12 people simultaneously for three weeks now. And in addition to all that firehose diet, I've been up late socializing with real people instead of here at my comfortable garret scribbling into cyberspace. It's an odd combination that has me exhausted. I'm going to work 8 hours today, but that's a virtual today because it's going to be spread over the weekend.
There are some excellent dynamics of communication that I'm finding out, and things I am learning about myself as well. I really prefer to listen than to speak. When I speak, I present. I want to make sure that everyone is in a perfect position to understand all of the implications to everything I say and I want it to be clear that I'm the dude in charge. All eyes on me. When I'm not presenting, I make witty rejoinders off tangents which tend to be unproductive. And yet I am essentially, at bottom, unquestionably a team player. I want everyone to be, as much as possible, on board, up to speed, in the loop, aware and engaged. Everybody should know the deal, be aware of the factors, know the direction. Specialization comes from direction in both a division of labor (top down) and volunteer to action (bottom up). Let it all shake out, ease off on the attribution of credit except when you are acknowledging other people's good work. Make frustration your own problem. And speak about it when you are prepared to call yourself the weak link - preface it by 'Help me understand something here..', or 'Can I ask a really stupid question..'.
What I don't do is sell when I'm responsible for building. So long as I don't know THE answer, I use guarded language. And THE answer is not really THE answer, it is a plausible solution that has buy-in. It's the thing that everybody explains similarly like...'well, what we were thinking at the time was... and we decided to... because ...'. And that can always lead to 'now that we know... we can ... and all that requires is that we...' and you write a new solution updating the old instead of saying 'we all know that ... didn't have a clue when he insisted that we ...'. Still that doesn't change the fact that most of the time, only a few people know anything close to the answers that will open up the door to a honest solution.
I'm reading Steven Weber's book on Open Source and have finally come to understand that the typical freetard at Slashdot is pehaps not representative of what all that movement has been about. I should have known better, and now I think I will have come to decypher a very important slice of my industry. I have never worked in open source and have always asserted that a software engineering team (small) directed Germanically with an ample feedback loop from paying customers would always build a better product. I might still be right, but sometimes it's not about product, but technology. Which means I have to learn this parallel dynamic. I'm not going to unlearn what I know about product sales, marketing etc, but... I'm coming to understand and make sense of what I've intuited about the craft of programming as it relates to ideas about productivity, property, collaboration and a bunch of other things.
Significantly, I am feeling a bit less pressure in writing that which is architected in my mind and giving away the code for redistribution. It makes me think about Lightship Server Internals, a class I and my peers were screaming for when we knew that the code was in escrow someplace in New Hampshire. (It's a long story).
So my motto right now is 'soldiering on'. It's a new quarter and I've changed my passwords and bought new underwear and socks. I am focused on making my team a success. That means that I cut down on the hedging and overbroad goalset and focus on what's directly on my plate.
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