I really liked one of the first professional programming jobs that I ever had. The people were great, I learned a lot on a daily basis, we had fun at work and after we left work. I made great friends. We had good clients – sometimes they were demanding, but nothing too unreasonable. The company was stable and seemed to have a bright future. While I did put in extra hours, it wasn’t required and I got recognized for the effort. They let me play with new technology and I got to interact with development teams at some of the significant players in the industry, at least they were at that point in time. So, the question is, why did I leave?
Although I really liked the people, the technology, the product we built and the customers – there was one thing that overshadowed everything else … the person who ran the company. We’ll call her Edna.
Edna was great at sales – she could walk in to a room and convince anyone and everyone that she had the cure for cancer, if they’d just sign on the dotted line. The issue – Edna had no clue how to interact with her team in the office, she did not understand what it meant to develop software and didn’t want to take any time to at least understand what it was that her team did. This company lived off of the software that was built by an incredibly talented group of individuals. And I’m not just talking the developers – top to bottom, the company had some incredibly talented people: business analysts, customer support, finance, marketing and development.
Edna consistently put a strain on this team because she had no idea how long it took to actually develop new functionality. She would get in front of the customer, who would request some unique feature, and then put promised delivery dates in the contract. Edna didn’t take the time upfront to discuss the “concept” with the team, so we were always under the gun to create the latest “whiz bang” that had been promised our latest customer.
Now, before you fire back, yes, I realize that when the product that is being marketed is a software package – that during the sales process, there are most likely going to be customizations that are requested. And, I actually do understand that it is the development teams’ responsibility to deliver those customizations.
My problem was that we had no time to plan. We were constantly shifting from one emergency to the next, as we scrambled to accommodate the latest promise.
To top this off, Edna’s style of management consisted of pulling people in to a room to have a meeting, and then berating them because they weren’t moving fast enough. Really? So I got the specs last week. Oh, and by the way, the specs are woefully incomplete and now you’re not satisfied that I’m not making enough progress.
One day I went in to work and was immediately pulled in to a “meeting”. There were six to eight of us in the room with Edna, and the meeting lasted the entire day. Not one person was left unscathed during the 8 hour marathon session. Edna had made promises, and by God we were going to work to make sure that the necessary functionality was complete by the date she had put in the contract. While I was just a developer at that point, I clearly remember the senior manager in charge of all the development teams attempting to shield the rest of us. It didn’t work – she blasted him with everything she had, in front of all of us, and then methodically worked her way through the room. She had no respect for the people in that room – not her managers and clearly not the team members.
I left the building feeling miserable. I didn’t know what else I could do – we had all been working hard on this latest project and were making excellent progress. Yet nothing we were doing seemed to make Edna happy.
I got home, and it couldn’t have been more than 30 minutes when the phone rang. I remember looking at my wife, telling her it was probably Edna, and to let Edna know that I hadn’t gotten home yet. My wife answered the call and then told me that I needed to take the call. The call ended up being the human resources contact for a company that I had interviewed with 6 months prior – the position had been on hold, but was open again and she wanted to know if I’d take the job. I didn’t have to think for more than 2 seconds before I answered with a big “YES”!
As I left that job and moved on, I made a promise to myself. That if I ever became a manager, I would never treat people the way that I’d seen Edna treat her team. I really did like the team that I worked with – I think about those days every once in a while, at least the ones where Edna wasn’t in the office.
I’m not sure that I understand the mentality of management by fear. I do recognize it when I see it, it’s not pretty and it’s very destructive to those that have to work within its grip.
I’m not saying that people can’t have passionate discussions. That’s only fair – I think some of the most incredible leaders I’ve met know how to encourage these types of discussions. It really does allow teams to break through tough problems. The difference is leaders that know how to do this properly, know how to manage the flow of the “discussion” so that it doesn’t become personal. They also know how to get people to listen what is being said, so that teams can understand what is possible.
Tags: #sdlc, #softwaredevelopment, #lifecycle, #process, #applicationdevelopment, #leadership, #management
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