Coming Clean

So, I’m 26. I’ve been out of school 3.5 years. And I’m the tech lead and architect for a pretty sizeable piece of software for our simulation. That’s pretty cool, I think, but I’m not wetting my pants or feeling like Mr. Bigstuff about it. I only mention it because when you work in an industry where the average age is like 50 (I’m serious), and you’re in a position such as mine, it means you’re going to be leading people older than you. Like, a lot older than you.

And that’s weird. I’m thinking there’s at least 10 years difference with the youngest person I’m working with. I mean, that’s not freakishly old or anything, but it is old enough for me to want to submit to them respectfully as I have been raised. …but I can’t. That’s not my job. And it’s taken me some time to get use to that idea.

And today was the best day for it. I started a weekly status review this week that will run for probably the next half-year to year for our project. Its main goals were to discuss the progress we’ve made so far and to divvy up the remaining work. In going through the remaining work, I wanted to close a few items as non-issues because it would take us a lot longer to fix it than to update documentation and teach the existing users to work around the problem. I start getting static because people think it IS a problem AND want to have it fixed. At this point, I’m starting to feel a little frantic. In general, these are issues I would take on myself to work but because I feel they are non-issues, I REALLY don’t want to.

And this is when I had my first managerial insight — delegate the crap you don’t want, ESPECIALLY when it’s not important and someone else is making an issue of it.

Oh good Lord, the result was priceless. I said, “Alright then, since you’re volunteering, I’ll sign you up.” The look of shock and horror was priceless. P.R.I.C.E.L.E.S.S. Especially considering that this person is notorious for giving people a hard time about minutia, I was feeling pretty proud of myself. This kind of thing makes for good water-cooler talk.

That happened one more time (with the same person) before everyone had the clue ball. I’m not dumping requirements out of preference. I’m dumping requirements because ends do not justify the means/dollars. Besides, closures have to get approved anyways, so I feel like my back is covered. But still…. man it was sweet to see the bug-eyes of surprise.