Finding my own level of incompetence

I am temperamentally a lone or small-group software developer, and have always generated frequent — usually weekly — builds for my customer to review. I was so successful at this at one company that I was promoted to manager.

I had taken on the contract development of a DOS application for PCs in C from a regular customer. There was just too much work for me to deliver it on time by myself so I hired a programming manager — let’s call him Bill — and he hired three more C programmers and a technical writer. He had a great track record, so I gave him the management of the project. I took on the database design and the assembly language programming, but otherwise tried to stay out of Bill’s way and manage the business.

We started work in the summer. Our first deliverable build was due in October. I booked a flight to the customer’s site for myself and Bill two months ahead of time.

I was very impressed by the progress everyone was reporting until it got to 90 percent and stayed there. Uh, oh. And where was the integrated build? Not to worry, said Bill: Everything was under control. I didn’t want to undercut him in front of his troops, did I?

The day before my flight, Bill tried an integrated build. It wouldn’t link. Well, it would only take an hour to fix the conflicts. This went on all day. No problem, said Bill, he and his three programmers would grab a pizza and stay late, and I could pick him and the build disk up from his house on my way to the airport.

At 0-dark-thirty when I pulled up to his house, Bill came out in the clothes from the day before, unshaven, with a manila envelope. No, he wasn’t coming with me: he had been up all night. And by the way, two thirds of the functionality wasn’t working right: there were still integration issues. I shouldn’t expect much from the demo, he said. And have a nice flight.

I actually had a lovely meeting after a nervous flight, for two reasons. First, I had a long history with the clients, who were more confident than I was that we would get the problems fixed. Second, they plied me with enough single-malt Scotch at lunch that I didn’t care.

It took another few weeks for that build to be fully functional. The final product shipped successfully, although it was a few months behind schedule.

As for Bill, he stayed on, but I had to impose my own development practices on the group. Within a few months, Bill and I could barely say hello to each other if we met in the hall. I think I left first.

Within a year, the company abandoned the contract software business entirely to “concentrate on its core competency.” The customer then brought the contract for the Windows version of the application to my consulting practice. But that’s another adventure entirely.