Accidentally Saving the Day
I appreciate the story and the pride he must have felt. But this is the entirely wrong message. It perpetuates that the superstars are those jumping in last second in some heroic effort to save the day.<p>This is not how projects should work, and we should stop perpetuating these heroic stories. The <i>actual</i> superstars are all those people doing the less-than-glamorous grunt work. Planning things <i>on time</i>. Getting the infra ready, stable, well-tested, documented. Making schedules that have margins. The people carefully designing things so they are robust and don&#x27;t break left and right. Thinking through their systematic testing. In short, preparing everything so that heroic acts are <i>not</i> necessary.<p>Imagine the same story but somebody two months earlier had voiced a concern that Jabberwocky and ChaChing wouldn&#x27;t play well together. Pushing for the APIs to be harmonized so that they <i>could</i> play together and integrate. Pushing all this <i>against</i> pressure that they are just delaying everything and should not worry so much and be more positive and agile. Imagine they had succeeded and everything had gone smoothly. This would have been <i>much</i> better for the company (since the existential risk wouldn&#x27;t have existed in the first place). But that somebody wouldn&#x27;t have ended being the superstar with the promotion and the bonus. It would likely have stuck to have been the guy just delaying things with their worries. <i>That&#x27;s</i> what needs to change in sw eng culture.