What is new?

You never know what you have till you lose it!

I am very sad to see Roberto leave the company. Beginning of January he resigned his position as CEO of Devstream. He is joining a small company with something like 5 people. I guess our company just matured/grew too much, to the point where it was not fun any more. Lots of politics, and little less coding for him. I can understand why he left.

In a way I myself decided to accept a permanent position to be part of the team, and gave up lucrative contracting. Now I am also considering going back to contracting, funny how some link a team together and without them it feels like the team is falling apart. My time working permanently has been one of the best learning experiences.

Reflecting on my time there I can say that I added a couple of skills.

1. People skills, I used to be a lone ranger type of programmer, arrogant and ignorant. Yes I can code, but to work closely in a team is an art. I really learned how to work in a team. I became a XP-programmer, test driven development seems like the only way to code.
2. I totally had to adjust my idea of a good leader, leading by fear vs leading by respect. How some people just don't get it. There is a big difference between someone that wants to be a leader vs someone that is a natural leader.
3. Managing complex software projects. How to plan and deliver working with lots of different people. I am shocked to discover a project well managed vs previous companies I worked for.
4. What it takes to make a cool development environment, what I need to do to create an environment where people want to work.
   

I suspect more people will resign in the next couple of weeks. We have a mountain of work and I do not have a lot of confidence in the current people that call themself leaders. Hopefully the issue will resolve itself. I am going to do my best to make sure that the right stuff happens.

Funny how you do not even notice what you have... Do you talk about the good old days? Do you miss it and wish you can go back? You should start realising what you have and appreciate it, it might be gone tomorrow.

So I decided that today must be great and I am declaring it a good time, it might not be my best day, but it is certainly not a bad day either. In spite of some minor setbacks... Life is good!

Personal rant... Blogger was down last time I tried to publish this post