Fifteen years ago, I was writing Smalltalk code as part of a small development team. I had learned about the Model View Controller pattern and had become a zealot. Tasked with building a key portion of the user interface for a looming demo to upper management, I held anxiety at bay and built an elegant object model for the entire project. Then I went home for the weekend, the user interface code incomplete. Kevin, the technical lead and the one under the most pressure to complete the demo, came in over the weekend and rewrote the user interface code I’d been assigned. And he discarded my object model in the process.
First thing Monday morning, Kevin showed the demo to our boss. Kevin explained to the boss that he’d had to rewrite my bit, but now the demo worked great. The boss was ecstatic. I was livid. Hell hath no fury like a programmer scorned.
Why did that experience bug me so much? I was embarrassed that I hadn’t completed my part, Kevin one upped me in front of the boss. But that wasn’t the core issue.
I wanted to be right. I wanted the rest of my peers and my boss to give weight to my opinions–every time. As a technical guy, I wanted that more than anything else–notably it mattered more to me that my technical judgements were valued than that other people could collaborate with me. I wanted to be the guru. When my object model was discarded, to the applause of the boss I might add, I didn’t feel like a guru, I felt like an idiot.
I wasn’t very graceful about it at the time.
Fast forward to the present, I’m no longer writing Smalltalk code (where is Smalltalk anyway?), I’m managing development teams. If I had been my own boss fifteen years ago, I’d have tried to convince me that being right isn’t an event, each technical discussion isn’t a show down on my fundamental worth as an engineer. In fact, the phrase “being right” is broken; rightness isn’t something a person is, it’s something a person, better yet a team, experiences. Rightness is something we look for, not something we own. To which the younger me might have responded, “then how do I compete for promotions and raises?” And that is another story, for a another time.
