Disclaimer: There’s probably a term for this, but I’ve this pattern in teams and I’d like to discuss it.

Scenario

You have a high functioning team of 6-10 individuals.  Team culture is great.  Everyone is pulling in the same direction, and lots is getting done.  Yet, in under 4 months half the team will be gone and the rest will be considering it.  As a manager, you’ll realize you can’t deliver anything and it all seemed to crumble overnight.  What happened?

Traffic in Austin seems almost reasonable during Summer.

I live in Georgetown, Texas, and I work in The Domain, just off MoPac @ Burnett Rd.  For the uninitiated, that means I have a commute of about 25 miles down one of the worst highways in America.  It costs me about $2.50 in tolls to roundtrip to work, but often the toll section of MoPac is a parking lot between 8 and 10 am, and 5-7 pm.  A full work-month means I’m putting about $70 depreciation, $100 in gas, and $50 in tolls out of my pocket.  Call it $220 all-up.

I’m a 40 year old working software engineer.

I’m not a program manager, project manager, team lead, architect, business analyst, sytems analyst, or whatever other term means “Doesn’t code anymore.”

I make my living by telling machines what to do so the company I work for can make money (alot of it) and pay me money (a little of it, but an obscene amount still).

As I sit here, I’m 2 days away from ending a three year stint with one team, and picking up with another within the same company.  The reasons aren’t complicated, but it’s impolitic to go into them.  Suffice it to say, I’ve been looking around for about 6 months internally and it took about a month to get through the transition.  Monday is ‘Go’ day.

I’m scared I won’t be able to see when I’m 50.  If I make it to 50.

I’ve always had poor vision, especially in my right eye.  My misshapen head grew disproportionately on the right side, so my eye sockets elongated….blah blah blah.  I’m functionally blind without glasses.  Have been since I was 8.

I learned to deal with it.  I wore glasses reliably through all of my school (including college) and finally got a set of Toric contact lenses when I was 21, and I was had actual peripheral vision until I dispensed with the contacts around age 32.  They were just too much trouble.

So, I made some rocks for my daughters’ rock ceremony last night.

The left, JOY, is for Grace (all-caps intentional) and the right Perseverance is for Maria.  Then today, I got the “memory” of the rocks last year.

That was exactly 364 days ago (Understanding == Maria, Enthusiasm == Grace).  As cliche as it sounds, it really seems like yesterday.  I’m reminded of reading the Stephen King short story My Pretty Pony.  The summary seems apt:

Having just ended my second trip through The Five Love Languages by Dr. Chapman, there are things I really wish I could get through my thick skull.

Apropos: We just got through Valentine’s Day and the occasion seems right.

1. Being “In Love"Ends

I remember my friend Dannah my freshman year.  She was one of the strongest women I’d ever met.  She had the grit and determination of her military dad, a sharp wit, and a heart as big as Dayton, Ohio.  But there was one thing.

This is how I work in my career.  Some of these are counter-intuitive and require explanation.

1. Shipping code wins.
2. On schedules: Picking an arbitrary deadline is often more efficient than carefully planning things out.  I’ve spend 20 years decrying this, but if you add up the time you spend planning, negotiating schedules, then executing, it’s less pain if you just work-to-deadline and throw features overboard in the process.
3. On teams: A disciplined team of professionals cultivating mutual trust will outperform a team of talented jerks.  There are exceptions, but only if you’re writing the Linux kernel or something requiring 10x insights daily.
4. On technology selection: Always pick the technology 1 step behind the bleeding edge, because it’s mature and documented For example, when everyone was going to Rails, use Spring MVC.  This will reduce your technical risk profile in every single case. 
5. Treat everyone as though they might be your boss someday.
6. Code only exists if it’s checked-in to version control.
7. If your team mostly cares about efficiency, run.  Now.  You don’t care about customers and growing.
8. The truly insufferable don’t last long.
9. Managers are much smarter than you think they are.
10. Project managers can help, if you let them.
11. You are not your code.  
12. You don’t own your code; your employer does.

There are many more, but that’s off the top of my head.  Mostly what I’ve learned in 20 years is “the people who came before us weren’t idiots.”

It’s been tough to be a Whovian in the past few years.

First there was the Clara denouement, in which show-runner Steven Moffat demonstrated he cannot write for women.  Then, there was no Dr. Who in 2016, period, and we suffered through the rather uneven Series 10 and Bill the social justice warrior.  Last, we’re in another break, as we wait for almost another year (October 2018) to see the first female doctor, Jodie Whittaker.

Context: http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2018/05/war-footing-toyota-ceo-unleashes-seven-samurai-bid-survival/#more-1625584

“With our rivals and the rules of competition also changing, a life-or-death battle has begun in a world of unknowns,” [Toyota CEO] Toyoda said during a fiscal update last week. “Cost reduction is crucial. It is a fight to restore our original strength.”

Dear Toyota USA

I read the article below and it sickens me. You are a great company well on the way to being FCA if you take your eye off product and think only of Expense controls.

I’ve toyed with the idea of doing a video review of this car.  If you’d like one, leave a comment
So, I’ve had a 10th Generation 2018 Honda Civic since April 24th.  I had a little car trouble and found myself in need of a car.

Crap.  Nothing like buying a car in the middle of Spring, when everyone else is buying a car thanks to Tax Refunds.   Middle of the model year.  No incentives.  Yaaaaay.

As the lights go up after a comic book movie, there are reactions one expects: Awed silence; various onomatopoetic words like “Whoa!,” or (in the DC Universe) grim reflections that it either did or didn’t suck as much as expected.

One does not expect seething, shocked anger like the gentlemen next to me, “Well, I’m glad I never saw Black Panther,” or the repeated, mindless exclamation of a teen across the auditorium.

Dear Ford Motor Company,

My 2010 Fusion Hybrid crashed today. No, I didn’t smash into anything…the electric traction system in my car crashed in the computer sense as I was rolling towards a stop sign. I was left without power brakes. Thankfully this was at ~5 mph so just stomping really hard on the pedal yielded a stop.

As I approached the stop sign in electric drive mode (engine off), my dashboard lit up light a Christmas tree, displaying warning lights I didn’t know I even had. The display shouted ‘SERVICE ADVANCE TRAC SYSTEM’ and my brake pedal went almost to the floor.

Martin Lomasney, an old West End political boss from Boston, is best remembered for his warning to young politicians everywhere — “Never write if you can speak; never speak if you can nod; never nod if you can wink”.

So yeah, let’s spend 20 minutes flying around Pandora from Avatar but let’s leave off the part that makes the plot work…

“There is such a thing as a tesseract” – Miss WhatsIt
I’ll never forget the day I read Madeline L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time for the first (and thus far only) time.  I was in 4th grade–11 years old–and I was in my Aunt Norie’s house in Highway 205.  My mom dropped me off, and I was alone for hours.   I can’t remember the occasion exactly, and especially the reason for my solitude, but it didn’t matter.

The following come to mind for being 39 years old ( I turn 40 in November )

• “Killing yourself, one M&M at a time.” Bonus points if you sing this to a “Fugees” tune and your coworker thinks you’re having a stroke.

• “The Advil Years”.  Significant things cause you to be sore the next day.  Like walking.

• “Remember when _____ didn’t hurt all the time?”  Knees….how did these things pass design review?

A programmer dies and goes to heaven, meeting a rather stern St. Peter at the Pearly Gates.

“You do know we have a record of every sin you’ve committed?” Peter says.

“Sure, whatever…I’ve got nothing to hide.  I lived a very clean life.”

Peter continued: “…and your full git history of every commit.”

The programmer just smiled.  “Great!  I’m quite proud of everything.  I practiced Clean Code.”

“…and the full DAG.  No rewrites of history in Heaven.”

I’m exhausted.

Yes, I know all the motivational crap about The 40% Rule.  I can (and shall) push through this, Lord willing, creek don’t rise, coffee maker don’t fail.

Some things to highlight for future reflection:

• I’ve crested 270 pounds.  I’m nearly 90 pounds up from where I was in 2012, and 30 more than when I moved here in 2016.   I’m eating myself to death.
• My exercise routine is nonexistent.
• My sleep metrics seem good, but I get no rest.
• I don’t read regularly.
• I don’t have any effective hobbies.  I basically work, sleep, repeat.
• …and yes, I happen to be on-call for my current team this week.

I begin to wonder (far too late, I suspect) that the above is unsustainable.  Other people seem to do this life thing well, and I….don’t.  I seem to just work.

So, a colleague brought in an espresso machine, a burr grinder, and some beans.

So, now I know how to make espresso.

Brilliant Idea: I need to setup an espresso bar beside a cardiologist’s office and take 10% of their profits.  My EYEBALLS ARE VIBRATING.

So, I’ve left Twitter and Facebook.  I had a flirtation with Blind that I’ve also given-up.

Detox has been weird.  I was used to having a hardwired line into the pulse of the internet.  Between my 4 (!) twitter lists updating constantly and watching Tweetdeck incessantly, I was a straight-up information junkie.

So….what’s the methadone for this heroin?

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/devharryc/

Thus far, Instagram has a much different personality than either Twitter or Facebook.

Well, as I sit here in 2018, it seems social media is an utter failure.  Given that I’ve been on internet chatrooms since 1993, this frustrates me.

This was basically the moment I knew I needed to get off twitter

Don’t lie and say you care about the school shooting today.

It’s been 1,866 days since Sandy Hook.

Since then: 1,576 Mass Shootings, including Las Vegas.https://t.co/LCwT6fLedK

Restate: You *may* care. WE THE PEOPLE don’t.