What's it all about, Alfie?

This week has been a little stressful for me - I've spent a few days off work getting the last of my things out of the house and into storage, and then signing some papers to sell the house. It's all a necessary part of life, I know, but it's stressful, and so I have to push through it.

What I didn't expect to have to deal with was a broken production app that supports some of the capabilities of the main project I'm on at The Shop. It's not a lot - it's not really looking all that great, but it's really useful to me in what I'm doing, and I depend on it every morning for writing up a status email that I send to the group about the overnight runs.

Anyway, for two days in a row one of the senior developers in the group - a relative newcomer, has broken production. The first day, I was pretty nice about it - just asking him if he checked production once he deployed the changes, and knowing full well he hadn't. The next day I was not as happy, and it started a significant email chain with him, the group manager, and myself about what we should be doing, and the qualities of leadership, in general.

The problem is that this guy was hired to be the Tech Lead of the group, but he's never really lead in a way that I felt worth following. He could certainly command, but that's not how groups at The Shop are run - it's meant to be a consensus of smart guys arriving at a good decision for the good of the team and business. There will certainly be differences of opinion, and our group has had many, but after a good talking session, we understand everyone's position, and consensus is reached. It might not leave everyone happy about things, but it works.

At least it used to.

Now it's not working, and I've tried to give it several months to work itself out. But after the second day in a row where no testing was done after deploying changes to production, I felt it was time to point out that this casual approach to production has to stop. That it's very simple to test when it's in production, and the lack of even the simplest of testing is really a sign of a much larger problem.

I could try to make light of the real problem, but it boils down to attitude. Always does, doesn't it? If you have to proper attitude about your work, then you care about how it's seen by others. You are careful about changes. You watch the details and make sure they are all covered.

Basically, you do a good job. Regardless of the job. Carpenter, Dentist, Doctor, Coder - all are the same. If you take care in what you are doing, the end result may not be perfect, but it's at least something you can defend as being the very best you can do.

In this case, he knew it was a mistake. And to do it two days in a row was - well… really inexcusable. So I pointed out that leadership is an isolated job - it's up to others if they choose to follow you. Command is an entirely different thing, and I think we have a problem with the words and definitions we're using for this position. He may have been hired as the lead, but it presumed that he was capable of doing that job. For me, at least, he can't.

I don't know what will happen. I doubt if The Shop will re-arrange staff to suit me, but it's possible that I can have my project separated to make it easy to not have to face the daily friction of dealing - or in my case not dealing with him. I hope that's the case, but I don't know that they will do that. If not, it's been clear that there are other groups in The Shop that would be glad to have me help them, so it's not all that bad, but it's uncomfortable now, and I've been able to keep it very professional and positive.

What gets me is that the original members of this group would have laughed a bit at the first day, and then roasted him alive on the second. That we have gotten to this point is very sad to me. I miss the old team.