I Hoped You Would Fail
A long time ago in a startup far far away, I was a part of a team that was given a small project to build. The project consisted of developing a system to automate the collection of data. That’s really not important as this write up isn’t about what we were building, but rather how we were building it.
Project responsibilities were divided into individual functional pieces and assigned to each member of the team. Each of us had to essentially build a link in a chain. Those links would then somehow be connected to one another over the course of the project.
This was the beginning of a disaster.
The project continued on with little to no progress for over a month. We would have meetings about 3 times a week where nothing of true substance was discussed. It wasn’t a fun time.
The most frustrating part of everything was that this ‘chain’ development model meant that if someone wasn’t done with a portion of their project it would block another team member’s ability to progress, therefore giving them an excuse to slack off until everything was ‘ready’ and they could proceed.
This wasn’t a particularly complicated project. We should have been able to put together a simple working prototype within a week. Instead everyone’s inability to communicate complicated the development process, stretching dev time from days to weeks.
Finally we had a breakthrough.
I managed to complete my portion of the project and provide a means for another part of the system to “talk” with it. I remember the joy of sitting in front of my desk and running through the tests and watching the system actually work.
Gone were the days of driving home feeling that the entire day was a waste.
My tests were passing. I had purpose. The team had come together.
We were a success!
I sat there spinning in my desk chair grinning like an idiot with one of my fellow devs when he let it slip: “I hoped you would fail”.
He even threw up a little fist jab as if to gesture, “hip hip hooray”.
I’m admittedly a tad bit dense, so it took me a moment to process such a statement. My brain fired off a background thread to continue computing what I had just heard as I blurted out some unintelligible gibberish as a quick exit from the conversation. I spun back around with a fake smile on my face and stared at my monitor and the now less impressive passing tests.
Let’s take a step back from our timeline for a moment and analyze this little blurb of schadenfreude said aloud.
At this point we had been working together on this very simple project for over a month. Having meetings, talking over coffee, doing office people stuff and this whole time in the back of his head he’s thinking, “Gee, I sure hope Mel fucks up something awful. The would benefit me because __FILL IN BLANK__”
Maybe he was simply worried about my development process and was hoping I would not succeed so he could show me the error of my ways and help correct them. Like he had this role as a mentor that he knew he would have to fill. By succeeding with my portion of the project I had simply relieved him of this burden and this was his way of thanking me.
Sure. That could be it.
Maybe he had a gambling addiction and had concocted some unusual bet with a shady bookie. With a working system and passing tests, I had cost him a payday. If he was dealing with sort of underworld crime syndicate then he could now be in real danger.
Wasn’t that far fetched.
I would feel bad if that were the case.
I didn’t want the poor fellow to get knocked off by the mafia or anything, I just wanted to get my work done.
Ultimately I settled on being content without having an explanation. I could theorize about why this guy was a prick until the cows came home, but ultimately it wasn’t worth it.
I don’t care why strangers on the street don’t always want to be my friend.
I don’t let it bother me if I meet a girl and she doesn’t quite fancy me.
I don’t get upset if I interview for a job and don’t get the position.
If you don’t call me back I’m not gonna cry.
If you flip me off in traffic…..I might return the favor.
These things are all fine.
These things happen in life.
I’m used to it and comfortable with things being this way.
My only regret in this situation was not having been able to identify the problem early on and address it. All those meetings talking about design would probably have been far more valuable discussing why certain members had problems with one another.
Meetings about real problems we were having.
Not meetings about problems that we thought we were going to have.
Shortly after launch the project was decommissioned and rebuilt from the ground up by a smaller team. We didn’t use a ‘chain’ model and had far less meetings about ‘design considerations’. Instead two developers would report their progress once a week and the thing got built. It wasn’t perfect and the smaller team had hindsight from the first project working to their advantage, but it got done and more importantly it got used.
I guess if there’s anything to learn from this story it’s that you shouldn’t do something simply because you feel like you have something to prove.
Happy New Year.
