While the cat's away...

I just returned from another trip out to the West Coast, this time for a far more pleasant reason than the last - a (re)marriage celebration instead of a funeral.

In my absence, a certain software release was supposed to take place back here at the office. This software release was supposed to establish for us a major baseline, a "stable" set of code that would allow our customer to begin their testing and thus gain confidence in our product.

I had hoped that the release would go well, that the baseline would be stable, that the testing could begin. I was sadly mistaken.

In my absence, the person on whose head I laid the responsibility to build and test and thereafter release the aforementioned software, failed to do so. That is, he built the software, tested the software, and released the software, but owing to his inability to fully comprehend what he was doing - and lacking any initiative to try and figure out what he was doing - the release was not as functional as it needed to be.

Thus when I returned, there were (almost literally) a swarm of people hanging around my desk, waiting for me to arrive.

In other circumstances, this would be enjoyable. They were looking forward to my presence. They awaited my return with eager anticipation. They recognized my value to the team.

But ... my value to the team is not supposed to be based upon what I can do to fix the problems; it is supposed to be based on my ability to lead others to find and implement the solutions. And my inherent distrust in the abilities and motivations of others led me to attempt to solve all the problems myself instead of taking the time and energy to train them to do it instead.

Admittedly, we are understaffed, overworked, badly scheduled, poorly funded, miserably managed, and completely unmotivated; and my current staff is mysteriously uninterested in transitioning from the pure software world into the mixed-bag environment of real-time systems, where a desire to play with the hardware is an imperative. Yet there is still a huge feeling of guilt hanging over me for my lack of ability to motivate them towards that area.

I had hoped to find in my staff some kernel of curiosity that would pull them toward the Dark Side of wires and switches and circuits and processors; we had spent several hours in the lab prior to my departure, reviewing the procedures and practicing the mechanical actions which were required to perform the tests.

But the fact remains that some people prefer the virtual world of the pure computer programmer rather than the dirty world of the practicing engineer, and, left to their own devices, will spend the majority of their time trying to find syntactic errors in their code rather than going to the hardware and discovering that (for example) a wire is not connected properly.

I cannot imagine a life as a "pure" software engineer with no understanding of the hardware upon which it runs. That is like knowing how to drive a car but having no ability to figure out what's wrong when the engine doesn't start.

But that goes back to my original problem. I don't like depending on people. I don't trust that they will get the job done. I want to be able to do everything myself so that I don't owe anyone anything, and I don't have to wait on them to finish, and don't have to fix what they screw up.

Unfortunately, that's what society is based upon - learning to depend on others, trusting that they will do what they are tasked to do, and being extremely patient with them when they are slower than one would prefer (just as one would hope for some patience from others when the roles are reversed!).

Things didn't work out this time, and as a result, I'm spending the Memorial Day weekend here at work, trying to fix all the things that didn't get fixed in my absence.

Oh, well. At least it's raining outside, and it doesn't hurt so much to be inside.