Managing Humans: More Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager

© Michael Lopp 2021

M. LoppManaging Humanshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-7116-2_3

3. Stables and Volatiles

There are two builders you need in the build

Michael Lopp¹  

(1)

Los Gatos, CA, USA

 

Stephen was a hired gun at my first startup. His contract started a year before I arrived, but he was long gone before I walked in the door. The story goes that when Stephen started, he found a small, solid team of five engineers, a QA lead, and a project manager. They were slowly and steadily going... nowhere. After two weeks of watching the team’s slug-like pace, Stephen was fed up.

Stephen, a guy we hired as a temporary contractor to tidy up our database layer, grabbed the greenest of engineers, moved into the ping-pong room, and told the engineer, “We are ...