gettingrusty

Patrick, as always your advice is very insightful, but it's going to be tough for me to follow it. I've become very apprehensive about sticking my neck out there for a new responsibility because in my work environment it has almost invariably been equated with being assigned blame. I'd assume you are quite familiar with the saying "the nail that sticks up gets pounded down."

The customer is quite far removed from the development team and honest customer feedback is jealously guarded by management, either blatantly held hostage or creatively misinterpreted to further management's own goals. My immediate supervisor is very supportive, but the management further up the chain that controls requirements, budgeting, and customer interaction hasn't demonstrated the slightest bit of care.

Thanks. I think your footnote is especially encouraging, since I'd been under the impression that not all open source projects are created equal, and that writing process schedulers for the Linux kernel or optimizing JavaScript execution in Firefox wasn't my cup of tea. I suppose there's no shame in contributing a tiny patch to the install script for some no-name program X so that it works on obscure platform Y, although it's not something I can brag about on a résumé.

I'd love to do that, but none of the projects I've worked on have succeeded or shipped. They're all rotting in the deadpool of neat proof-of-concept types that will never see the light of day.

I can't even say that I've saved the company money here or there. The most credit I could claim on that front would be that I chased down a problem enough to know that is not worth wasting more effort trying to solve it in the manner prescribed.