When Developers Work Late, Should Manager Stay or Go?

"Let’s turn the clock back to earlier that morning. I was writing software for a major payroll conversion that was supposed to take place that coming weekend. We had tested and tested and were continuing to test in preparation for the big conversion that would impact over one hundred thousand employees.

"I was feeling pretty confident and very well prepared. Then that all changed in an instant. Our business analysts had mistakenly mapped a bunch of fields incorrectly and the logic was much more complex than what we were already doing.

"It was agreed that this shouldn’t stop the conversion and that we needed to code the changes immediately so we could run one full test cycle.

"Let me be more clear. My manager agreed. I was simply told.

"He sauntered into my cube and said “I have a challenge for you."

"Uh oh."

Complete Story

Related Stories:

• Why Developers Get Fired(Sep 22, 2009)
• Does Quality Software Code Really Matter?(Sep 14, 2009)
• Too Old To Write Software? Or Just the 'Wrong Era'?(Jun 30, 2009)
• Finding The Coding Zone: Your Perfect Trifecta?(May 18, 2009)
• Where's Your Coding Happy Place?(Apr 22, 2009)
• When Developers Drink On The Job(Apr 09, 2009)
• Are Quirky Developers Brilliant or Dangerous?(Mar 17, 2009)
• Do Nice Engineers Finish Last in Tough Times?(Jan 21, 2009)