I suspect what happened here was Rick was the type of personality that defined himself by being the person who solved problems. He probably wasn't a genius, he was probably just senior and experienced.
He didn't want it to end up like this, I bet. I bet he didn't expect it. He didn't know how to say no, and even worse: no one knew that he should. Rick had no peers or management that could even faintly empathize. They didn't get that there was simply too much to do.
Rick's first and biggest mistake was long before his absurd outbursts: refusing to admit the project was too big before it was too late. Instead he imploded and started saying stupid and offensive things. He defined his identity by his ability to solve problems but no matter how much he tried, the problem seemed to get worse.
He got fired. He even deserved to be fired, I think. Because part of being the technical adult in the room is NOT letting it get that far out of control.
The ugly part is that it seems no real lessons have been leared by the org. Instead of recognizing the obvious lack of technical management, they're spreading the responsibility across the entire org. Intead of owning their business logic they called up vendors and sold it to them. Instead of broading the scope of the business with these added capabilities early on the entire business is now balanced on top of a pinhead of those few cases.
Everyone made terrible mistakes. And it seems like no one learned from them.
Eh, I've joined 3 or 4 projects where there was a "genius" behind it.
They liked being in control, and to a one they all talked about being irreplaceable.
I don't know Rick, of course, and can't speculate on what's going on in his head, but he certainly seems like the geniuses on the projects I and others ended up rescuing from their own respective geniuses.
I think everyone's quick to pile on the author, for some reason, but the Rick side of the story just rings so many bells for failing projects I've joined (or, later on, took over and reimplemented by myself).
I'm no genius, either, just old enough to know a little tiny bit better.
Ok, fair, that's good, I think we probably agree more than disagree then.
I guess my take on it is that the handful of Ricks I've seen, they all wanted to position themselves as irreplaceable, as kings of the project. For them it was intentional.
Maybe not the case with the Rick in this story. Without knowing the person (or even if the person is real, or if this is a composite character from multiple situations, etc), we're all just guessing.
I'm just more inclined to sympathize with the author, because of my own experiences with Ricks. :)
I think everyone's quick to pile on the author, for some reason
Oh, that's easy.
The prevailing wisdom around here is that management is always, without fail, a bad thing.
Management is either bad because they get in the way by doing anything, or, when a project goes sideways, management is bad because it failed at doing something.
For example, the devs involved in the BMW scandal? Well management told them what to do, so it's management's fault.
And this post? Well, it's management's fault for not stopping this guy.
I suspect what happened here was Rick was the type of personality that defined himself by being the person who solved problems. He probably wasn't a genius, he was probably just senior and experienced.
He didn't want it to end up like this, I bet. I bet he didn't expect it. He didn't know how to say no, and even worse: no one knew that he should. Rick had no peers or management that could even faintly empathize. They didn't get that there was simply too much to do.
Rick's first and biggest mistake was long before his absurd outbursts: refusing to admit the project was too big before it was too late. Instead he imploded and started saying stupid and offensive things. He defined his identity by his ability to solve problems but no matter how much he tried, the problem seemed to get worse.
He got fired. He even deserved to be fired, I think. Because part of being the technical adult in the room is NOT letting it get that far out of control.
The ugly part is that it seems no real lessons have been leared by the org. Instead of recognizing the obvious lack of technical management, they're spreading the responsibility across the entire org. Intead of owning their business logic they called up vendors and sold it to them. Instead of broading the scope of the business with these added capabilities early on the entire business is now balanced on top of a pinhead of those few cases.
Everyone made terrible mistakes. And it seems like no one learned from them.
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