I’m a pretty lucky guy. Today, when I told my boss “I need to spend a sizeable chunk of time doing this right (that is re-doing it since we’ve solidified on concepts and semantics since the proof of concept version of this code)” he understood that it was important. He gave me the rest of the day to refactor that code.

It would play to my ego to think that since I’m such a wonderful engineer my word was taken as it should be — as the absolute unabashed unbiased truth. Unfortunately I’m not the golden child of engineers; and fortunately I don’t view myself in that way (nor do I wish to do so.) The reality is that Scott took my advice, weighed it, and gave me the chance to pay it forward.

So, four and a half hours of work today allows for a time savings of 75% any time we want to write a new feature for a particular (and important) area. The truth of the matter is that we may not put in more than one feature there before release, but the company that I work for has turned its mind to planning and true agility.

It’s sad to think that a large percentage of companies would have (at this point: pushing towards an initial release, and tantilizingly close) simply written it off as not immediately important. While it’s true that getting to the goal is hugely important, it’s also true that getting there with a torch that no longer supports a flame really defeats the purpose.

So even as tension mounts with personal and business life colliding (as is oft the case with startups), not to mention business relationships stressed by the sheer exhaustion of effort, Scott still seriously considers my advice and allows a fair amount of freedom in my momentum.

Maybe it’s because hes a macro, as opposed to micro, manager. Maybe it’s because we’ve worked together for so long. Maybe it’s because I’ve never let my employer (him or otherwise) down. Heh… Maybe it was just a good day on the other end of the IM session. Whatever it was… Thanks

DK