Wow – congrats! Looks like you did an awesome job!
You should come lead our retrospective one day

Think I will have to grab a copy of the book and see if I can get some pointers too!

Nicely done!

Howard

I deal with a fair amount of legacy code on a daily basis, and sometimes the day ends with me feeling like I totally suck! I find that treating augmentations of legacy code as a little test, and taking regular breaks if you’re getting wound up really keeps your head level.

Excellent advice, otherwise. I wish there’d been more people to talk to about this stuff when I was a junior. Development can feel like an incredibly lonely profession sometimes!!

Earlier in my career I remember resigning from a role where I had been instrumental to the success of the business. It was a tough decision, and one I agonised over for a long time. Had it not been for the chance that my then boss had given me, I would never have stepped onto the career path that I find myself.

Having declared my intention to leave, the rest of my day comprised 6hrs in a room with my boss whilst he literally cried, shouted, begged, offered vast sums of money and used many other techniques to try to persuade me not to leave. I remember it to this day, and I still find it difficult to reconcile in my head.

Underneath, he (like most employers) knew that staff will move on. I knew that my team were strong and that life would carry on without me. Unsurprisingly it did, and the business is still going strong today. Those who had supported me stepped up, and took the next step in their careers.

Personally I would not wish that “resignation debrief” on anyone, and it left a lasting impression with me. No-one should ever feel guilty about moving-on, provided you do it with integrity, continue to do your best during your notice period, and provide a decent hand-over.

“Integrity” is a word I use a lot. If I can look myself in the mirror in the morning and genuinely believe I have done the best I can in a given situtation, I cannot do any more than that. Even when I have had to take the difficult decision to dismiss an employee, they have always understood. Often ‘releasing them’ was the best thing that could happen to them, and many have gone on to be far more successful than they could ever have been on the path that they were previously travelling.

It is my personal opinion, a decent manager cares about their team, and wants the best for them as individuals, as well as wanting the best for the business. If you are able to both inspire and support your team, and offer them what they need to progress then they, in turn, will reward you with the effort they put in.

A lesson every manager has to learn is that most of your employees are *not* your friends, although you may be lucky enough that one or two become friends – often after they move on! However, that obviously does not mean you can’t be friendly to each other.

To be an effective manager you will regularly have to take decisions your team may not like – and in some cases many not understand. This is where it is critical that your team trust and respect you. If they do, they will follow your instructions to the best of their ability, even if they don’t necessary understand why. In time, the reason often becomes clear.

The impact on a middle manager when an employee leaves is less personal. For a business owner, it can be more of a blow. However, most business owners are entrepreneurs. They are likely to have been aggressive in persuing their career and, once rationality enters the room, they will understand and respect your decision better than most.

One of my philosophies in life is to “never close a door unless you have to”. Leaving a job and moving onto a new one doesn’t necessarily mean that previous path is now closed to you. The people you meet as you travel your career path may be enormously valuable to you and, later in life, you may find yourself employing them!

I would pick up on your point of “asking for a code review”. Although a good idea, not all employers will be up for this. Paranoia is strong, and an employer has to protect their IP. Also, it is necessary to understand an employers reasons for hiring you – and this may be something they cannot always explictly express. It may be that the code base is a load of Pony, and perhaps the intent is that you become instrumental in changing that. However, often politics dictates that a hiring manager will not be able to voice that. Therefore you need to be wary that you don’t discount an opportunity, as you may not have the full picture.

Location is also another interesting aspect of a job move. Often a job may not be ideally placed, but it can be a critical career step. The balance of work vs. life is always a tricky one. Do you live-to-work, or work-to-live?

I remember one job I had where my boss and I were sent to close down a factory that the company had bought. We were both (literally) beaten-up on our first day, and my boss quit and walked out. I stuck it out, and learned how to overcome the extreme nature of that situation. I possibly learnt more from working with and winning those people over, than I have from anything else in my career. We may not always why life throws some of the things it does at us until much later on. Sometimes it just continues to elude us!

Self-belief is an important attribute. If you are good at what you do, and you believe in yourself, there is little that can reallygo wrong. If you make a bad job move, then what’s the worst that can happen? Give it a try, and give it time. If it’s not right, move on again. The world is desparate for *good* developers. Many talk-the-talk, few can crawl-the-crawl, let alone walk-the-walk.

I’m certainly no John Harvey-Jones. I have made many mistakes in my career. Most I have learnt from. A few I will no doubt make again. I have, however, been fortunate for the great opportunities afforded me by at least two managers. I will be forever grateful for that, and they know they could call on me again at any time if the need arose.

In the words of that great philosopher, Ronan Keating, “Life is a rollercoaster”.

- Don’t think you are there to learn anything.

And what I mean about that, is that I went there thinking I would learn something, which you generally don’t. However, you can learn *of* a lot of things. So now I know that:

- When at a developer conference, don’t go to talks on topics you think you should learn. Go to talks on topics you are curious about, with cool/interesting/funny speakers and have fun =)