Cheers,
Ben

Ben is a first rate guy, who will do well in whatever career his heart is set on. I am sure he appreciates your encouragement.

Ben has explained to me his reasons for thinking about a career change (even before his career has really started) and I appreciate his reasons. I believe they are genuine reasons, and respect him for that.

I have (offline) offered my own thoughts, and hope that he found them of some value.

Hence my comment above that Ben will have a good chance at succeeding at wherever his heart is really focused.

This is the same for all of us, really, if we are honest about who we are and what we are really driven to be (not who our parents, partners or friends want us to be, for instance). I use the word “driven” here purposefully, as we really must be driven to be something, not just “want” it in an artificial sort of way.

Ben’s post is also honest in that it is not entirely flattering to the company, or my management - and I genuinely appreciate all of that criticism as well.

As Ben has noted, we have taken some big steps in improvement between Vacation 2008-09 and Vacation 2009-10, as a result of:
1) Autopsy 1, which was what we organised internally; and
2) Autopsy 2, which was were we effectively realised our issues were bigger than we could handle and started seeking a range of external assistance.

I will have a post up “shortly” (i.e. when I find the time to finish) explaining how these retrospective exercises are only the start of our adoption of a core value of Relentless Improvement.

This will explain, in further detail, how the company will get where it is headed.

Cheers

Paul

This is a very honest post and a great service to others entering the profession. Don’t be dis-heartened. My first task on my first project required me to allow a user to enter a decimal number and I had to scrape it off the screen and store it. (Showing my age - this was pre-Windows for an embedded system). It took two weeks and masses of monolithic code. I then presented the code nervously for review. A more experienced colleague re-wrote it in less than a morning and a fraction of the code. And I can’t bear to admit my first thoughts on documentation and testing (though years later and responsible for support and customer service my views had changed somewhat!)

Twelve years after cutting that awful code I was promoted to a senior role in a large company and responsible for lots of developers.

The important thing is that you’ve shown you’re humble enough to admit mistakes and to learn. Some of my biggest problems in this industry have been caused by developers who are over-confident and always start with the assumption that any fault lies outside their code. You’re clearly in no danger of being one of them and that is to your great credit. Good luck!

On the off chance that you ever check these comments - how many hours (or days) did it take you to write it?

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. It is interesting to read your perspectives on how we were operating as a company versus how we are operating now. It is very unfortunate that your first time with us probably coincided with the least productive time in the company.

I think that from reading your post, management and communication were the two areas that ultimately lead to the failure of the project. These are incidentally the two areas that are least focussed on at uni (at least in my experience). I distinctly remember being told that “you are not allowed to have a leader” in my group projects (which I still find perplexing and a really stupid idea). I remember that you sat at your desk, separate from the rest of the dev team, in silence for much of the time you were here. No wonder you had no idea what was expected from you!

The fact is that because you were basically thrown a bunch of ideas and then before you had a chance to develop them were thrown a bunch more, it was not clear what your priorities should have been and what the scope of your project was. It was destined to failure, no matter who was tasked with the project.

The best thing about this all is that you probably learned more in your time here than you did in all of your university degree. I would try and think of the first time you were here not as a failure, but as a learning and growth exercise.

I also would like to encourage you in anything that you decide to do. You are talented enough of an individual to excel in your chosen field. However, I would like to encourage you to stick to software development and come back at the end of your degree to work with us :). I could see you becoming an excellent product manager or software architect one day.

-Stephen

Have fun doing whatever it is you are doing now.