Scary responsibility in job ad

[Bill Swallow]

There's always beer involved. ;) But no, this was a full-on
collaboration that I initiated with the engineering VP and the product
architect. It took some convincing, but a few flow charts later and we
were good to go. You have to cover all bases and have a contingency
for everyone on all sides should something slip (and outline
consequences). But it's nothing that isn't possible to plan for, and
is exactly the type of work anyone in any kind of project
management/leadership role should be doing anyway.

But beer... there were a couple of fellow homebrewers on the
engineering side whom I knew, and a bunch of cooking nuts/foodies as
well. So there was rapport there from the beginning with quite a few
folks. I would get hops from one guy and return to him beer made with
them. Another team member (a writer) kept bees, and I'd return to him
beer made with the honey. But that was all really aside from the main
push. I had little rapport initially (in fact, some tension) with the
product architect going into it, but through planning and negotiation
we were able to work things out. We were never buddies, but we ironed
out the wrinkles in our working relationship. Of course, the entire
project team (locals, anyway) would meet up every 2 weeks for an
after-work pressure venting session at a local bar. Working 70-90
hours a week takes its toll (company tweaked its work from home policy
and even paid for our home broadband), and it was nice to have that
kind of break in a relaxed environment. Beer, wings, billiards, darts,
and even karaoke. All good.

On Fri, Oct 7, 2011 at 10:29 AM, Jeff Coatsworth
<jeff.coatsworth at jonassoftware.com> wrote:
> Ooooh! They won't fall for your Jedi mind-tricks! I bet there's beer involved in this somewhere, right Bill?


-- 
Bill Swallow

Twitter: @techcommdood
Blog: http://techcommdood.com
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/techcommdood