A proposal to be the fixer, and donuts
[ This is part three of four. You might want to start at part one. ]
Continuing from yesterday, then: I made a plan to bring in some donuts from Stan's. Nobody can resist them. I also came up with what I was going to say. It went something like this:
Let me just start by telling you why I'm here first. There are a great many broken projects around here and I know how to fix them. I want to be the fixer. I want to be your fixer. I just need the power, the mandate, and frankly, the protection, since people around here aren't too nice when I find out they aren't doing their jobs. Would you like a donut?
First thing Monday morning, I grabbed those donuts, drove to work, waited for the time to arrive, walked in, sat down, and delivered that pitch. A lively discussion ensued, in which I learned how things were backing up other things and causing some teams to do ridiculous workarounds, all because testing of the kernel was too slow. The idea was, I would parachute in, boot out everyone who was worthless, then finish the job and get things working at last. I would hear back within the week.
So that was Monday. I went back to my desk, buzzed a quick ":-)" or something like that, and went back to work. I started digging into things which might take a while to finish, since it looked like I'd be sticking around for the long run.
Obviously, since I'm writing this, that is not what happened. On Tuesday afternoon, things reverted to the mess that I now truly know them to be.
June 22, 2011: This post has an update.