This is a difficult article for me to write. I’m admitting something that makes me feel ashamed to the entire internet - and it’s tied to my real name. I also know there are former colleagues and current friends that follow my blog and that heartfelt confessions might feel like a cheap apology for previous transgressions. It is what is however - and I feel like I have valuable insight to give the wider world regarding the phenomenon of the ‘Rockstar Developer’.
After six years I will be leaving the Idaho National Laboratory and moving on. I reflect a bit on my time there, particularly on the open-source project DeepLynx
After a few years of unhappiness, I finally write the email that saved my life.
A few times I’ve found myself stuck as the subject-matter expert of an internal project, or stuck in a role that I was growing either bored or frustrated with. If you’ve found yourself stuck as “the frontend person” and wanting to move on from a long-lived project, here’s some advice that might help you break out.
Learn how to be successful even when you’re the only developer on a project.
The Norse god Heimdall was the watchman of the Norse gods. He dwelt at the entry of Asgard and stood guard over Bifrost, the Rainbow Bridge, which connected Asgard to Earth. Through Heimdall and Bifrost the Norse gods kept watch over and interacted with Earth and the humans living there. Waxing poetic (and very arrogant) I think we can consider ourselves gods over our programs. We watch over them from afar, interacting with them through a bifrost of command lines and gui’s. We care about their health and performance and we strive to insure they fulfill their function.
With these words we lost our project lead and arguably the most skilled and experienced of the developers currently at the company. Losing a team member in any project has an immediate impact to both productivity and team morale. In this case, it felt like the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs had just dropped into the middle of our team. We had been tasked with replacing a legacy system in charge of managing the products available in our various e-commerce platforms.