I’d never asked to be the boss, my aspirations had always been along the lines of writing something in the next new technology or to work on project x because it looked interesting. Yet here I was sat in the board room in front of the Managing Director being told ‘Cole, you’re the boss’. Well maybe not the boss but in charge of the other developers and so this strange journey through the world of software development management began.
My predecessor had decided that management wasn’t really for him and moved back to a more hands on role. I’d filled in for him on occasions and had been at the company for a while. I generally got work done quickly, communicated with the project managers coherently and hadn’t messed anything up too badly and that was enough for the powers that be. I was now, at the tender age of 25, in charge of our 8 strong development team.
I was given a brief handover and my own office and then left to my own devices. For a second there was a post-promotion chill and I wondered if I’d done the right thing in accepting but before I could contemplate it any further chaos started to break out. My previously neatly filed inbox began to fill with demands for updates and meeting requests, my phone started ringing and didn’t stop for hours and the developers started knocking on my door with questions about what they should be doing.
Hmmm this may be a bigger job than I anticipated.