Boss can make you fly like cotton or fly like Bird

After saying very nice words like…we will miss you…you were a great asset to the company…you were always helpful..and others in the farewell speech of his Tech Lead, Ramesh was very happy that he would get rid of John. Why he shouldn’t be happy about this? At last, he doesn’t need to report to a Tech lead who was never helpful to him. You will also agree with his stories. It just happened one month back.

Ramesh was assigned a new framework feature for an implementation. Although Ramesh always works on the limitation of framework and implements use cases abiding by the framework. But this time he was given a little bigger item in the framework. So the impact is going to be high on all the use cases. He was a little worried and also a little excited to work on something which he never got a chance. He was always complaining that he is never given an opportunity to work on the core framework. He wanted to work on that to understand what is a great deal it is. He started understanding the core framework and always hitting the roadblocks in terms of understanding it. He went to his Tech Lead who according to him was always idle and doesn’t have work, so always in meetings and discussions.

Ramesh: John, I am facing some issues in understanding the core framework.
John: Hmmmm…what is the issue?

Ramesh: It is very complicated.
John: It is designed to be extendable and for that reason, there are places where it is not straightforward.

Ramesh: Can you tell me how does it work?
John: Hmmmm…I had given a session on the overall design. There is a design document available to understand the overall flow. You can go through it and let me know if you want me to explain any specific area.

Ramesh: Can you debug with me and show me what is happening?
John: I have explained to you from where you need to start. Why don’t you give a start yourself and let me know if you are facing any issues?

Ramesh thought, there is no point in talking to this guy. John is not going to help me. John is never helpful. Always gives Gyan. Ramesh was curious to understand who makes this kind of Leads who doesn’t work themselves and never helps their juniors. What has happened if he would come to my desk and explained to me what is needed to be done. I would have done it accordingly and everything would have been completed. He is not a leader at all.

Ramesh struggled quite a lot to understand the framework and to extend it. Somehow he understood it and after doing a lot of googling found one solution from someone’s blog. He copied most of the code from there and pasted it in the code with some variable name changes and comments. At least he had a solution that was working. He showed it to John and John asked if this is the only solution he found. Is there any other solution available? Did you try to see if there is any other better solution? Have you done performance and impact analysis?

What the heck? After a lot of effort, I found a solution and he is asking for another solution. He went back and implemented another solution, did impact analysis, and then came back with a report, and finally, the code went into the framework part.

At last, John is going out and another Tech Lead is coming. So Ramesh doesn’t need to work with this cranky Tech Lead. Life would be happy.

Dinesh joined as the new Tech Lead. Dinesh was a blue-eyed boss everyone looks for. Ramesh was very happy with him. Whenever he had any problem, Dinesh used to come to his desk and help him. Dinesh used to show him where is the code, what changes need to be done, exact class level changes, function details. For Ramesh, life was very simple with this Tech Lead. There is any problem, call Dinesh and your problem is solved. You don’t need to do much. As Dinesh’s hometown was also in the same state where Ramesh belongs to, most of the time they used to talk in their native language. They used to go out for lunch, used to hit the pub, and also did some of the outings together.

Appraisal day came, Dinesh got promoted to the next level and Ramesh also got promoted as Tech Lead. There was a lot of celebration and parties happened after that. Within a couple of months of promotions, Dinesh got a much higher-paying job and resigned from the organization. Ramesh was very sad on the farewell day of…all the words….were coming from his heart…we will miss you…you were a great asset to company…you were always helpful..and others.

Now, the new boss, Varun was always busy with his work. He set the expectations early to Ramesh that he is Tech Lead and needs to handle his items himself. As Ramesh was Tech Lead so a lot of framework items were on his plate. He had to do it and there was no one to help him. The expectation was that he will solve these items himself and also solve the problems of his team members.

He started handling himself and found it was not going as smoothly as he was expecting. He was struggling a lot to implement simple framework changes/enhancements. Working on one of the weekends, he pondered why he is not able to handle items himself. He is a Tech Lead for the last six months. He should be an expert in handling these small items as John and Dinesh used to do. Then why is he not able to do it? He started analyzing the last one year of work under Dinesh who was very helpful to him. Dinesh always used to solve his problems and he never learned how to solve his own problems. Dinesh learned quite a lot about the framework and but Ramesh was always confined to implementing what is given to him by Dinesh. So the skill of exploring things and solving a problem will only come when you try yourself.

Ramesh just remembered the words from his boss John with whom he was never happy “There are two ways I can make you fly. Either like a cotton or like a bird. Cotton will fly when there is wind to blow it. A bird will fly on its own wings. I want to make you bird not cotton. So you can fly on your wings”. John was trying to help Ramesh in developing the skill of exploration of code, finding alternate solutions, impact analysis, and others. Now Ramesh has to learn all these skills again because although he is a Tech Lead but without these skills, he would not be a real Tech Lead. If he would work with John, Ramesh would have learned quite a lot.

I believe there is a lesson for Boss as well junior.

Sometimes as a boss by not helping your junior, you are making him capable of handling his own problems. But you need to give proper care, so while learning swimming in the pool he shouldn’t get drowned.

As a junior, we need to understand if your boss is not helping you, the Boss is really helping you.

Happy Learning 🙂