Once the floor opened for questions and discussion, with characteristic bravado he announced, “Well, I’ve got a bomb to drop.”

“Of course you do…” I almost thought aloud.

Summarizing: “Hedging our bets, I went off and solved this problem on my own. Already done! Works like a champ!”

Motherfucker… “Great. So, tell us about it.”

“Well, I stood up a box, and I used this tool, and it runs the job on schedule, and it works great!”

Here’s the thing: It was never a technical problem. Never. It was a politics problem. It was a policy problem. It was a procedure problem. It was a people problem. It was never a technical problem.

Who owns the box? Who pays for it, maintains it, secures it, and certifies it to live in the Big Company’s production environment? Who guarantees the algorithms will run every day, maintains the integrity and history of the code, takes responsibility when others contribute their code, and who sets the priorities when different teams contend for the resources? How do we avoid all the single points of failure?

Stupid, stupid motherfucker. Why didn’t you set your ego aside and just listen? You didn’t solve one single problem. Not one. You’re back on Day One.

Alright – not stupid, per se. Just jaded. Too many years getting acclimated to failure. Too many years believing you alone know better. Too many years pursuing the heroic solution. Too many years creating precisely what all those processes have been designed to kill.

“I recognize the patterns. I’ve seen it all before.” Indeed. Now he doesn’t see his part in creating it. He couldn’t see it wasn’t a technical problem. He couldn’t see how his words were sabotaging our collective effort. He couldn’t see how much further along we’d be if he’d contributed his time toward furthering our effort instead of working silently in a different direction in case we failed.

“There is an art to flying, or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. … Clearly, it is this second part, the missing, that presents the difficulties.” ~The Guide

We’re soaring across the finish line without him.