We'll Miss You

I found out today that I am being transferred to another team. It is the end of an era and I should be happy about this. For the most part I am happy, I can finally stop whining and complaining about having to work in C and having to answer questions from our support team. I love the fact that I am going to be apart of a extremely talented team, which will allow me to grow my skill sets immensely. I do think that things will be difficult as the new team is under a lot of pressure to deliver on a major milestone that will determine the future of the product. The managers on this new product have said that they expect me to make a significant addition to the team and to help them meet a deadline that is just barely a month away. This obviously doesn't sit well with me since I have no idea if I will be able to meet their expectations, which probably are a little too wishful. The new team feels like they are in a do or die situation: If they do not meet their financial targets, then the company may decide to go in another direction and disband the team. Our company has already expressed a desire to incorporate offshore outsourcing into the fold, so it is critical that our current software developers continue to demonstrate their worth by meeting its targets. And so I've made the entire fate of all of the developers in the company lie on my shoulders because I am an egotistical and self centered. Yup, I have figured it all out, so it is time I forget all of this and erase all doubt and self loathing from my mind.

Along with the move to a new team, I am celebrating the end of a project that was mothballed. I have been working for the last 2 months on a data card project. This would have presented summarized information to the user in a series of grids and panels. I coded up a very interested data access layer that retrieves data through an existing large and complicated dll. It dynamically created the code to access the dll and return the data, which is all driven off of configurable xml files. I used reflection and code emitting from the .NET framework to accomplish this. I'm quite satisfied with myself with this clever way of adapting our data access model to match that of another teams so that we can share code. It is because of the pride and satisfaction in this task that I now have to morn its death. Time of death was some time in the afternoon of April 7^th 2006. The coroner did not give me specific details, but told me that it died kicking and screaming at the hands of a blood thirsty product manager.

In loving memory of the data card project,

Corey Stewart