Gary Allison's Leadership Blog

Leadership09 Aug 2006 03:08 am

Do you watch Dirty Jobs on Discovery Channel? I have to admit, I think I’m hooked on this show. It might be the deadpan delivery of Mike Rowe, or could it be somewhat deeper? As a leader in software development, sometimes you can feel like the star in the PigWrangler episode (and no developers are not pigs). Bear with me as I take metaphorical license… Sometimes you have an uncooperative environment, and after the product goes to market, well, theres just a lot of poo to clean up. And, boy is there poo! Well, you’d just have to see the episode.

 In fact, the poo theme seems to run through many of the Dirty Jobs episodes. At the end of the day, in the midst of all the poo, there is a successful business. Art imitates life again.  In software development, there is more than a fair share of poo – changing requirements,customer promises of features that don’t exist, missed sales targets, layoffs, inept people at all levels (yes executive management too), pass-the-buckers, slackers, hackers, you name it. Face it – on any given day, we are all capable of poo. Still, out of all this comes innovation and products that people use every day. For many of us, this makes the job worthwhile, even when it’s a Dirty Job.

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