A previous manager used to refer to me as "SpecOps Dev" and when I queried him on it, his response was "I can drop you in on a Production bug, no background, no tools, no prior knowledge of the system you're looking at, no-one to help you, and you always get the job done while giving someone else the credit. You have the strange ability to be able to just do absolutely anything I throw at you. Don't worry, it hasn't gone unseen."
I've also taken a complete novice (could barely use MS Office!) and within 6 weeks, he had written a complete application to have a RaspberryPi actuate a series of physical switches. I started him off by teaching how to think about the problem in UML.
It was that experience with the novice that changed what I tell people at social gatherings in response to "So, what do you do?"... my response now is something along the lines of "We know more about the universe than we do the seas... I basically head off into uncharted water with all the care & attention that airline pilots have... only I do it for a software company."
I'm spread across being a Lead Dev / Architect / Change Manager / PM / whatever other hat I need to wear, and today, I'm covering our Helpdesk Manager's day off while writing code... there's no way you could even start to explain all that to someone that doesn't already live & breathe commercial software development. So I stopped trying.
I have to admit... nail hit on the head.
A previous manager used to refer to me as "SpecOps Dev" and when I queried him on it, his response was "I can drop you in on a Production bug, no background, no tools, no prior knowledge of the system you're looking at, no-one to help you, and you always get the job done while giving someone else the credit. You have the strange ability to be able to just do absolutely anything I throw at you. Don't worry, it hasn't gone unseen."
I've also taken a complete novice (could barely use MS Office!) and within 6 weeks, he had written a complete application to have a RaspberryPi actuate a series of physical switches. I started him off by teaching how to think about the problem in UML.
It was that experience with the novice that changed what I tell people at social gatherings in response to "So, what do you do?"... my response now is something along the lines of "We know more about the universe than we do the seas... I basically head off into uncharted water with all the care & attention that airline pilots have... only I do it for a software company."
I'm spread across being a Lead Dev / Architect / Change Manager / PM / whatever other hat I need to wear, and today, I'm covering our Helpdesk Manager's day off while writing code... there's no way you could even start to explain all that to someone that doesn't already live & breathe commercial software development. So I stopped trying.
Thank you - and well said!