The true mother of invention

Im not sure how it happened. One day, while minding my own business running the IS department for a large B2B publishing company, I decided to try something a bit wacky and took one step forward. Maybe I took no steps forward and the rest of the group silently snuk back a foot. Either way, I (was?) volunteered. To do what? Well, just to pretend to be something I'm not for as long as it takes to become that something. To fake it until I make it. No problem, Im a smart guy. I can do this. Ok, actually one problem. How do you fake being something most similarly categorized people earn through 4 years of school and a decade of hand's on experience? How do you pretend to be a Software Development Manager when you can't write an application?

Now I'm no milk-fed mama's boy. I'm a network engineer, and a damn good one. I cut my teeth in one of the toughest financial institutions in the country and when they say zero down time, well lets just say it wasn't a jumping off point for negotiations. I worked my dues and I know why the watering down of the term Enterprise Class chaps the collective asses of the true IT professionals who keep this country running. I've slapped together some impressive Perl that ran a million dollar department for 9 months until their Java team could replace it with something, well, more OO that did the same damn thing. I've written that Rails app that scratched the CEO's itch and made the company ROI near instantly. I've hacked, slashed, and patched enough to become that annoying little gnat in App Dev's ear. But I am not a programmer.

As IS Manager I never babysat my people, I worked with them. I took the calls and worked the late nights and solved the mysteries and took the lumps right along with them. Taking this job meant I would have to hold my own in their world. My Cisco collection would become O'Reilly. Eclipse would replate Telnet and SSH on my desktop. Id have to start wearing polo shirts in brain-numbing patterns.

It is crazy for a hardware guy to even try to break into the enterprise software world, especially at the top. Or so they say. Maybe thats the reason I took the job. Proving people wrong is something of a natural talent in my family. We wear our victories over other's narrow mindedness like well earned war wounds. Only this time, it wasn't someone else that needed convincing, it was me. I was up against my own fears; afraid to leave the comfort zone of that cushy, stagnant, all but conquered position as IS Manager. But equally afraid that I would rust over if I didn't branch out into something, anything new.

So stubbornly I pitched my case to my boss. How would he like to have the best Software Development Manager in the industry in two years working for him today? Well I know it was corny at the time, but would you believe it worked? Ok, I wouldn't either. But I knew something the reader does not. Our company was and is growing very fast. It was in a unique position to entertain unconventional initiatives from promising prospects.

This blog will be a personal journal of what I learn on the way to becoming the best Software Development Manager in the industry in two years. I almost feel sorry for whomever holds the title belt now. Fair warning, Im gunning for ya.