With power comes responsibility...
... and sometimes being responsible for things can be tough.

Earlier this year I was promoted to Tech Lead and placed in charge of the entire engineering effort of one of our major client projects. This is a great opportunity as it pulls me off the engineering "floor" and puts me strait into the boardrooms. It has, however, been quite the crash course learning experience. While I have the engineering side of things down pat, I'm finding I have a lot to learn about being a manager of people. Like how to manage time for employees who can't manage their own time,  how to get incompetent employees to write good code on time when they have no idea what they are doing, or how to get eomployees who dont seem to understand english very well to understand what I am saying. 

Or, like today, how to decide whether or not to fire someone. Firing someone is not as easy as one one think. Especially when the employee is a really great person, whom everyone likes, and is trying very very hard and putting in a lot of hours. It's just that he's not, well, a very good software engineer. My project has strict deadlines, big payment milestones, and some complex work. But this decision effects a lot of lives. This is this fellows job I'm deciding. It'll effect his life, his wife's life, probably not in a good way. But if I keep him I risk endangering the project. I have to explain to management why we didn't get paid 250k on friday because someone in engineering missed a milestone. And that effects me, my project manager, my entire team as well. Do I sink the careers of at least four people for one nice fellow? As tech lead, I don't just have a say in what happens, I have the only say. It's my job and the responsibility starts and ends with me. 

So today I learned a bit more about managing people, exercised my power, made a decision, and hope like heck I made the right one, because now I'm responsible for it....