My Dad! He used to write private projects in Clipper an dBASE and was quite successful.

At the age of 10 I asked him why I couldn't play games (he was on the pc)... and he showed me then stuck the dBASE book in my hand and told me to design an inventory system for his garage...

That was the beginning

Microsoft Dynamics CRM... may the designer's fingers turn into fish hooks and his testicles get infected with the fleas of a thousand camels!!!

Writing cool code might be your passion but shipping it is your job. Sometimes they are not the same thing unfortunately... and its ok!

Gantt charts... and waterfall evangelist PM.

My first manager : "You will never be a programmer! Network guys don't know shit."

That was after working as a MCSE for 2 years (that was for NT4... fuck I'm getting old) for this asshat and maintaining their servers and fixing their crappy sql.

Worked and studied my ass off... now I manage a team of 40 developers... and I still love coding!

Was chilling with my team and remembering some very funny code issues (wasn't at the time) we inherited in a product... when we took control of the servers they were dead...

Code somewhat abbreviated... see why a few 100 of these could do that :)

public class Util
{

... lots of nonsense here...

public static DbConnection GetConnection()
{
conn = factory.CreateConnection();
conn.ConnectionString = this.connectionString;
conn.Open();
return conn;
}
}

try {
Util.GetConnection().DoThingsAndStuff();
}
finally {
Util.GetConnection().Close();
}

DBA bitches about one of our developers SQL... implement changes... deploy... now it takes 12 minutes... up from 40 seconds... good job!

Anyone else got some funny terms in their office like:

Rocketsurgeolist: Guy that knows everything about everything but hardly manages to pull anything off.

Maffamagician: A person that battles with math and spreadsheets

Marketard: Marketer

The blue donkey strikes again!

"Make it work, make it right, make it fast"

Thank you Mr. Beck!

Always helps to remember his directive when breaking down a complex problem!

Our company is restructuring and our CTO offered me the lead architect role. I'm currently the dev manager for about 40 guys and girls. I was delighted.

So, because I believe people make shit up in the absence of information, I called my seniors in to explain the possible restructure. To my surprise (and shock), they dropped the following pearl on me...

If they had to report to anyone else, they're going to leave the company.

I tried to convince them that one of them can apply for my role, also no.

Don't get me wrong, I love my team and do feel flattered about their response. But I also feel a bit trapped/confused now. I've spent the last 6 years building and protecting the team from 5 guys. And frankly, I'm tired and just get back to focusing on coding.

Any sage advice?