I turn 56 tomorrow.
Ten years ago I joined a startup software company as Director of Quality Assurance. (Broadly, software engineers write the code and people in Quality Assurance make sure it works.) My leadership colleagues on the software development side were two men, each of whom admitted to me along the way that they were 56. It always seemed to me that they both were trying to prove that they could still swim in the technology with the 20- and 30-something software developers they hired. One of them even admitted it, more or less: “I took this job to show everyone I still have it.”
I thought about those guys a lot as I took my current role as Director of Software Engineering at my current company 2½ years ago. I was 53 then, which isn’t far off 56. I did not want to be those guys. They took unwise risks and resisted project planning. They both tended to let troubles brew, or even quietly start troubles, so they could ride in on their white horses and save the day. They tried hard to appear as hip and cool as the young developers on their teams.
One of those guys and I didn’t get on well. In a display of bravado, he publicly announced that he was going to build one small product feature all by himself. I said just as publicly that I would personally test it. He left enormous and easy-to-exploit security holes in it. I don’t even pretend that I can code anymore, but I am very good at copying and pasting code from the Internet. I found some JavaScript that would make a banner appear on the screen that displayed a JPEG at a specified URL. I pasted that code into a particular text field that made that JPEG appear on the screen of everyone logged into that testing system.
That fellow instantly appeared at my office door. He looked panicked. “What did you do?” he demanded.
“You have to code defensively against hackers,” I shrugged, and nonchalantly turned back to my screen.
The next day, he handed his feature off to one of the 20-something developers to finish.
My current company is refreshing in that a few of the engineers are over 40. One of them is a little older than me. But I’m still an elder statesman to most of the engineers. I’ve decided to lean into it. When I started, I told everyone that I can’t do their job anymore. I’m not ever going to coach them on being better with the various technologies we use. I won’t ever fix a bug or code up even a minor feature. But that doesn’t matter because I bring something even better to the table: more than 30 years of experience in the industry. I have learned how to organize teams and put just the right amount of process in place so people aren’t crashing into each other trying to get the job done. Also, I see it as my duty to push back hard against the forces that lead to working nights and weekends all the time, a common malady in our industry. I have learned how to set good expectations with upper leadership and keep resetting those expectations as conditions change.
This job has been one of the tallest challenges of my career, but I’ve kept my promises to my team overall. I think they like working for me because of how I do it. “You keep things sane around here. It’s so nice,” one of them said to me not long ago.
I am trying to be much like this in my personal life. I don’t want to pretend I’m 30, or even wish I could be 30 again. I’ve gained far too much life experience. I can easily handle things now that used to utterly baffle me, and I wouldn’t trade that for anything. I intend to lean into that experience and let the youngsters have their fun on the way to building their own experience.
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