Game On

I got some messages from the guy who leads my team at work. He said there were some new problems in our programs. The customer was eager to get them fixed. I got one of the issues. Took a look at it and figured out what was wrong. Then my team lead scheduled a meeting with one of our managers.

I explained what was going on. The manager asked how long it would take to fix. I told him it would be 8 hours worth of work. This was late Friday afternoon. The manager said he would inform the customers, but wanted to know what we would do if the customer wanted us to work the weekend to get this done immediately.

Having heard about this crazy weekend idea, I told the manager that I could just as easily call it 24 hours worth of work. Then the earliest the customer would get the fix would be Monday afternoon even if I worked the whole weekend. The manager understood this tactic. Then he dreamed up the idea of rewriting the software in a better fashion. That would take us two weeks. His plan was going to be to pitch the two week solution, the roll back to the Monday delivery when the customers screamed that two weeks was too long.

Most managers don't want to tell a customer no. The bad ones just throw guys like me under the bus, promising that I will work through the weekend. Now I do make some good money at my job. But it is not good enough for me to work on the weekends just because someone could not tell a customer no. Knowing all this, I can appreciate a manager like the one I dealt with today. He knows that the customers are going to demand the world. That's why he manages their expectations. And that's a win for me.