GTO
08 Jun 2006Yesterday I became a GTO. I don’t even really know how. It just sort of happened.
So what is a GTO in this sense? Well, it sure isn’t a pontiac. It’s a General Technical Owner. It means that a certain project or subsection of a project is completely mine. If it goes wrong, it’s my fault, etc.
Again I will reiterate, I’m not sure how I fell into this. It’s not really a bad thing, if anything it is a good thing in terms of my career. It’s like being a mini-lead programmer. Seeing as how my current lead is one of the most amazing and highly respected programmers at the studio, I really don’t mind playing second fiddle here.
Yesterday the managers came to me and said “We want you to lead the demo. Would you be willing to do that?” and I said without even a moments hesitation “Sure. I’ll do that.” Just as the words finished coming out of my mouth my brain locked up in a WTF? moment as I realized what I had done.
It’s some sort of sick compulsion. I don’t know how to turn down responsibility. It’s like a part of my brain cackles and rubs it’s finger tips together while whispering Stress. MORE STRESS! in an evil tone.
Of course the saddest part is as much I as I don’t really want to do it in retrospect, there is a much larger and louder part of myself that really does want to do it. As much as all of my friends tell me not to get caught up in the management and politics of working here because it will take all of the fun out of my job, a part of me absolutley craves it.
I want to officially lead again in the future. My true skills are in developing and growing technical talent. I can freely admit that I am not the best programmer in the world, but I can turn people into the best programmers they can be.
Well, that’s sort of what I want to do in the future. My actual goal would be to start a central debugging team. We would be involved in the setting up of all projects and doing general reviews of coding methodologies used in projects. My team would lay the groundwork for cross-team debugging tools and features. When a team hit the wall and were searching for a panic button, my team would be the group that responded to the panic button. We would be the fire fighters, the medics, the SWAT team of coding.
You’re either SWAT, or you’re not.