Software Astronaut

A scientist, highly trained, practiced in the skills, able to work calmly under insane pressure.

I had to explain to a boss that I’m not a software sports-hero, which was the metaphor he liked to apply. I wasn’t motivated by exhortations to give 110 per cent, to do ‘whatever it takes’. I was the guy who said, “100 per cent is all there is,” who came in every day ready to do good work, and left for home every evening to attend the rest of my life. In a crisis, I would work calmly to resolve a problem, ignoring the urge to run around screaming, until the work was complete. I was a software astronaut.

I was laid off a week later.

Managers don’t want software craftsmen, artists, or astronauts. A manager has pressure from above to perform, but no control over the work getting done. If developers don’t respond visibly to pressure, the manager can’t tell himself that he’s doing his job. This makes him fearful, and keeps him up at night, because his job is on the line, and there’s nothing he can do. A manager can feed a rock-star’s ego. He can exhort a sports-hero to try harder. He can fool himself by saying, “My whole team is rock-stars and sports-heroes. They will get it done.”

A manager has no handle to control a developer who is internally motivated and has standards of quality. Being internally motivated is an affront to the manager’s feeling of control.

Never mind that a manager adds value by training his team, by seeing they have the resources they need to do the job, by shielding them from pressure so they can perform at their best level. None of that feels like control. Only one or two managers in a hundred understand that they don’t have any control.

There are people who manage astronauts. They know the astronauts are the ones ‘out there’ doing the work, and the manager can’t do it. They know that astronauts are highly motivated to do a good job, and all the manager can do is offer support. The people who manage astronauts understand that training is important. They know that a reliable process will get their team through times of intense pressure better than yelling at them will.

It’s hard to manage astronauts. The manager’s job is giving them support, training, and process, then letting them do their jobs. When a crisis arises, it’s the astronauts who face it, relying on their training and tools. All the manager does is watch, because the manager’s job was done long ago.

It’s hard to just watch. That’s why job ads call for rock stars. It’s a signal about the style of the management. It says, “Come with mad skills, no support here.” It says, “Bring your ego, because we have ego too.”

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