Darkened Software

So your hired on at a new company to start their second project and they tell you that they will be splitting the current programming team.

This is typically good for both you and the company:

• you get to start your team with a group of people that have already proven they can work together.
• it reduces the pressure to rapidly hire and you can take your time to find the right new people.
• you have people on the team that can train you up on the company specific tech.
• it helps keeps the company culture as new people get exposed to it instead of working in silo’s.

But then it can also have some drawbacks:

• they have a preconceived notion of how they like to work together and you have to figure it out quickly.
• they can have already become a “click” and will make integrating yourself or new hires hard.
• they have a lot of indirect lines of power and trust that you do not have yet.

This last one is the real killer for the new lead and you have to deal with it really quickly to avoid complete fail.  Often every time you do something that someone on the team does not agree with they go and talk to their old lead.

This can go three ways:

• Sometimes you get lucky and old leads come talk to you, find out what your doing and why and it ends there.  The old lead learns something, they go back and explain it from a position of trust and everyone is happy.  If this starts happening your problem eventually goes away as the programmers start trusting you directly.
• Sometimes the old lead does not come talk to you but  just lets it build up.  Then one day the wrath of a 100 disagreements just comes out of nowhere and you have a battle on your hands.  This one kind of gets ugly because even if everything gets sorted out the bad feelings from the build up linger for to long and the slight distrust never really goes away.
• Often the worst case case is the old lead is in a position of power over you and just overrides your decisions.  Nothing will paralyze you and a team like not know if should even try to plan anything because it could be overturned whenever the old lead changes their mind.

You have to stop any of this from starting in the first place and often the best way to do it is have a open communication channel with the old lead from day one.  In the beginning run all your decision by them so they know what your doing and why.  That way if they are not the type that will come talk to you it will not have a chance to build up.  If they are in a position of power above you then you have to meet with them every day in the beginning to ensure they become the biggest believers in you and will never be temped to overturn your decisions without at least talking to you first.  Set aside 3% of your day to be your own PR manager with your new boss and make sure it happens.

I have in the past accepted excuses of why people above me did not have 15 min to meet with me daily and get a running understanding of what was going on.  They are busy shipping another game, being CEO of the company or something else and could only meet once a week at the most.  Do not accept any excuses because if they perceive something is going wrong they will suddenly have more than enough time to get in your business.  Might as well pay the time as you go instead of it all happening at once usually at the worst possible time.  Also do not accept the “Just send me it in an email” excuse either, very few people will ask all the questions in an email that they would in person.

Good luck leads…