Competence

Today was interesting.

I'm back at home, and back to work at home.  Monday and Tuesday were slow.  I spent the days rebuilding a design document to reflect the changes I made in the module I built in the UK.  I was done by noon yesterday.  So I just sat around and chilled for the afternoon.  Did my expense report from my trip.  And asked about my next assignment.  Oanh told me it was still under consideration, but that there were only two real possibilities.  I told her that my only preference was that I be working with (and under) someone from my own company, not just with our client.  So she set me to bug-fixing with Gordon.  And I started today.

I got into the office early, but by 11, Gordon still hadn't made it in.  It turns out he was at the client site, and I drove down there to meet up with him.  It was so incredibly nice to work with someone who actually knew what they were doing again.  We got my system set up and went over the bug list.

Now, here's the weird part.  My second job with this company, I was working with Gordon.  And I was lost around 2/3 of the time.  He goes off on technical tangents, and he is brilliant.  Really, really brilliant.  But he's not as good at communicating, and he tends to forget not everyone is as good as he is at following things.  But today... I was actually with him all day.  We got into a good-natured debate about what jobs we needed to deploy on weblogic, and when we ran into exceptions, I figured out the problem first at least... oh... 15% of the time.

It's kind of a testament to how much I've learned in the last six months, I suppose.  But it was odd, and a little frightening to realize it, just as it was odd to realize all the things that were frustrating me regarding the incompetence of the people on the last project I was on may actually have related to my own increasing competence level.  It was... strange.  In a good way.

Growing Up

Other interesting note.  My father mentioned to me Saturday evening, while we were watching synchronized diving at the Olympics (weird event) that over our dinnertime conversation, it struck him for the first time that I was really an adult now.  "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things."  We had been talking over dinner about my trip.

My mother had commented that she was really impressed by me.  After the second week, she told me, she wasn't sure if I would make it to the end of the third week  -- the end of my trip.  And then my trip became four weeks, and then five, and I made it to the end.  And we were talking about the trip, and the problems facing our client now.  I cited their rapid expansion of both personnel and clientele and their focus on delivering speed to many people, rather than quality.  I noted that they were working so hard to turn a profit right now that in the end they were going to overbalance and end up folding under their own weight.  And I talked about how I worried about my company's dependence on them, because when they fold we're going to go down with them.

My father was telling me later that was when he realized that I'm an adult.  Not the college graduation, or the getting a job, or the wedding... the moment when I was sitting with him intelligently critiquing my company's business plan.  It was a bit odd to think about it.  My father's respect always makes me feel a bit funny.  I spent so much of my life striving for it, and he gives it so sparingly.  It is a real reward, and actually means a great deal to me.  I've had a sort of happy glow since then.