Studying Comp Sci, there was often the mention of the Big Red Bus. The smaller the company, the more impact the Big Red Bus can have. But as we know, the Big Red Bus is just a metaphor for losing a key player, and the continuity and knowledge that person represents.
This week our skeleton crew of a successful dot-com lost its CTO of 15 years. The thing is, other than the CTO, there was one developer -- me. So guess who's the new accidental CTO? Yep, me. How does this happen? Well, when you have a specialized stack with a myriad of complex business rules in play, even the most experienced developer would take months to get up to speed. However, when you're not Facebook or Hootsuite, attracting that ideal candidate is harder. Especially in a red-hot tech market like Vancouver.
While at first I was terrified, that feeling has been joined by exhiliration, excitement, and trepidation. But mostly stress thinking about being responsible for a 24/7 operation, dealing with the CEO, with Customer Service, with Marketing, with Accounting. All roads lead to the platform, and the platform is now me.
So I've decided to keep this web log of my successes and failures. Hopefully you find it amusing, maybe you'll learn something, maybe you can teach me something. I'll try to revisit here as often as possible.
I'll be taking over in two weeks, and already I'm planning on how to do things differently -- on how to organize better, on how to improve processes, on how to make rapid and radical improvements to our stack. I hope you'll enjoy what I write, and continue to read along!
