A Car Crash In Slow Motion

Since I’m among friends, I hope I can be open with you. I started Codemanship 17 years ago in my late 30s, as a response to being asked by a recruiter for the gazillionth time “Why are you still a software developer?” I’d been contracting for 12 years, and been programming professionally for 18, and that is what I do. I passed through lead developer roles into architect and then senior/head architect roles, and decided to walk my career back to being hands-on as a developer, but with enough authority and control over how my teams worked to do a good job – despite management. Over the previous decade, I’d spent more and more time mentoring developers, as well as bits of structured training here and there. The job that flipped the switch in me to make the jump permanently to that role was working as a Software Development Coach – a title I invented for myself because I didn’t like the one they’d given me (Technical Architect) – at BBC Worldwide. Even if I say so myself, I made a…