I get invited to a call with a customer about an important enhancement. It’s about an area of the system I have very basic knowledge of. The call is in 30 minutes so there’s no time to read up on anything.
If it’s an internal call, then it can be embarrassing but it’s easy to explain the situation. For an external call; then as a company, we seem like idiots.
I tell my manager that there is only one developer that knows about it; Bruce. Luckily my manager contacts him and he agrees to come onto the call. I’m still required for some reason.
I still anticipated it would be really awkward. The customer says, “can we all introduce ourselves”. So they all take turns.
“I’m Sharon, lead customer representative in Team A.”
“I am Bruce, I was the Lead Developer on the original project and have been involved in related project X”.
Everyone has great credentials. It eventually gets to me. I don’t have a fancy job title or any related credentials to this call.
<awkwardly>“I am A developer”
Me
Luckily, the customer did the majority of the talking, and Bruce chipped in to deny/challenge the occasional suggestion. I would have been doomed if I didn’t manage to get Bruce involved. He saved the company reputation there.
Surely, we knew about this arranged call days ago. How did we get into this situation? It’s another management failure.
Stranger Coding Tings 