I’ve been managing teams off and on since the beginning of my career. I was running night crew when I was in the Marine Corps and I’ve been in some kind of leadership role almost every year since. But I’ve always been a builder first.
When I was working on fighter jets I used to come home with hydraulic fluid and grease under my fingernails that wouldn’t come off with normal soap. There was a MIL-SPEC cleanser we used, it was the only thing that worked. I still remember the smell of it.
Somewhere in the last ten or fifteen years I stopped building things and started building teams. Teams are what I build now. That’s the job and honestly I think it’s my calling because it’s harder.
Machines have documentation. You can RTFM. People don’t come with a manual. The variables are infinite. Someone calls in sick. Someone has a fender bender on the way to work. Someone’s going through something at home that they’re not going to tell you about but it’s going to affect their Tuesday. Machines don’t do any of that. Machines don’t need to sleep.
And the pride I get from building a team that actually works together, that trusts each other, that delivers, that beats a well-functioning machine any day of the week.
But I still miss building machines.
That’s why I’m starting this. I’m building something in my house, on my own time, with my own hands. A lab. Some servers. Some networking gear. I’ll share what I find as I go. If nothing else, it’s a good journal.
And I’m building it with my hands on this keyboard.