On the Hook

It’s broken. Again.

I tested this before I deployed it. I *know* I did. But here I am, 8pm on a Thursday, staring at “build unsuccessful” for what is probably the 134th time.

This is Jason’s fault.

Three weeks ago, Jason convinced the team that for a migration, we should just swap out the project file. “It’ll take a day,” he said. “I’ve done something similar before, it’s easy.”

I argued against it. I said we should take the time to understand *why* the old system worked first. Map everything out, then migrate it piece by piece. Yes, it would take longer. But at least we’d understand what we were touching.

Andrew, our team lead, liked Jason’s timeline better.

So here I am. Staying late to fix something I didn’t even agree with. Of course “just swapping out the project file” didn’t work. And Jason left hours ago. And Andrew is expecting a progress update tomorrow.

I keep scrolling through the logs, and all I can think is, this wouldn’t have happened if they’d listened to me. If we’d done it my way. If Jason hadn’t waltzed in with his “brilliant way” and handed me the mess to clean up.

I mean who does Jason think he is anyways. Sure, he may be more senior than me but he’s not here. He doesn’t have to tell Andrew tomorrow. I am the one that has to face him. I am the one that is on the hook for something that I didn’t even ......

Something catches my eye, I found a “50” instead of “5.0”. I rebuild.

Fuck me.

It works.

The next morning, Jason messages me. “Hey, sorry I had to leave early. How’d you go with the migration?”

I tell him about the small setting and some changes I made.

He replies: “Man, sorry about all the trouble. I really did think it would have been easier. These things always have some weird edge case.”

Thanks Jason, now I feel like shit.

Jason didn’t care whose idea it was. He just wanted it to work. And it does.

It was just one late night.

I think the only thing that was actually broken was my attitude.

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