Dave and I were sat opposite each other, nervously awaiting the arrival of 3 others.
It wasn’t a smart room. In fact, it was rather tatty, and the lighting wasn’t great either. But at least the chairs were comfortable and the desks between us looked pretty new.
In came the other three…
Copies of our programs in one hand and a cup of tea or coffee from the machine in the corridor in the other.
This was it then…
The moment of truth.
To be honest, I’d probably built this up to be something bigger than it actually was, and the butterflies were flying around in my stomach far more uncomfortably than I cared for!
Dave and I were both trainee programmers and we were both about to endure our first program walkthrough…
To the uninitiated, that means other people look through our code, line by line, to see if it works and if it’s coded according to best practice.
That all sounds very straight forward, but we hadn’t been able to test the program… that wasn’t allowed for trainees, so the pressure was on!
The other three people in the room, were my Team Leader, The Lead Analyst and a Senior Programmer.
We were here to impress…
They were here to shoot us down!
We started with Dave’s program and that went pretty well… although there were a few minor issues it worked and would produce a nice report at the end, if it was run on the company mainframe computer.
All smiles.
Time for mine…
“Well for starters, it won’t work!” Chipped in the Lead Analyst, with a knowing grin!
My heart sank… the worst possible start.
As they dug deeper, things actually weren’t as bad as they first seemed and the rest of the walkthrough went by with just a few amendments required… and the reason it wouldn’t work was actually only a minor error… something I later found out, many trainee programmers got wrong.
As I reflected on the meeting, later in the day, I wondered why the Lead Analyst seemed to take such great joy in putting me down. After all, I was only a trainee and had only been at the company for a couple of months or so.
I needed building up… not putting down.
On further reflection, I realised he wasn’t putting ME down… he was just commenting on the code in front of him.
It was my ego that thought otherwise…
My ego that took it personally.
I recalled one of the first training lessons, which talked about egoless programming. In other words, the need to detach yourself from your work… to learn to see criticism of your computer code as a necessary way to learn and not think of it as personal criticism of you as an individual.
It’s something I’ve drawn on many times since…
Not in terms of computer code, but life in general.
Attempting to live an egoless life hasn’t been easy…
My ego doesn’t want to let go…
But I want to let go of my ego!
It doesn’t mean I don’t try and achieve…
It doesn’t mean I don’t aim for excellence…
It just means I don’t need praise from others… because that just feeds my ego.
That first walkthrough at the Wellcome Foundation left a mark…
One that’s stayed with me…
One I’ve learned from and grown from.
And hopefully, I’ll have left a few marks along the way as well…
To help a few others as they journey through life.
21 Days of Transformation: Day 15 - "You've Been Upgraded, Sir"...
Keith Jones
Living a Life of Purpose
21 Days of Transformation: A Journey to Dig Deep into Your Inner Thoughts
If that sounds like a journey you’d like to take with me…
If you feel the need to dig deep and find out things about yourself you never knew existed…
If you need clarity and purpose to be at the forefront of your life…
Let’s take this journey together.