responsibility, what's that

"we don't need to think about it,
we'd be better off without it"

ok, so say you used to work for a development company with more developers than you could count on your fingers and toes and now you work for a development company where you could count the developers on the fingers of one hand with some to spare... what's that you're feeling? that sense of criticality? that notion like success or failure rests on your shoulders...

well here's a needle; go stick it in your head 'cause your ego has gotten too inflated... if you don't have the authority to make decisions about the directions things should go in then you do not bear the kind of responsibility hinted at above...

don't get me wrong, you still have responsibilities - responsibilities to write good code and meet your deadlines, but without authority to decide things you are just a cog in the machine (possibly a very large cog, but still just a cog) and you need to either emotionally divorse yourself from the qualitative outcome of the venture (because you are not responsible for whether or not the machine runs smoothly) or find some way to acquire the authority to make the decisions that are troubling you... i vote for the former - a person's got enough of their own dreams to worry about without incorporating someone else's into themselves... there's only so much of yourself you can go around investing in things...

as for those decisions (or should i say mistakes?) that you see happening that you wish you could do something about, well you still can do something about them... try to propose the correct solution... it may be frustrating trying to lead your PHB's down the golden path (especially when they don't see the light) but it's easier to let go in the end because at least you tried... if things don't work out where you are now, don't worry, be happy, life goes on...