The Guy.

The mood in the development meeting was much lighter this morning. We were all relaxed, even jovial, without the looming deadling of a release hanging over our heads. No one was worried about having to work over the weekend. My boss was discussing what needed to happen now, clean up here and there, small changes for any reported bugs. It was all minor stuff compared to having cleared our one giant annual hurdle.

Yesterday had not been so nice. We had free pizza, sure, that was nice. But the boss was only buying us lunch to make sure we didn't try and stray too far from the office when there was work to be done. That pizza was just a weapon to hold us hostage. Sure was good, though.

We had spent yesterday testing, finding bugs, fixing bugs, and then testing to find more bugs. The real tension about this part of the software development life cycle is that no one wants to be The Guy. You know, The Guy who wrote the code which has the bug that will make everyone stay late when they'd rather be at home watching basketball. No one wants to find any bugs at all, because then we all have to stay. But it's much worse to be The Guy, the one who is the cause of the latest frustration. I wish I could say that being A Girl exempted me from being The Guy, but it doesn't. I had been The Guy for a while yesterday afternoon until someone found a bug in someone else's code, and that guy was The Guy for a while.

The funny thing is that while I feel embarrassed and ashamed when I am The Guy, I never resent The Guy when it's someone else. I'm too busy being thankful that it's not me and praying that it won't be me again this cycle. When I am The Guy, I imagine that my coworkers are secretly passing around a petition to have me fired, while their children sit at home and ask if Daddy is ever coming home tonight. I probably write worse code because of my eagerness to stop being The Guy as quickly as possible.

But we'd got it all wrapped up yesterday, all tested and cleared to be released to the general public. We hadn't even had to stay all that late. We'd gotten enough sleep, come in maybe five minutes later than we might have, leisurely read email before the meeting. I doodled on my notepad while half-listening to my boss talking. The big boss, the one two higher than me, came in a little later, scanned the room briefly, then sat down in the corner without speaking. After a minute or two, his face took on the glazed look that everyone else had. For another fifteen minutes, the lesser boss talked, until the big boss interrupted the talking boss.

"I'm sorry, I hate to interrupt, but I couldn't really get a word in there."

"That's fine, man, what's up?"

"I pulled it."

"What?"

"I pulled it." We all look around not comprehending. He pulled what? A muscle? The bus stop cord? Some salt-water taffy?

"You pulled what?"

"The release. I pulled it. I found a bug and it just can't go out like that. This bug is too severe." We shook ourselves out of our respective reveries, blinking at the sudden jarring we'd just received. It was sort of like being woken in the middle of a pleasant dream by a phone call from your parole officer. We all shifted gears together; you might have been able to hear a click.

"Okay, what's the problem?" We all hold our breaths, waiting for him to announce the foul code, to name The Guy who had thoroughly spoiled what had been a lovely morning up until then. What a Guy it was, to write code that would hide its bugginess until we had all gotten comfortable, then BLAM! Bug city.

"It's in the new toolbar." Crap, that was me. Inwardly, I cursed myself, completely deflated. On the outside, I sat up straight, with pen poised at the ready, trying to look competant when evidence was suggesting otherwise. Once the meeting ended, I walked with long, quick strides back to my cube, anxious to get to work on the bug, to regain my coworker's trust, to pass the torch so that I wouldn't have to be The Guy anymore.

As a couple of my colleagues passed by, I heard one of them wonder whether we'd be getting pizza again today.