Debug It!

Prima Donna

I once worked with a superstar. He was the “go-to guy”—the team member who could be relied upon to come up with the goods when the chips were down. Very bright and hugely productive—much more so than anyone else on the team—he had an encyclopedic knowledge of the entire product line and could turn his hand to anything.

Management, you won’t be surprised to know, loved him. If only we could clone him, all our problems would be solved.

Occasionally there were a few problems with the code he wrote, but these were trivial issues that could easily be handled by lesser team members while he moved on to the next challenge.

If only.

Although on the face of things he was incredibly productive, a cursory examination of his code was ...