teams talked directly to each other

I remember distinctly going to my team leader: I didn’t understand the design document I’d been given and I was trying to get somebody to explain it to me. They said they’d get back to me when they had time and I should get on with what I thought was right and so I did. Then I went back to him a month later, and said “Look I still don’t know what I’m doing here. This is what I’m doing, can you at least confirm that this is right?” And they went, “Er, I’ll look at it.”

I didn’t get anything back until I actually went to the Project Head and it’s 70 people to a project and I was pretty junior, so I was a bit nervous, I said “Well, look I’m just trying to find out whether I’m doing the right thing.” And he went, “Sure, I’ll look at it.”

I joined a local software house and I was there for five years. For three of those years I was stuck in the basement doing VB (and I didn’t like VB). I wasn’t getting too well with one of my leaders, with looking for feedback and not getting it basically, with the usual result. The environment was very bad for my health, my eyesight, my optician recommended I get out of there. So I taught myself Java, because I realised it was quite heavily in demand in the industry and the software house had hardly any Java coders. And then I told some people that I’d learnt Java. Apparently there were abou