sagev.space/posts/torch

Passing the Torch

When I left my last job, I was lucky enough to do so on great terms with
everyone there. It was all very <i>the circumstances are what they are -
nothing to be done</i>. So, when I put in my notice, I was asked to spend some
time showing my replacement the ropes, and I was surprised by how much I
enjoyed it!

Much as I did like working with the company, there was a thing or two that made
my own onboarding a bit weird. The first day of the job basically began with,
"You know some C? Go fix an enormous memory leak in this Linux driver."

    <i>"Okay."</i>

I enjoyed the challenge, and it worked out alright, but it was definitely a
rough way to start. Worse, it took forever to figure out what people even
<i>did</i> every day. Evidently, I was on a team of 3, but it was days before I
knew who my teammates were, and weeks before I figured out what they were
actually working on.

So, I wanted to save my replacement some time. Most of it was just saying "the
device we're working on is designed to do <i>this</i>, your teammates are these
two, who work on <i>that</i> and <i>that</i>, and what you'll be doing for the
foreseeable future is <i>this</i>". So it wasn't exactly excruciating. I just
tried to clear up some of vagueries I dealt with at the beginning. Sometimes,
it also made sense to help them brush up on C, which, as I've <a
href="c">mentioned before</a>, I'm unreasonably happy to do.

It was hard in a few ways, because at this point the company did most of its
work remotely. I never actually got a chance to meet the person replacing me,
but I still enjoyed teaching, and I hope I made their life a little easier.

I'm definitely not clamoring to lead a group based on one, "I taught someone
some stuff and then <i>left before there could be consequences"</i>, but I
really liked my brief excursion in it, and I'd be happy to try again!

2020-09-30