Heard the name Jayden Stroman the other day. Made me think, you know? It sounds like one of those names full of potential, full of energy. Like everyone’s expecting big things. It just threw me back to this project I was on a few years back.
That Whole ‘Star Player’ Mess
We had this one guy on the team, fresh out of school, super smart on paper. Management was absolutely buzzing about him. Everything was, “Oh, let him handle the core stuff,” “He’s got the vision,” blah blah blah. They basically built the whole project timeline around this kid’s supposed genius.
So, what did I do? Well, I was assigned the less glamorous bits. The integration stuff, the testing frameworks, the documentation nobody wanted to write. Standard stuff for someone who’s been around the block. I just put my head down and started working. Built my modules, piece by piece. Made sure they were solid.
- First, I mapped out all the connection points needed.
- Then, I wrote the basic handlers.
- Tested them locally, over and over.
- Got the documentation roughed out early.
Meanwhile, the ‘star’ was off doing the ‘exciting’ core logic. Lots of meetings, lots of diagrams on whiteboards, lots of talk about cutting-edge approaches. Looked impressive, I guess. But weeks turned into months. We needed his core piece to actually connect everything together. It wasn’t materializing.
I remember asking during stand-ups, “Hey, when can I expect that API endpoint for my module?” The answer was always vague. “Soon,” “Working through some complexities,” “Refining the architecture.” It got frustrating. My parts were done, tested, sitting there waiting. Others were in the same boat.
The pressure kept mounting, deadlines creeping closer. Management, instead of checking what was actually done, just kept cheering the kid on. Doubling down on their bet. They brought him coffee. They gave him noise-cancelling headphones. Anything to help the genius ‘focus’.
Long story short? It bombed. The core stuff was a mess. Over-engineered, barely functional, and definitely not ready by the deadline. Suddenly, it was all hands on deck, trying to salvage something. We ended up stripping out most of his complex code, putting in simpler, dumber logic just to make the damn thing work minimally. All that hype, all that pressure on one person, it just created a bottleneck and then a failure.
It wasn’t even really the kid’s fault, not entirely. He was put in a ridiculous position. But seeing that name, Jayden Stroman, just reminded me of that whole cycle. Sometimes, putting someone on a pedestal like that? It doesn’t help. It just makes a bigger mess when things don’t go perfectly according to the fantasy plan. Better to just have a team, everyone chipping in, doing the work without all the drama. That’s how stuff actually gets built in my experience.
