Lenny London was promoted up to senior management. He had apparently started out as a developer and worked his way up the food chain. Lenny had respect from above and below. That is, the rank and file programmers respected him for his deep domain knowledge of the system. And vice presidents loved him too.
Every once in a while, when times were tough and our huge development staff needed help, Lenny would roll up his sleeves and fix problems. But these times were few and far between. In the couple years I spent on the project, I only heard stories about this happening. However knowing Lenny, I believed that these stories were true.
I would always say hi to Lenny. Even thought he was high up on the management chain, he was a down to earth type of guy. I remember going to his office once or twice to talk to him at his request. He explained how at one time he worked on the team I was on and loved it. He said that over the last couple years, all he did was strategic planning for the project and the company.
The activities of senior management were beyond my view. They would have said that these activities were beyond my comprehension. Somehow I got the feeling that Lenny was promoted up high enough so that he was no longer relevant to the software maintenance we performed. And I think this was our loss.
