It seems that I have the knack of joining projects that are doomed. On one such project I reported to Judy Simmons. She could be summed up in one word as a "workaholic". I am not sure if this was a personality disorder, or whether this was just how she wanted to live her life.
The problem with working for Judy was that she could not say no to unreasonable requests. This impacted the development team when Judy accepted more tasks for us even when we were already overwhelmed. I think a necessary trait of a good manager if having the gumption to stand up and tell people no. Even if those people are the customer. Now there is a politically correct way to communicate this. But I believed it is a rare and acquired skill.
In the end, Judy burned out and quit the project. Not everything was bad working for Judy. It was surely a wild ride. I like to learn new stuff and pump out new code. With all the tasks that came in and got assigned to me, I got a lot of experience in a very short time. However the end result was a failure that made the company look bad.
