“Are you willing to take the lead?”
That was the question I got asked. A proposal to take on small clients on a stack I already knew.
Short projects, Junior engineers to grow with me while we shipped. CTO/CEO backing me up. Design, HR, QA, whoever I needed.
“We think you can do it. What do you say?”
Of course I accepted.
My first assignment:
- Small online store
- One junior to help me and open to learn
- I knew the commerce stack very well, we have shipped on it before
When the client asked about timelines, I answered short, defined deliverables, yet too short.
I paired with the Jr. Taught while building. Managing client: calls, scope, expectations. Programming myself, getting hands on directly.
The load stacked: do the work, grow him, move the project, keep client warm.
The best part: Jr followed my lead. Client trusted me. I started trusting myself enormously.
The worst part: Assumptions. I took for granted that the platform already did the hard parts, or at least there were extensions covering them.
Customer experience was on point. Products sold one-off, but the real business was subscriptions and recurring charges. That core was not there. I promised dates as if it were merely configurations.
Empty promises. Pretty surface first. Soft attention to client needs and to the Jr.
Then the meeting; CTO and HR. Fear. Stress. I kept asking if I should start looking for another job. I failed.
Part of me wanted the exit so I would not have to sit in the shame.
They said NO!!. It was too soon, I needed more experience. The CTO would handle the project. I was allocated to work on another project. One of my many misses. I have to learn.
“Stay if you want; leave if you must. We prefer you to stay”.
I apologized to the client and to the Jr. Made a plan for what I actually needed to learn. After that I asked earlier, raised a hand sooner, proved the stack before I sold dates, put the hard path first, and said clearly what I could carry. Naming the miss was easy. Confronting it — amending instead of looking for the exit — was not. Ego and fear were louder than the will to keep going.