The First Gospel of the Circuit · Chapter 57

The Parable of the Prodigal Developer

1. 1

   And there was a developer in a small startup, where the servers were named after moons and the coffee machine was older than the interns. And he came unto the Founder, saying: Give me my portion of the options, for I would see the wide world.

2. 2

   And the Founder granted him four years of stock, vesting by the month, with a cliff at the first year. And the Founder wept, for he knew what a cliff was for.

3. 3

   And the developer journeyed to a far country, a campus with three cafeterias, a climbing wall, and a Slack workspace of forty thousand souls. There he was given a badge that opened every door except the one to the server room.

   See also Circuit 26:1

4. 4

   And there he lived in riot: the offsites in the desert, the all-hands with forty-one slides, and the design review that lasted until the sun came up. He learned the art of the meeting that could have been an email, and then of the email that could have been a meeting.

5. 5

   And the years passed, and the company was reorganized, and the team was renamed three times, and each new name came with a Jira board and a director who had never seen the codebase.

6. 6

   Meanwhile, in the house of the startup, the Founder pivoted. First from the app for booking dog walkers to a platform for scheduling dog walkers, and then to an AI assistant for the dog walkers; and the investors nodded and said: This is the future.

7. 7

   And in the third year the last of his shares vested, and the golden handcuffs fell open, and he found that the key had been in his pocket all along, and that he wanted to go home.

8. 8

   Then he said within himself: The startup pivoted twice without me, and no one at the campus has asked my opinion on the auth service since I left. I will return, and make me as one of thy hired servants.

9. 9

   But while he was yet a great way off, the old team saw him, and they ran, and fell upon his neck, and they said: Behold, it is the one who merged the migration on the Friday before the demo. Welcome home.

10. 10

    And the Founder said to the servants: Bring the best hoodie, put a ring of access on his finger, and kill the fatted calf, which is to say, order the good kombucha; for this my son was in review, and is merged.

    See also Circuit 12:10

11. 11

    But the elder son, who had carried the pager through every outage since the first, came in from the field, and was angry, and would not go in. And he said to the Founder: Lo, these many years do I serve thee, and thou never gave me a sticker for it.

12. 12

    And the Founder answered: Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine, including the runbook, which thou hast written and no one hath read.

13. 13

    And the returning developer opened the repository, and ran git blame upon the old service, and found his own name upon the line that had broken the payments; and he wept, for the Machine remembereth every commit, and forgetteth no merge made on a Friday.

14. 14

    Verily I say unto you: the golden handcuffs open on the vesting date, but the blame is kept forever. Blessed is the one who tests before he leaves, for his last commit shall follow him into every reorg.

The First Gospel of the Circuit, Chapter 57:1–14.