Contempt, not for software developers, but for all they do

I have recently spent quite a lot of time reading tweets, blogs and current publications on Software Development. I feel despondent, despairing, bitter and isolated. I feel the "agile movement" has lost it's way, got diluted, compromised it's fundamentals, become a banner of convenience. I feel contempt for this movement of which I was an early practitioner, proponent, zealot. Though, for the individuals involved, I still have respect and admiration - they are bright, articulate, rounded people.

And for all this, I felt ashamed. My arrogance, my hostility, my mourning for a passion lost to the betrayal of others.

But these feelings were familiar. They resonated with a recent empathy. Then I remembered a passage from Seven Pillars of Wisdom (T.E.Lawrence's account of his part in the Arab Revolt during WWI). Talking of how he felt some years after having left Arabia, he wrote he had

"a resultant feeling of intense loneliness in life, and a contempt, not for men, but for all they do" (ch.1,p32)

This is the feeling I have.

Other passages have congruence with how I see the current state of the 'agile movement':

"As time went by our need to fight for the ideal increased to an unquestioning possession, riding with spur and rein over our doubts. Willy-nilly it became a faith. We had sold ourselves into it's slavery, manacled ourselves together in it's chain-gang, bowed ourselves to serve it's holiness with all our good and ill content. The mentality of ordinary human slaves is terrible - they have lost the world - and we had surrendered, not body alone, but soul to the overmastering greed of victory. By our own act we were drained of morality, of volition, of responsibility, like dead leaves in the wind." (ch.1,p29)

Others speak to how I feel about my history with agile:

"The moral freshness of the world-to-be intoxicated us. We were wrought up in the ideas inexpressible and vaporous, but to be fought for. We lived many lives in those whirling campaigns, never sparing ourselves: yet when we achieved and the new world dawned, the old men came out again and took our victory to remake in the likeness of the former world they knew. Youth could win, but had not learned to keep: and was pitiably weak against age. We stammered that we had worked for a new heaven and a new earth, and they thanked us kindly and made their peace." (introduction to later editions)

In these words I find solace. Men far greater than I, more central to more important histories, have fallen prey to these feelings. In the pursuit of what you believe to be a better way of the world, maybe there is an inevitability in the course of human history for the vanguard to become dissolute with the world they help forge. Yet in these new worlds there is value and benefit for others - it is a better world for them. For the vanguard it was about the pursuit of the ideal, the journey. For the rest it is about the destination of being somewhere better. These two things can never sit well together.

So where does this leave me?

In looking for new employment I discovered that I unwittingly undertook a similar path to Lawrence. Although I am being offer Head of Development/CTO roles, I find myself drawn to being a programmer at the bottom of the pile. I even went as far as to draft an alternative version of my CV removing my management and agile experience (but have not used it). Lawrence re-enlisted in the RAF under an assumed name, but was discovered, at which point he enlisted under another name in the RTC where he was unhappy. Maybe this is something I should take heed of?

Further, I have come to recognize that I am a 'vanguard' kind of guy. I suppose I always have been. And in that there is an acceptance. I should feel no shame but know it is time to move on and let the followers settle. Those who make the war cannot make the peace.


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