I had a situation recently where the president of my company suggested I contact a person he met at a conference whose company streams multimedia. Upon contacting this resource, I was convinced that dealing with the challenges of converting media to different formats and streaming it wasn’t something I wanted to spend development time on. It’s not our core competency and I would rather spend time developing something that is in our wheelhouse. I did however have some hesitation about the vendor being very young and not having some of the bits we would need right away (APIs for uploading videos for conversion, Library for Android platform, etc).
When our president asked me what I thought of the vendor, I said I thought it wasn’t something I wanted to spend time on and we should outsource it. His impression was that he thought the guy was sharp and I told him we should give it a shot. In hindsight, my answer should have been “I think we need a service like this, but I’m not sure if we should use this one. Let me go do some research and get us some options.”
What I did was assume his impression of the vendor outweighed my hesitation. I was intimidated without any hint of being overruled. The truth is, as a technical leader I am the person who should be making decisions about technology. I’m more qualified to do it. The push I got from our president was likely to force me to defend my opinion. Managers often push subordinates to defend their opinion and defend it vigorously, simply to ensure they have all the data and the best decision for the company is ultimately made. Perhaps this partnership will work out, but I failed to do my job. I’m managing development for a reason and part of that is to make the tough technical decisions.