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That sounds like a nightmare. How did they handle things like being on call? Was the loner responsible for their genius 24/7?

• ponker 6y ago
  No, basically the group managers assigned the “architecture astronaut” tasks to these brilliant loners. They would figure out the answer and then be assigned to a team to onboard them basically, they’d come into the office for a week or two to do design reviews, go back to being remote to get the stuff into production, and then the full crew would own the service and the loner would go to the next thing.
  • secondcoming 6y ago
    Interesting. How did the team feel about being maintenance people? I think I'd have found it a bit demoralising if someone gets parachuted in to work on the - I assuming - interesting stuff.
    • ponker 6y ago
      The team didn't become maintenance people. Basically the architecture astronaut did the first 6 months of 2-3 year projects. And everyone knew that they were geniuses, maybe there was a little grumbling but people got on board.