A little while back I had the pleasure of seeing the "Self-Destruction of the Ultimate Warrior" DVD put out by the WWE.  When I was younger, I was a tremendous wrestling fan; something about the combination of over-the-top cartoon characters and tremendous simulated violence greatly appealed to me.  Of all of these wrestlers, my absolute favorite of all was the Ultimate Warrior (seen above).  The Ultimate Warrior was definitely a unique individual - he would run through his pre-match interviews snorting like an animal and rambling incoherently, the run hyperactively to the ring, destroy his opponent in 1 minute, and then race out of the ring, presumably back to the Parts Unknown from whence he came.

What fascinated me about this DVD was the "VH1 Behind the Stars" approach they took; rather than pretending that wrestling was real, they instead talked about all of the stuff that went on backstage with the Warrior and essentially how crazy he actually was in real life when the makeup came off.

The Warrior was not a long-term success and never a truly great wrestler (by great, I do not mean the predetermined win/loss records, but how entertaining and dynamic your matches are for the fans watching).   After a brief period in 1990 where he was at the top, he faded in and out of the wrestling business, with a brief return in 2000 where he pretty much proved once and for all that he sucked, and sucked horribly.

There are many reasons why the Warrior's return (and overall legacy) was a spectacular failure.  They are interesting in themselves, but even more fascinating was that many of the comments his peers had about him mirrored what could possibly be said about some software developers today.

Hanging onto previous accomplishments

For one, the Ultimate Warrior was hanging onto "accomplishments" (if you can call beating someone in a predetermined match an accomplishment) from ten years previous.  Now, let's set aside how ridiculous it is to be coasting on the result of a written script; after all, you don't see Bruce Willis going onto talk shows ranting about how he still kicked the ass of those terrorists in Die Hard 2.  (Okay, maybe Steven Seagal does stuff like this, but nobody else).
Here's the main problem: no one cared anymore.  The Warrior got a free pass from fans for all of 20 minutes when he returned in 2000 and then they turned on him.  Why?  Because not only was he no longer entertaining, but he was obsessed with him beating Hulk Hogan in a storyline 9 years ago that most fans watching at that time weren't even old enough to remember properly.

Likewise, I have seen some people in software development think that the only thing that matters in the industry is the sheer number of years you have put in.  Guess what?  This means nothing if you don't have the requisite skill.  Software development is not a union shop; you are not going to be treated better or respected more simply because you have worked for a greater number of years than the developer next to you.

We've all witnessed managers in the past who trumpeted the accomplishments they made in the industry more than a decade ago, despite never really accomplishing anything since.  These same people seem to have an expectation that simply because they did something successfully years ago once, they have a free pass to be treated like a god at all times, even if their current output is barely on a level of competence.  Behavior like this just leads to people turning on them much like people did the Warrior when they realized he was living in the past.

No ability to adapt

The Ultimate Warrior had no ability to adapt himself to the times; the wrestling business had changed greatly from the days when he and Papa Shango the Voodoo King had their classic feud that ended up with the Warrior vomiting all over a bunch of emergency workers.  The era of people having a wandering half-naked muscleman with face paint and tassles on his arms
as a role model was over.

Yet the Warrior, rather than change his style for a new decade, continued to push for the whole "I'm a superhero" schtick that the fans were now too "smart" for.  Ridiculous is not a strong enough word to describe storylines where the Ultimate Warrior would appear in mirrors to some people but not to others, and disappearing in a puff of smoke in the centre of the ring.  Many people tried to warn the Warrior that these were bad ideas, that times had changed.  There were numerous attempts to get Warrior to understand that people had a hard enough time rooting for a face-painted maniac in tights and tassles, let along a face-painted maniac in tights and tassles who was also a ninja.  However, the Warrior would hear none of it - he felt this still worked.  He stuck to it, and he paid the price for it.

The Warrior's attitude here reminds me a little of that completely ridiculous "Save VB6" petition that a bunch of developers who fear change and progression put together.  Sure, hang onto VB6 if you like.  Continue to stubbornly refuse to keep learning, to keep pushing yourself to better things!  I won't be surprised or sympathetic, however, when you're complaining
that there aren't any more jobs doing FORTRAN out there.

No self-improvement

The most recurrent complaint about the Ultimate Warrior was summed up well by Ted Dibiase (the Million Dollar Man): "he had so many opportunities to improve, to learn from the best...but he coasted on lucky opportunities and he never took the time to hone his craft."

In some ways, this harkens to the story of two developers I know - Dev A and Dev B - both of whom have 10 years in the industry.  Dev A took the time and effort - and still does - to do a bit of self-improvement every day.  Dev A, although talented from the get-go, always felt there was room to improve and dedicated himself to always learning and absorbing something new about the industry he worked in.  He is now recognized by most of his peers as a truly great developer and there are always people talking about how nice it would be to work with and learn from him.  He has been a mentor and role model for several developers.

Dev B also has 10 years of experience - however, he spent the last several years of his career taking shortcuts.  When bugs occured, dev B never even made an attempt to understand why the problems were occuring...he merely cut and pasted some code from here or there to try and attempt to fix the problem.  In fact, all of his fixes were routinely worse than the actual problem he was attempting to solve.  In sharp contrast to Dev A, Dev B was of less business use than several people I know with a fifth of the experience he had.  People were reluctant to work with him for fear that he would slow them down dramatically as they often had to completely re-write code he had written.

Working with Dev A was a pleasure - working with Dev B made me sad.  It didn't make me sad becuase of any personal frustrations; it made me sad because there was a lot of wasted potential.  Dev B's reaction to bugs was far more disturbing to me than it would have been if he was fresh out of school.  If his first reaction to fixing a bug was to do a quick hack cut and paste and *hope* that it worked rather than trying to understand the problem and why it was occuring, it probably meant he had been doing it for years.  As I talked about yesterday, it's pretty tough to overcome bad habits learned over a decade.

Don't Be The Warrior

The Warrior's legacy in the wrestling ring is probably questionable at best.  The DVD repeatedly emphasized how great he could have been - so much wasted potential for all the reasons I describe above.

When I watched the DVD, it made me think about what professional legacy *I* want to leave in my field 20 years from now.   I (and all of you) have a choice - we can be remembered by our peers as good or even great, with people talking about how much they admire our work; or the last bits of our development careers will be the footnote in someone's blog post somewhere or a submittal to the Daily WTF.

The choice, as everything is in life, is yours to make.