Retreat Route

Before my career started, I was working part-time at a contract development shop.

The developer I was paired with vanished the day before the deadline. No answer. The code was half-finished, and the full spec existed only in his head. I begged a senior engineer for help and somehow got through it. Forget a retreat route — I didn't even know where I was.

There's a novel I still reread. There's a line I love. Something to the effect that a beast that doesn't know when to back away is just a foil for the hunter. The original has more style to it.

The line has stayed with me.

When I was young, I never thought about retreat. The developer who vanished probably had no planned retreat either. I skipped termination clauses in contracts. Put off plans for graceful degradation. Shipped to production without rollback procedures. Always running on the assumption things would work out. You only realize there's no exit when you're already cornered.

With experience, you start checking exits first. Can I walk away from this contract midway? Can this architecture be rolled back component by component? If this project gets killed, where do the team members land? Planning the retreat is harder than planning the advance.

Being seasoned means securing the right position, building situations where retreat isn't necessary, and still keeping an exit ready.

I'll be hunted in the end. At least let me put up a good fight.