I missed a deadline at work.

Well, more precisely, the software engineers that I oversee missed the deadline. But it reflects on me. I haven’t missed a deadline at work like this in years. I’m frustrated and upset about it.

I talked to my mentor at work, and he seemed to shrug it off, as if to say this sort of thing happens all the time. And maybe it does. But I don’t have to like it.

There are reasons we missed the deadline: both engineers are very new, and while they have a lot of support from our expert engineers, it takes time to get things done. Also, we’ve been in a staffing crunch for months and we’re shifting people all over the place, so one of the engineers really had two fewer weeks to get her part of the job done because she had to onboard to the project. As a company we don’t do a great job supporting new people — I do my best, but there isn’t really much we can do. You have to learn this job by doing it.

Today I managed to postpone my meeting with my boss. Hopefully by the time I talk to him again we have some sort of plan of action in place and a defined date when we’ll be done, because if we’re not done, then the next step of the project can’t start, and that creates a domino effect all the way down the line.

I hate this feeling.

And I know I’m going to feel it again, and again, and again. Because no matter how hard I try, I can’t actually step in and do the work to help the engineers out; I didn’t go through the training they did, and I was never an engineer for this type of software. Oh, I know the basics of the programming languages we use, but not how it all works together. That takes specialized education and, honestly, years of experience.

I was hired for my management skills, not for my technical skills. But this is the first time the lack of technical skills really came back to haunt me.