Leave the Product Better Than You Found It

Early in my career at Sybase, I worked on the Sustaining Engineering team for the company’s database client products.

The engineering model was straightforward: a separate team would build a new feature, and our team would inherit it, support it, and fix whatever surfaced in the field.

One day, HR announced that layoffs would take place in two weeks.

This wasn’t a rumor or information passed quietly through the grapevine. We were told the date, but not who would be affected. On that day, everyone was expected to be at their desk. If HR came to get you, you were being let go.

Two weeks is a long time to sit with that kind of uncertainty.

As our team talked about it, I made a suggestion: Let’s spend the next two weeks fixing as many bugs as we can. Let’s put our heads down, limit interruptions, and leave the product better than we found it. If some of us were going to leave, at least we could walk away knowing we had done something useful for our customers.

So that is what we did.

We fixed many long-standing bugs across DOS, Windows, OS/2, Solaris, HP-UX, and the other platforms we supported. Not everyone could work on every platform, as we each had our specialties, but for those two weeks, everyone was rowing in the same direction.

The uncertainty was still there, but the work gave us a shared purpose and the focus to do what we believed was right for our customers.

When the day arrived, we watched HR walk through the office and take people into conference rooms. Fortunately, everyone on our team kept their job. Some of our coworkers did not, and watching them leave was difficult.

I don’t believe our two weeks of bug fixing determined that outcome. The decisions had already been made. What the work gave us was agency during a period when we otherwise had very little.

We couldn’t control what was going to happen. We could control how we spent the time—and whether we left the product better than we found it.

That experience became a guiding principle throughout my career, and one I try to bring to every team I build or join: we begin each day intending to make something meaningfully better, and end it knowing we contributed—especially when the circumstances surrounding the work are uncertain.

The tools, languages, and platforms have changed, as has the speed at which we can deliver. But the principle has not:

Focus on the customer. Rally with the people around you. Every day, leave the product better than you found it.