Thinking About ‘Mike Bell Judge’
So, someone brought up ‘mike bell judge’ the other day. Honestly, first time I heard that specific combination. My immediate thought was, okay, is this a person? Some kind of new tech thing? A weird code name for a project?
I poked around a bit, you know, just curious. Didn’t find much that clicked right away. It just sort of hung there in the back of my mind. And it got me thinking, not about this ‘mike bell’ specifically, but about judges. Not the courtroom kind, necessarily. More like the workplace kind.
It reminded me of this situation a few years back. We were working on this project, pretty straightforward stuff, or so we thought. But the guy leading the review phase, let’s just call him ‘Mr. Bell’ for the sake of the story, acted like a high court judge. Everything had to be exactly his way. Not the documented way, not the way that made sense for the actual users, but his way.
We’d present something, and he wouldn’t just give feedback. Oh no. He’d bang his metaphorical gavel. Sentences like:
- “That’s fundamentally flawed.”
- “I don’t see the logic here.”
- “This needs a complete rewrite.”
All delivered like final verdicts. No discussion. It was like he had this perfect image in his head, maybe based on something he did ten years ago, and anything different was just wrong. He was the judge, jury, and executioner for every little feature.
It slowed things down like crazy. Morale tanked. Good ideas got shot down because they didn’t fit his exact mold. We spent more time trying to guess what ‘Judge Bell’ wanted than actually building something useful. It felt like walking on eggshells constantly. You know the type. Stifles everything.
Eventually, thankfully, management shuffled things around. New lead, completely different vibe. Suddenly, work started flowing again. We actually shipped the thing. It wasn’t perfect, but it worked, and customers liked it. Way better than being stuck in ‘Judge Bell’s’ courtroom.
So yeah, ‘mike bell judge’. Still don’t know what that original thing was about. But it definitely kicked off this memory. Sometimes a name or a phrase just sends your brain down a weird path, reminds you of folks who put up walls instead of building bridges. Makes you appreciate the collaborators, not the judges.
