So, about this Zach Matthews. You hear the name, and you think, “Okay, just one guy, right?” Wrong. Lemme tell ya, my journey with “Zach Matthews” was something else.
The Wild Goose Chase Begins
It all started a while back. We had this recurring, super annoying bug in a system. Nobody could figure it out. Then, my manager at the time, bless his clueless heart, said, “Find Zach Matthews. He’s the expert on this module. He wrote it.” Sounds simple, eh? Famous last words.
So, I started my hunt. First, the internal company directory. Found three Zach Matthews. Emailed the first one. “Nope, not me, I joined last year.” Okay. Second one? “I think you mean the other Zach Matthews, he left two years ago.” Great. Third one didn’t even reply. Probably a ghost account.
My “practice” then went wider:
- LinkedIn: Man, there are hundreds of Zach Matthews out there. Which one was our Zach Matthews? The one who supposedly wrote this ancient piece of code? No clue. I sent out a few hopeful, but ultimately useless, messages.
- Old project documentation: If you can even call it that. Scraps of notes, mostly. The name “Zach M.” appeared once. Helpful.
- Asking around: I talked to some of the older guys. “Oh yeah, Zach Matthews… good guy. Think he moved to Colorado? Or was it Canada?” Super helpful, thanks.
This went on for days. Each lead was a dead end. I was spending more time trying to find this mythical Zach Matthews than actually, you know, fixing the bug or doing any real work. It felt like everyone just assumed a Zach Matthews existed who could solve all problems, like some kind of coding superhero.
Why It All Got to Me
Now, you might think, “Why get so worked up about finding one guy?” Well, this wasn’t just some minor inconvenience. This was during a really tight deadline. We had a major client breathing down our necks. And this bug, the one “Zach Matthews” was supposed to magically fix, was holding everything up. We were burning time, burning money, and my stress levels were through the roof.
It reminded me of this one time, a few years prior, I was working on a freelance gig. The client kept mentioning “their amazing designer” who had all the original files and brand guidelines. Turned out, this designer had quit months ago, took all their work with them, and left no forwarding address. The client just hadn’t updated anyone. It was chaos. This Zach Matthews thing felt just like that, but on a corporate scale.
The whole “Zach Matthews” saga made me realize how messed up things can get when nobody takes real ownership, or when knowledge isn’t shared properly. It’s like companies build these invisible pillars of “key people,” and when one of them disappears or was never really there in the way people thought, the whole thing starts to wobble.
Eventually, we had to rebuild that entire module from scratch. Took weeks. Cost a fortune. And you know what the funniest part is? To this day, every now and then, when a really tricky legacy issue pops up, someone new will pipe up in a meeting: “Has anyone tried reaching out to Zach Matthews?”
Yeah, good luck with that. He’s out there somewhere, probably multiple somewheres, and none of them are gonna fix your code.
