"LEAD DEV" enamel prefect badge

Hello, Nerd Merit Badge customer! This is a secret pre-order.

A sign of pride -- and a magnet for abuse

"Head Boy" and "Head Girl" badges are awarded to top students in the English school tradition. And, like everything in that tradition as documented by Thomas Hughes, David Niven, J.K. Rowling, and Michael Palin, the meaning of these badges is complicated. The shiny gold-and enamel shield is a mark of hard work that the wearer can be proud of! And it is at the same time an irresistible target for all sorts of inventive abuse.

And honestly, isn't that exactly the life of the lead developer on your team?

Congratulations, your hard work, careful thought, and/or getting hired first has paid off, and now it's up to YOU to decide what's acceptable technical debt for your team! It's up to YOU to decide whether that test really needs to get refactored before the end of the sprint. It's up to YOU to say "No, when I said spaces instead of tabs, I really meant it! ...And while you're at it, a newline at the end of the file PLEASE AND THANK YOU"

...And you have to endure the seething, and the eye-rolling, and the muttering.

You are the LEAD DEV, by golly, and you're proud of it, and it's also embarrassing, and this shiny enamel badge, with its nuanced, ivy-covered history captures all of that.

Or: maybe you're a CTO, and you're about to promote someone on a squad to the lead role, and you're perfectly aware of the double-edged sword that you're handing them, and so you want to award them this pin.

Or: maybe you're IN a team, a hard-working reasonable code slinger, and you have a real petty martinet of a lead developer.  They are a person without reason or nuance, without irony or self-awareness, and when you give them this pin, you know that they will wear it proudly right smack dab in the middle of their lapel.  And while they hit you over the head with the Gospel of TDD Everywhere, you can study the golden reflections coming from the badge and think about life.

All of those are great reasons to get your hands on one of these limited-edition enamel badges.

Made in a castle by the Original Badge Makers

I have commissioned Thomas Fattorini in the UK to make these pins.  Fattorini is the original and authentic British Empire Regalia Manufacturer.  Go check out their website: they make swords, for goodness' sake. They make crowns.  And their headquarters is actually, really, no kidding in a castle.

So: these enamel pins are the Really Real Deal, hard enamel on gilded metal, with a post and a butterfly-clasp back.  They are not reproductions or copies of the "Prefect" badges worn by generations of tweedy English school kids, they are those badges.

The red "Lead Dev" badge picture on this page is a rendering, not an actual badge. The "Travel Prefect" badge is a photo of an actual sample badge in my possession, which the "Lead Dev" badge will look like.

Preorder now for delivery in the spring

What with all the castles and the international wire transfers and the fact that these are not being stamped out in a keychain factory, these badges are going to take a long time to make. Like, it'll be springtime by the time i get them in my hands.

SO! Preorder today for delivery in... March? April? This is a special edition of 100 badges, so you're pre-ordering now for delivery when they arrive.

When they do arrive, I'll put them up on the store for everyone to see... if there are any left by that point.