As somebody who has worked as a contractor developing software for startups for the better part of a decade, I'm here to tell you that you get what you negotiate. Renegotiating the contract you are working in the light of success is very bad form. Live and learn.
When I read the headline, my head parsed "Smithsonian celebrates 150 Years of COBOL"
Build better bugs, experience more fruitful testing.
I've been in the situation where a manager in a crunch period really slowed the whole thing down because they were demanding explanations of every check-in. I've also had the experience of having a technical manager save the team no end of hassle by running interference and buffering us from the political realities even higher up the chain in crunch periods; in those cases the manager was technical enough to just let us get on with it.
"It doesn't much signify whom one marries for one is sure to find out next morning it was someone else." -- Rogers
