Reinforcements Have Arrived

I was recently supplanted as the most experienced member of my engineering group. Not by just a little bit, either, we got a new worker who has been with the company twice as long as me. The department lost work on one project, so we gained him on another. The fellow knows a great deal more about specific systems than I do, and at least as much about things in general. In other words, I'm no longer the sole go-to guy for the project we are working on. I normally flourish as the one source of information, and even leading the group. As I thought this through, it seemed like the addition of this guy should, on some level, be a struggle for me. Nobody, least of all me, likes to be demoted in any sense. The reality is that this whole affair couldn't have turned out better. I have somebody to help do homework, to answer questions with confidence that I would have had to issue an I.O.U. on, and to bounce ideas off of. I am responsible for less, I am not front and center taking all the stressful questions, and with all that I end up looking better. Now this is a great turn of events, the additional help is probably helping me get home just a little bit soon. I'm just glad I didn't let my pride get in the way.