Tuesday, October 11, 2005

Stepping Up

As I've mentioned before, my project inherited some sub-par developers a few months ago. Well, recently, one of them decided that we were going too slowly with him. He wanted more responsibility, more freedom, etc. You know--to be a real programmer. I, of course, am opposed to this until he demonstrates his ability to "do no harm" to the code base and the ability to think and act for himself. How should he demonstrate this? Fuck him. That's his problem.

Well, this iteration we gave him a couple of tasks. One was to add some controls and information to an existing web page. The other was coordinate with a member of another team about some issue. Halfway through the iteration, I find out that he's "blocked" on adding the controls. We have a brief team meeting and discover that his issue is that he wants to have a philosophical debate about whether or not the controls are needed. After a few minutes we pound it into his head that they're needed but that it is irrelevant as its not his call and it's a simple task--just do your fucking job, moron. Well, then it kind of comes out that he doesn't know how to do the task. So, it sounds to me like his whole debate was a cover for the fact that he doesn't know how to do something. Fair enough. However, I just got through doing the exact same type of work last iteration. He could have copied the damn code straight out of my stuff.

His next issue was that the member from the other team wasn't available. So, we picked up the phone and called the guy. He answers and we start trying to go through the questions our noob was supposed to be asking him. Well, it turns out that the noob doesn't have his questions ready. So, his second blocked issue is also due to him not doing his goddamn job.

That's a great way to get more responsibility, by the way--fuck up the easy stuff I give you then try to hide it. Genius.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home