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CPColin posted:You're not a weirdo. Your boss is an idiot. There's no possible way for you to grow if you're kept away from the "harder" stuff. Companies hate the growing pains that come with building up the skills of their engineers, and want engineers to come pre-trained and learned. Hence the massive demand for seniors over juniors.
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Feb 7, 2018 17:30
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Shirec posted:Goddamnit, I got shoved off to UI only again because my boss is stressing about all the suddenly “critical” issues. He’s emphasizing that we’re in dire straits, that we have a month to onboard our first customer, otherwise all sorts of bad things may happen. As I've been doing UI full time for the last three years, I don't think it is automatically 'easier', however if your boss is actually framing it that way then yes, he is essentially insulting you. It is not strange to be slighted, but I wouldn't let it bother me. The problem is with your boss and his opinion of you should be one of the least significant ones on the planet. These are just chores that need to be done until you find a new job.
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Feb 7, 2018 17:30
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Skandranon posted:The problem is with your boss and his opinion of you should be one of the least significant ones on the planet. These are just chores that need to be done until you find a new job. In theory, yeah, but when this is your day to day it's hard not to take it personally.
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Feb 7, 2018 17:31
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Pollyanna posted:In theory, yeah, but when this is your day to day it's hard not to take it personally. I know it's hard which is why I'm trying to provide support to hopefully counterbalance that.
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Feb 7, 2018 17:32
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I know. Just commiserating I guess.
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Feb 7, 2018 17:37
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Skandranon posted:I know it's hard which is why I'm trying to provide support to hopefully counterbalance that. I try very much to take yours and others words to heart about what is actually valuable and important. I know what I’m currently in is nothing I need to think is the default. It does suck quite a bit though, cause I’ve gotten really good at making consistent bug free UIs and closing requests quickly, but I’m always told that UI is the least important thing we do. We’re a managed service type company so I get that a lot of people won’t see what I’m doing, but drat, it takes the wind out of my sails. Boss also just came and told me to schedule re-occurring 30 minute meetings with him daily, he wants to get me up to speed on some things. So kind of dreading that but at least I’ll be learning hopefully
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Feb 7, 2018 17:45
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Good UI is difficult to teach because it's a very intuitive field bordering on design and marketing. A lot of things don't really need good UI, though, and lovely UI is probably easier than backend or processing stuff.
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Feb 7, 2018 17:45
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Shirec posted:It does suck quite a bit though, cause I’ve gotten really good at making consistent bug free UIs and closing requests quickly, but I’m always told that UI is the least important thing we do. We’re a managed service type company so I get that a lot of people won’t see what I’m doing, but drat, it takes the wind out of my sails.
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Feb 7, 2018 17:49
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Shirec posted:I try very much to take yours and others words to heart about what is actually valuable and important. I know what I’m currently in is nothing I need to think is the default. That is what insecure backend coders would say to help salvage their fragile egos, as they know deep down no one would buy their lovely REST service without the UI. The UI is what the customer sees and what they actually buy, everything else is to support that UI. Watch to see how bent out of shape they get when users sing your praises for implementing a relatively trivial feature, but don't care about the 2 years of work they put into slightly improving the performance of some queries.
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Feb 7, 2018 17:50
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Skandranon posted:That is what insecure backend coders would say to help salvage their fragile egos, as they know deep down no one would buy their lovely REST service without the UI. The UI is what the customer sees and what they actually buy, everything else is to support that UI. Watch to see how bent out of shape they get when users sing your praises for implementing a relatively trivial feature, but don't care about the 2 years of work they put into slightly improving the performance of some queries.
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Feb 7, 2018 18:00
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Capri Sun Tzu posted:Agreed, this process wouldn't work for entry or even intermediate level. I think it points out a flaw in how CS grads are educated; they're taught to be scientists when they're aiming to be engineers. The details of how transistors work or how a compiler functions have almost no relevance to the day to day life of a modern developer. Yeah, a recent CS grad probably has zero experience with code review or software design. I don't think that's a good method of interviewing new hires. That's why we make interviewees write code that passes unit tests (and the testing framework is Google Test, you don't need to have any knowledge of it since you're not actually writing tests) as our interviewing standard. None of the tests require hardcore algorithms or anything. It's more "write a function that compares dates" instead of "implement a red-black tree". If you managed to get a BS in CS and can't even manage writing code on your own to implement simple things, then, well...
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Feb 7, 2018 18:07
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Good UI is not important unless it's bad UI, and then it's very important and everyone has their ideas for how it should be fixed For the first 9 months of our last project they kept telling me that everyone would be using the REST API or the CLI (which still doesn't exist) and we just need to throw together a basic UI for the small handful of users that can't use curl Of course it turns out that the engineers and scientists that make up our user base are not all terminal gurus like our tech lead, and pretty much everyone uses the UI I was at least somewhat vindicated the other day when said tech lead asked me "why don't we have something like this <existing robust UI>?" and I showed him the almost identical design proposal I made that got shot down six months ago, because the people who would need those advanced features are just going to be manually building the JSON objects anyways
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Feb 7, 2018 18:11
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Shirec posted:rah-rah we have to get this done and y’all are amazing and the work you guys are doing will set you apart in the future and the rewards coming once we get this done are huge! If it's any consolation, I have never seen this happen. The closest thing there is to a reward after crunch-time is going out to a restaurant once. One time, though, the CEO gave a speech (which he thought would be motivating) about how we were loving it all up and nobody would remember us after the company had failed. The company ended up buying a whole week of free lunch to try to raise morale afterwards. That was pretty awesome.
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Feb 7, 2018 23:24
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Capri Sun Tzu posted:Agreed, this process wouldn't work for entry or even intermediate level. I think it points out a flaw in how CS grads are educated; they're taught to be scientists when they're aiming to be engineers. The details of how transistors work or how a compiler functions have almost no relevance to the day to day life of a modern developer. There's a limit on how much practical engineering you can teach in a university setting. The semester/quarter structure makes it really hard to do any kind of long-term projects, and the fact that (almost) everyone has no experience means that working in groups is very artificial. And while it's true that most developers don't need to know the theory/low-level details, there are a few of us that do, and besides, future computer science professors have to start somewhere. There's certainly room for reform, but there are real constraints on what's practical or even desirable.
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Feb 8, 2018 02:36
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Hmm so does anybody have experience dealing with difficult paired programming situations? I'm a fairly recent grad and am pretty junior when it comes to skill, and everybody on my team is a senior developer. I currently work in an all paired environment, and have had some okay experiences so far. But recently my current partner of the week is just miserable. They refuse to talk at all, want to drive at all times, don't explain anything they are doing, and whenever i manage to drive immediately jump on me and yank control away once i write a single line of code. I'm not really sure how to approach telling a Senior to basically gently caress off and let me explore the code and figure things out on my own if they aren't gonna teach. What's worse is this particular Senior is basically a database services expert, and knows jack poo poo about UI. And we are doing UI tasks. So I get to watch her struggle without explaining her thought process at all. I've sat down with her and asked if I could take the lead and her coach, she will agree.... and then she immediately questions everything i do in a way that feels very un-constructive ("why are you running unit tests right now that isn't helpful!", "why are you writing a console.log you should already know this is this!") and immediately yanks control away. I find it kind of odd that I've been the one to resolve her being stuck at 2 points just today. It's also incredibly irritating that she tells me that code I write that gives me a better feel for how a feature works and then testing that it works the way I think it does "is a complete waste of time because it doesnt finish the story". Idk, i dont want to make waves, this job pays REALLY well, and thus far i'm learning alot of stuff and getting exposure to pretty much my wish list of technologies. My team lead mentioned bringing it up in retro. I feel pretty confident that the team isn't following paired programming best practices, but I don't want to be the new guy who tries to rock the boat either. I'm also concerned about my skill level, but my team lead says she's happy and that they wanted somebody teachable, and 2 other seniors said I seemed to be on track and was contributing. I'm also not exactly how happy with pairing with the other seniors sense they basically drive and I have to beg to get a chance to write some code, but at least the other ones will explain stuff when I go "um what is that thing", and when they ask why i'm doing stuff it's usually followed by an explanation of why another way would be better. It also doesnt help that I haven't gotten any kind of formal feedback other than reassurances from my team lead (who isn't my manager who does my evals though) that she is happy with where I'm at. anglachel fucked around with this message at 04:40 on Feb 8, 2018 |
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Feb 8, 2018 04:37
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I've never done an all-pairing job, only situations where I was trying to onboard someone else or myself, or work on a particularly thorny problem. I always had the less-experienced person on the keyboard and the more-experienced on the mouse. That way, the newer person can take dictation when things are making sense and can stop when something's strange. How fast a typist are you, compared to the rest of your team (especially the problem member)? It can be pretty frustrating when the driver is hunt-and-pecking along at one character/second. (And it can be stressful when you're driving for someone who you know is a keyboard wizard.) Mostly, it sounds like you've got poorly-matched personalities. Some people just don't work well together. Can you get along with her personally? Like, can you eat lunch or chat together and have that go OK? It can be easier to forgive someone's bad work habits if you like them personally. I would try talking to her about the problem. She's a senior developer at an all-pairing place, so she's probably had or seen cases before where partners didn't sync very well. Maybe something like, "I feel like you're doing all the driving and all the thinking and I'm not keeping up with you. Is there something we could do differently, so that I'd learn more but wouldn't slow you down much? Maybe we could take a break from writing code every 30 minutes and I'll ask you questions then?" I think you need to meet her in the middle -- if she's not comfortable explaining-while-coding then you'll have to learn to save up your questions/comments/suggestions and she'll need to figure out how to give you some learning-time.
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Feb 8, 2018 14:32
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That isn’t your problem, part of having a senior title is teaching juniors. Bring it up with your team lead.
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Feb 8, 2018 21:11
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Have you tried just saying "No" when she tries to take control back? I doubt she will use violence.
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Feb 8, 2018 22:33
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Get a wireless keyboard and just run away with it while typing.
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Feb 8, 2018 22:36
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Learn DVORAK and bring your own keyboard to work
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Feb 8, 2018 22:43
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Skandranon posted:Have you tried just saying "No" when she tries to take control back? I doubt she will use violence. And if she does, problem solved after HR finds out.
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Feb 8, 2018 22:52
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I knew I was tempting fate by being in a good mood and feeling ok about myself. Scheduled training session with boss went fine, at the end, thanking him for it, and he starts into a lecture. I know it’s gonna be bad when he starts with “I don’t need you to like me but I need you to respect me.” The personal project he had said I should do, the one he then never mentioned again, and also got mad at me for looking into the libraries, got brought back up. He was giving me a shot today by letting me work on a more complicated piece of backend in those aforementioned libraries, but I was taking too long. 5 hours! Instead of fixing UI bugs. He also didn’t like that I guess I talked about the company too much? He wanted it to be very clear that it was him that gave me the job, that decided to hire me. Not the company. Then a lot of talk about how we all need to be a cohesive team and it’s not about individuals. He needs to know I’m invested in the success of the group. Because no one else is going to hire developers in North America when they can be had so cheaply elsewhere. He’s trying to give me what I’m interested in, but sigh I haven’t really been stepping up to it. Maybe he’ll just hire a backend dev in the next few months, but that might mean I get pigeonholed, which he knows I don’t want. Then he brought up our intern (we have this very sweet old man intern who is working for free on Linux stuff) about how dedicated HE is and that’s the kind of passion he wants to see. So! I’m feeling really great in general now
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Feb 9, 2018 00:35
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Shirec posted:Then he brought up our intern (we have this very sweet old man intern who is working for free on Linux stuff) about how dedicated HE is and that’s the kind of passion he wants to see. Oh my loving god
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Feb 9, 2018 00:39
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Shirec posted:we have this very sweet old man intern who is working for free on Linux stuff what the gently caress
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Feb 9, 2018 00:42
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You should write a book about this
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Feb 9, 2018 00:42
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Omgwtf. I thought I was bad at accepting compliments. You really are stuck in some sort of bizarro hell world. He's clearly some sort of megalomaniac who is reading The Prince at the moment. I bet he will start dropping Sun Tzu quotes in a few weeks. He doesn't want to hire offshore developers, he is just manipulating you with that nonsense line. If I had hiring authority and open positions I'd much rather hire you than offshore developers. Distance actually matters, and that is the easiest issue to solve with offshore. Trust me, when you get your resume fixed up, start interviewing, and get that next job offer, this will all be worth it. It will feel so good to quit. I would try to quit in the most gas-lighting manner possible (without putting yourself in actual physical danger, he sounds like a loose cannon).
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Feb 9, 2018 00:44
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Alternatively, you could just stab him on the way out. You'd be making the world a better place. (Note: Don't actually do that.)
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Feb 9, 2018 01:17
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Shirec posted:I knew I was tempting fate by being in a good mood and feeling ok about myself. Recommended reading: Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us
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Feb 9, 2018 01:18
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No one wants to hire developers in North America when they can be gotten so cheaply elsewhere, except every single company in North America.
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Feb 9, 2018 01:18
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Shirec posted:... Because no one else is going to hire developers in North America when they can be had so cheaply elsewhere. ...  Isn't this like gaslighting or some such craziness? This is abusive relationship behavior. "No one will take someone as broken as you, you're lucky I was there to take you in."
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Feb 9, 2018 01:29
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Shirec please quit your job soon, we're all rooting for you 
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Feb 9, 2018 01:38
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Imagine that my post is an audience at a gladiatorial arena, calling for this guy's blood.
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Feb 9, 2018 01:39
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Shirec posted:“I don’t need you to like me but I need you to respect me.” Okay, dad 
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Feb 9, 2018 01:42
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Unbelievably White posted:Imagine that my post is an audience at a gladiatorial arena, calling for this guy's blood. "La-bor Board! La-bor Board!"
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Feb 9, 2018 01:45
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A new hire at my shop beat his managers rear end until he was hiding under his own desk while everyone else cheered on his third day and got hired back a few months later. The manager didn't. Sometimes violence is the answer.
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Feb 9, 2018 02:25
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shame on an IGA posted:A new hire at my shop beat his managers rear end until he was hiding under his own desk while everyone else cheered on his third day and got hired back a few months later. My coworker was telling me about her former co-worker who had a temper and was told by the CTO to re-do something even though what he did was pretty rock solid. The guy got so angry, he leapt over his desk and uppercut the CTO. Unlike your guy, he was promptly fired. Now I want to work in a dysfunctional workplace just for a month to see poo poo go down.
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Feb 9, 2018 02:29
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shame on an IGA posted:A new hire at my shop beat his managers rear end until he was hiding under his own desk while everyone else cheered on his third day and got hired back a few months later. Geez, what happened in the 30 seconds before the violence?
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Feb 9, 2018 02:53
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Pollyanna posted:Oh my loving god rt4 posted:what the gently caress I thought he was paid until a few weeks ago, I was shocked. He works 8-4ish normally. He's apparently a big Linux hobbyist, so he knows a loottt. I don't know why/how it happened that he got hired and for no pay.  Skandranon posted:Omgwtf. I thought I was bad at accepting compliments. You really are stuck in some sort of bizarro hell world. He's clearly some sort of megalomaniac who is reading The Prince at the moment. I bet he will start dropping Sun Tzu quotes in a few weeks. I try to put this all into my inspiration to get more applications out there each time it happens. I can't wait to be free though, I didn't realize how badly this was affecting my anxiety until this past week or so. downout posted:
fantastic in plastic posted:Recommended reading: Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us Unfortunately I have a history of running into people like this. Father, ex, and now this. I tend to think I am supremely unlucky or have a weird magnetic power for abuse. My therapist tells me that because I am kind and conscientious, people like this tend to seek me out. Pseudoscorpion posted:Shirec please quit your job soon, we're all rooting for you I'm trying! Getting my information out there, doing the legwork, just have to hope I get that spark of luck that lets me start interviewing.
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Feb 9, 2018 03:12
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Shirec posted:I thought he was paid until a few weeks ago, I was shocked. He works 8-4ish normally. He's apparently a big Linux hobbyist, so he knows a loottt. I don't know why/how it happened that he got hired and for no pay. My wife tends to occasionally, randomly attract pretty eccentric people. I really wish you the best of luck in the job search. I'm not sure if you are interested in central Ohio, but my shop is often looking for BE/FE developers. Feel free to PM if you want some more details.
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Feb 9, 2018 03:45
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Skandranon posted:What really gets me is the study Google did on their 8h+ long interview process, found it did no better than a 1-2h long interview in predicting employee performance, and then said "screw it" and made no changes because wtf else is there to do? Not quite: Google discovered that their practice at the time, which was calling people back multiple times for multiple days didn't do any better than 3-4 interviews that are focused on job-specific skills (coding, design, troubleshooting, etc) They did change that process and we're strongly encouraged to not give into the temptation to ask candidates to return for another day, but instead to ask them to try again in six months. Up to L8 (director) at least, the process is the same: 1-2 phone screens, and four 45-minute on-site interviews. Senior candidates can expect a follow-up if the on-site goes well with the VP of the org but that's it. I've only done one VP interview and it was still just four on-site, but I don't know what came before or after.
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