The Becky Special

Becky has worked at the company for several years as a Senior Software Tester. She occasionally does stupid things so I’ve written a few blogs about her. To be honest, she isn’t that bad when it comes to manual testing, but she isn’t technical at all; which then leads to funny mishaps.

I think she does try hard to get involved, but often has a hard time grasping even simple concepts. She seems to forget things too. There’s a few occasions where she has asked a question and stated “I’ve never come across this before”. Yet, if I search Slack, I can find the last time she asked it 3-6 months ago.

Here’s a collection of smaller stories that weren’t interesting for a full-length blog.

Interruptions

One thing that Becky likes doing is acting like she agrees with people. She often does it in an incredibly rude way.

For example, Mick was giving a detailed explanation, and while he was talking, Becky was like “yeah… yeah… yeah, yeah… yeah”. What made it even more funny is when Mick finally finished, she went “ooooh” as if she was surprised.

On a casual/non-work chat, James was informing the team on Best By vs Use By dates shown on food.

James: “Best before means..“

Becky (loudly): “Yeah! Yeah!“

Then, because James got interrupted, someone else diverted the conversation. I knew roughly what he was going to say, but other people on the call may not have, and could have found it really interesting.

I get really frustrated when I am trying to explain how to recreate a bug, or the impact of it – so she really needs to understand in order to do her job – and she is talking over me with her “yeah, yeah, yeahs”. I don’t believe she can take the information in when she is constantly saying “yeah” while you are still talking.

Profiler

Becky found a client-side issue and I was trying to investigate the code to try to understand what was happening. After a while, Becky comes up with an idea:

Becky: “shall we use the profiler?“

Me: “what sort of profiler?“

Becky: “oh, I dunno! I was thinking SQL Profiler“

Me: “It’s nothing to do with SQL“

Becky: “ah right, yeah“

I was really perplexed when she suggested using a profiler. I thought she was going to suggest something amazing like an advanced debugging tool, but no, she was just saying some words and hoping for the best.

Wrong Server

“Some help if possible…I cannot connect to the Application server within SQL Management Studio, but I can remote to it with no problem. I can however connect to the Database Server using my windows login through SQL Management Studio. Does the App server require admin credentials? TIA”
Becky

No, it doesn’t need special credentials, the problem is that Application servers don’t contain databases. A Database Server can be connected through SQL Management because it has databases. It’s in the name, really.

Any server can be connected using Remote Desktop Connection. SQL Management Studio requires Databases.

Criticising Becky

I’ve had a few calls with different colleagues recently, and instead of giving me a standard greeting and then start discussing the topic at hand…they start the conversation with a rant about Becky.

They have been helping her prior to my call. Their statements have been similar to “god, she is such hard work”, and “I have repeatedly told her what to do, but she didn’t understand – so I ended up doing it myself.”

There was one exact quote I wrote down. I thought it was hilarious.

“It’s difficult to come to terms with how useless she really is”

The Fabulous Holiday

Becky: “did you enjoy your holiday yesterday?“

Alison: “Actually, it was sick leave“

Becky: “Fabulous“

I was convinced that Becky didn’t listen to her response.

Are You Aware?

Becky added me to a group chat with a few people. She asked

“Are you aware of this issue?”

There was no previous context, and the chat didn’t have a title, so all I had to go on was her question.

I respond with a “shrug” emoji because I have literally no idea what she is referring to. After a few minutes, she hadn’t responded, so I thought I’d make it clear just in case she didn’t come to the realisation that she hadn’t sent a bug number or description. So I said

“I assume you are referring to a recent meeting you assume I was in, or have added me to a group conversation and assumed I can see the previous chat history”

So she responds

“Sorry, I thought you were aware”

I facepalm, then headbutt the desk.

Box Ticking

When we have a version of our software to release, the “patches” get stored on a server. However, the server was full which was preventing the new release from being created. This was scheduled to be signed off that evening, ready to be pushed to production tomorrow. We have a tool that can view the list of patches, and you can easily delete old versions you don’t care about. Just tick the checkboxes and click the “deprecate” button.

A few hours after I was aware of the issue, a Manager requested help. We point out that someone just needs to tick some boxes and click a button. He then posts an angry response.

“If all that needs to happen is ticking a box and clicking “deprecate”, I’m really struggling to understand why we’ve been totally blocked since this morning? 7 hours of time was absolutely wasted. Now I have to go and somehow explain this to the Senior Management why we are not signing off tomorrow!?
Angry Manager

I see this as a rhetorical statement, because obviously, he is really angry. However, Becky chimes in with:

“you have to make sure you tick the correct boxes.”
Becky

I was in tears. Absolute hilarity.

Change to avoid change

Where I work, we go for long periods with barely anyone leaving the business, then we seem to be hit with several at once. There’s been a few people leave recently when we announced we would switch from the standard Agile process to SAFe.

With this restructuring, some roles did change but I think it was mainly people that weren’t affected like Software Developers.

I was talking to one of my colleagues, and he said

“Why are people leaving? it sounds like we will still be using the same technologies”
Developer

The thing is, Developers will leave if you make them use different languages, and Developers will leave because they want to learn something new, so you cannot win.

I think some people may be leaving because they don’t believe our new software will ever get finished, then they have used the news of the process change as a final trigger to leave.

It seems quite stupid to me though – a change in management/process often makes people leave, even though leaving means you are dealing with a new management/process anyway in your new company.

It happened when we moved from Waterfall development to Agile. It also happened when we moved offices, and we have moved 3 times; even though it’s always been 10 minutes walk at most to the new location. If you come by car, it’s not even a problem unless the parking situation is different.

“OMG IT IS DOWN THE ROAD, I AM LEAVING to an office further away”
Stupid staff member

I remember with one office move, I was in the new office kitchen and talking to a Developer who was leaving. He said “I’m sick of these office moves”. I pointed out that we were literally standing in the new office, so he has already gone through the hassle of moving. He said he was only here because he had to serve his 3 month notice period. Yet he was moving to a new job that was probably further away from his house, and would more likely to have more job pressure because it’s very relaxed where I work. Also, since we had moved office, you could essentially guarantee we would stay there for at least 2 years because of the building lease. At a new job, you will more likely have to move offices within that time period.

In my mind, a change should be an encouraging aspect to make you stay, unless one of the changes has a negative impact on why you liked the job. In my experience, it seems a lot of people don’t see it that way.

General Update For The Last Few Weeks

I haven’t written a blog in a while but I do have pages of ideas that I need to flesh out. Some of them I could probably finish if I dedicated some time to them, whereas others need some more ideas to make them interesting. I’ve got various code samples and funny quotes too.

So let’s discuss what has happened over the last few weeks in the crazy world of software engineering.

In our new team structures, we were told that the teams could be quite flexible so people would move teams frequently, which really goes against what makes a successful team. Surely you can’t have much team cohesion when staff are constantly being reassigned. We were also told that each team would have a Tech Lead who would be permanent (which I was). However, a few weeks later, another Senior joined and was instantly assigned the Tech Lead, then a few weeks later, I then moved teams. So maybe the Tech Leads don’t move teams, but can be demoted – then moved!

Recently, all the changes that have happened seem random and we don’t get an explanation of manager’s decisions. However, the person that I replaced in my new team specifically asked to move teams. The thing is, he has reasons why he didn’t like this team and moving me into it isn’t going to change things. He mentioned that there’s 2 people that often argue, there’s a lack of developers, and the developers they do have often tried to get him to do their work.

I mentioned in Mentoring #5 that I wasn’t working with my Apprentice anymore, but now I am. This is one reason why there’s a lack of developers because he isn’t at a level to do proper work.

After a few days in the team, I was invited to their “Retrospective” meeting. I looked through their notes for their previous meetings and they had previously discussed the amount of turnover in their teams, so I brought it back up for discussion. A week later, the Product Owner switched teams.

I think the 2 people that often argue was the Product Owner and the Senior Tester, so maybe that issue has been resolved now.

I keep being asked to do everything. We seem to have loads of projects planned but I don’t see how we can do them given we don’t have enough developers and can’t do multiple projects at once. I end up attending meetings, then am asked to try to estimate the size, then have to fix urgent bugs, help people with various stuff, and do code reviews.

One day, I think 3 hours went by before I even started thinking about writing some code. I said to my Apprentice that I just don’t have time to start proper work. He said he hadn’t done anything either because after the Daily Standup meeting, he decided he wanted a second breakfast! I really don’t get it. I told him stories of developers like Derek that took so many breaks, he only worked 4 hours when he was supposed to work 7.5, and my Apprentice seems to be going down that path. He ends up starting late because he sleeps in, he likes an hour lunch because he likes eating, then finishes early because he needs to pick up his kid from school, but then can’t work because he has to look after his kid. So he probably works 4 or 4.5 hours. I’ve mentioned in previous blogs that I understand people have personal circumstances and it’s possible you could be very efficient and get your work done in half the time – so it’s not really a problem if you literally work half the time you are paid for. But in this case, I see nothing from him.