I’ve often said that my employer is reluctant to sack people even if they are bad. We once wanted to hire some experienced software testers to bring new ideas into the testing team since most of ours were internally trained. One of the new hires, Zack, was recommended by another employee, and a manager reckoned we hired Zack only to appease that employee, but then that guy quickly left anyway; leaving us with Zack.
Zack seemed reluctant to do any work, learn anything, and would often not really listen but repeatedly say “yeah, yeah, alright” when you were talking to him. It was irritating because it would interrupt you whilst you were speaking but also not give you any indication if he understood it at all.
What annoyed me is that sometimes he would ask for help, then go ask someone else without attempting to do what you said. Did he not understand or was he just procrastinating and wasting your time whilst doing it?
Blagging
He loved blagging his daily standup updates, because he had done nothing but had to say something.
From probable lies: “There was no power to my PC this morning, so I had to sort that out. “
Saying a few words to blag: “I’ve been doing a bit of admin, and some other things I don’t remember”
To definite lies: “Helped get Jim up and running” (I think that is a bit exaggerated, he just watched while I helped him)
Or a bit of humour to deflect: “In Nerd Heaven, looking at XML code”
Procrastinating
There was one time Zack asked me which test organisation he could test a feature on, and he said he was gonna use my user account. I told him to create a new user since there isn’t any extra config he needs. The next day, I got in at 8:45 and he told me he couldn’t find my user on that organisation. He gets in at 8. Instead of creating a new user, he just sat there for 45 mins. So I told him to create a new user, and he walks over to Jim and asks him what his password is. Why can’t he just create a new user? Is he trying to avoid his name from being shown in the error logs or something?
Zack 13:06:
Hi. Do you know anything about filing external messages?
Me 13:06:
You need Messenger set up, and the Messenger Forwarder Tool to send them in
Zack 13:08:
OK, I'll see what I can find out about that. Jim sent me a link to a wiki or two that I haven't read yet
So he had the answer, but decided to ask others again.
I loved that time when Zack was trying to palm some work off to anyone that would take it. Zack says to Josh “So who is responsible for this?” and Josh shot him down “As Senior Testers; we are, Zack“
Me 16:09:
we have just been laughing about Zack
he got told to test an item. He spoke to Paul, spoke to me, spoke to Sanjay, spoke to Jim, then sent an email to everyone summarising our conversations
Mel comes over and says "who is testing it?"
turns out, it is Jim
Dean 16:10:
so they both had the same WI assigned?
Me 16:12:
well in fact, I think Paul wanted Zack to test it but since he isn't confident, he said Jim can assist but neither of them seemed to understand they were supposed to work together.
The item doesn't have testing details, wasn't assigned to Jim, and Zack even asked Jim how to test it and he didn't even think he was on about the same item
The Longest Work
There was one time we made some risky changes to a feature so we advised fully regression testing it, alongside some specific tests. Zack ended up testing for a month. 109 hours on his timesheet. One day, as Zack was leaving he jestingly said :
“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t”
Zak
So I said to Sanjay
“Shall we mark his item as “Completed”?”
you won’t hear a better joke this week
James: “Are there any IRP experts?”
“Zack, he has spent 3 lifetimes on it”
Senior Developer
Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs
The frequency that Zack said “right, yeah” etc was insane. Sometimes I’d type it out as Zack said it to joke with team member Sanjay.
Me 09:58:
right, yeah, okay, right, right
Me 11:36:
Jim gatecrashing their meeting
Sanjay 11:37:
Jim is a legend
Me 11:37:
you should do it next, just walk up going "yeah, yeah, yeah, er yeah right"
Sanjay 11:44:
ha
Me 11:46:
yeah, yeah, um, yeah
Sanjay 11:52:
you basket
Me 15:43:
oh yeah, yeah, right
Sanjay 15:44:
you're a basket
Me 15:45:
our conversation history is just
oh yeah, yeah, right
you're a basket
that's what we have become
Sanjay 16:54:
oh yeah yeah
Me 10:04:
We asked Zack a few times if the Test Environment was patched with the new changes and he was just like "yeah, yeah, yeah"
ended up checking myself and it hadn't been
Sanjay 10:05:
I told him yesterday it was not patched
“anything that isn’t abnormal is normal”
Chris
“ah right”
Zack
Stranger Coding Tings 