Years ago, we were told that for GDPR (or for some other legal reason), we would always need staff in the UK so we can access data from the production database.
All the staff we hired in India would never be allowed access.
However, my employer once bought a house over the road from the office then allowed Indians to stay there for a few months. So they paid for the flight, Visa, all expenses accommodation to work in the UK for a bit. There was a rumour they could then access production databases but I’m not sure that is true because we have to have a DBS check to ensure we don’t have a criminal record.
Another colleague reckoned we brought them over because if you don’t promise Indians a chance to work in the UK, they will go work for an employer that does offer that. Once they have had their UK trip though, what incentive do they have to stay? Can’t they go work for someone else and get another free holiday?
An annoying aspect of it, is that it was still going on when we were going through a redundancy process, and yet they were trying to assure us the Indians weren’t taking our jobs. I did wonder what the cost was to employ them and pay for their brief UK stay. Kinda seems a hassle to organise as well.
I’m convinced I posted this before, but this was from Colin who shared his screen with an open spreadsheet of people’s wages.
Name
Role
Rupees
Yearly Salary £
Prasanth
Graduate Trainee
500000
4,295.00
Saranya
Software Engineer
650000
5,583.50
Hemalatha
Test Engineer
600000
5,154.00
Vinitha
Junior Software Engineer
700000
6,013.00
Vignesh
Software Engineer
1000000
8,590.00
Padmasri
Junior Software Engineer
650000
5,583.50
Hebsi
Software Engineer
1400000
12,026.00
Shoban
Software Engineer
800000
6,872.00
It’s crazy how much money is saved by hiring Indians. They have definitely taken our jobs over the years.
A few years ago, some team members had been moved onto other projects and we were left with two developers and one tester. I led the team, and it was a tough project which ended up getting delayed. The result was that some managers saw the delay as a failure, and others interpreted that we did a great job against adversity.
As the project reached its conclusion, our team merged with a team that managers claimed was one of the most successful teams. Additionally, my manager switched from Colin to Mary.
Mary said the initial plan was to merge the two teams, then we were adding 3 new developers, so the plan was to then split the team into 2 because it was too big. The other developer that I led actually moved to a different team.
Doesn’t really make any sense does it? May as well have added a couple of developers to my original team.
Mary criticised my leadership and made out that my team was a disorganised mess. Technically, Colin was the Technical Manager so was the equivalent of Mary’s role in this new team. I was the development Team Lead but I didn’t think I actually had responsibilities. I kinda think things just organise themselves really. I like a laid-back culture but would voice my concerns if I felt it wasn’t working.
I was actually looking forward to seeing how organised and productive their team was. I was good friends with a couple of their team members already and they always seemed to boast how productive they were, getting plaudist from external managers.
The first week
On the first standup, Dennis talks about a problem he was having for over 5 mins. I was thinking I would have interjected and asked to discuss at the end. In my previous team, I didn’t mind people talking off-topic because it was pretty much the only time you hear people talk. But at a certain point, I’d flag it and request we organise a separate meeting with anyone that is interested, leaving the other team members to go off and do work; which is even more important in a larger team. This team had a member assigned as “Scrum Master” and that’s his job to guide these meetings.
In one of the standups we were asked to estimate one of the items. Standups are for progress updates, not planning. Why are we planning mid-sprint?
Also during this Sprint, I saw that the team was working on items not assigned to the Sprint, and left unpointed (not estimated). Then when they do officially bring it in, they bring it in with fewer points because they estimate the remaining work; and ignore the investigation/prototyping work they had just done. So what happens to tracking their actual effort? They will be lowering their velocity working that way.
There’s another type of work item called “Spike” which is an investigation item. So if you know you have a requirement but have no idea how to implement it, then you can do some design/planning to make it clearer to estimate the actual item. This team was creating Spikes when they can’t recreate bugs and so I asked them what the idea was. The way I see it, instead of basically marking the item as blocked, you are creating another item to say it is blocked and then removing this new item when it is unblocked. The Scrum Master said he has no idea where the idea came from, couldn’t remember how long they have been doing it, but everyone has been following this process without questioning it. Weird.
Meeting Chaos
I got told to go into their shared Team calendar and add all the meetings into my personal calendar. It turned out they had multiple invites for the same meetings so it was easy to miss them. So instead of one meeting that recurs daily, they had 2 fortnightly meetings for Monday and Friday then another meeting which recurred weekly Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday. So 5 meeting invites in total just for the stand-ups; then invites for a few other types of meeting. I ended up initially missing a Stand-up meeting when it wasn’t in my calendar which Mary made out was my mistake. The invites were also set to show the reminder at 15 mins before which I find really annoying. I like 5 minutes or just alert on start. So I had to then go through all the invites and change the timing.
Not the amazing organised process we were promised
With Mary micromanaging and boasting of her ability, and with a dedicated Scrum Master, you think every aspect would run smoothly and processes would be perfectly followed. I didn’t think I’d hear/read statements like this:
“it’s tested, it just needs a test case writing for it”
Tester
Dennis: "Did you log the bug we found"
Tester: "no mate"
How are we supposed to check the bug is on an older version when the test environments are all on the current version and the API often doesn’t work? This is ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. It shouldn’t be like this. We’ve never had this before
Mary
Stubborn Management
When it comes to code reviews, we have a rule that it needs to be approved by 2 people that weren’t involved in the work. We needed Dean to help fix a few of the remaining bugs since we were running behind schedule, but Mary blocked it.
“you can’t help because we need you to do the approval”
Mary
Ok, we need people to review, but he could have reviewed what the other team member’s wrote, and we can review his parts. It’s not a big problem. Also what is worse? Finishing on time but it’s not reviewed, or finishing late but it is reviewed? You have to be pragmatic.
During integration testing, shortly before release, I found another bug. Mary and the Product Owner decided they wanted to keep it secret from Software Delivery. Mary tried to blag it to us that: because the bug hadn’t been directly found from a test case; then it can be released. She was then insistent we release the software as is, and fix known bugs later. I thought it was technically unsafe to do so.
NO Mary. That’s not only not how it works, but I did find it directly from a test case, so you have just mugged yourself off.
my thoughts
why is she doing this? it just reflects badly on the company. her job ain’t to ensure a deadline
my old team member
“I’m not comfortable putting our feature out like this…we are removing items just to get something out on time. Is this even legal?”
Tester
It just seems like they are clutching at straws and giving any kind of justification to not fix it. It also sounded like they have beef with the lead of Software Delivery so are avoiding talking to him.
Implied Disrespect
For the remaining bugs on my project there were clear “easy” and “hard” tasks. Mary explicitly told me to do the easy ones and Dennis to do the hard ones. We are on the same level, just that she is chummy with Dennis and doesn’t seem to trust me.
When it came to hiring these new developers, she said she chose them simply based on how much they talked because she didn’t want people that don’t talk in her team. Which I felt was a dig at me. I tend to hate smalltalk and struggle to talk to people I don’t feel comfortable with. Not that I dislike certain people, but I think there’s certain people that I tend to instantly connect with and feel myself, whereas others I find more intimidating and it takes me a while to open up. I can talk a lot at that point but sometimes people’s first impressions are that I am too shy.
When it came to the inductions, the Product Owner, Tech Lead and Scrum Master were all assigned to the “Welcome Meeting”. Dennis was assigned the “Ways Of Working” meeting, then Tech Lead, Scrum master and Dennis were assigned as Technical Mentors. Me and my tester who had joined the team weren’t assigned to anything. You could argue we hadn’t fully integrated into the team but we knew the process and weren’t new to the company. We felt disrespected there, like we weren’t official members of the team.
Complains about autonomy
During testing some of the remaining items, a bug was found, and I took the initiative and fixed it.
“we can’t keep working like this. You can’t keep finding bugs and fixing them”
Mary
She had berated us for not having many unit tests but that actually allowed us to work faster. She complains that I have made the decision to fix a newly discovered bug without consulting, but that also got it fixed faster. Then she was “really disappointed” that we had missed the deadline. It would have been worse if I hadn’t made these decisions.
However, the next day:
“Thanks both, efforts haven’t gone unnoticed with all this, I just feel bad for you guys it’s got so manic for so long”.
Mary
Performance Review
“You’ve got the ability to not be quiet”
Mary
In my end of year performance review, Mary says she has noticed an improvement since I joined the team. I think this is just coincidence and confirmation bias. I think she wanted to “manage” me and see an improvement; so that’s what she thought she saw. I was actually demotivated due to all the disrespect and had actually been taking longer breaks and finishing early.
Mary also told me that Colin told her what I said about her during the handover period. Colin is an absolute backstabber. What happened to talking to managers in confidence?
What I said to Colin is that Mary seems to try and micromanage. Constantly asking for updates, telling you to pick up tasks that you know you have on your To Do list. It’s like she doesn’t trust you to be autonomous, and then can claim credit for success because she has been controlling it the entire time – even if it would have had the same outcome if people were just left to manage themselves.
She also mentioned the tester had complained that I hadn’t had a call with him when he asked. I wanted to have a call but he was on a call for what seemed like hours. Then when he was free, I was busy so I missed the call again.
I actually thought she was rather positive and very friendly during the review; a change in mood that remained.
Closing Thoughts
It was a weird initial few months with that team. The hype of them being organised and productive didn’t seem to be true. Then I felt like I wasn’t welcome even though I was good friends with the main developers of the team, and had actually worked with the tester previously and got on with him.
I must have caught them at a bad time, because after the current projects were released, I didn’t notice much erratic behaviour from anyone, and Mary was never problematic again. What seemed like a nightmare quickly resolved itself and I have actually really enjoyed working with the team over the last couple of years. I suppose it could have been helped by the fact that Mary did take 1 year maternity leave and then we worked more autonomously. Maybe shows that these manager roles aren’t actually needed.
It’s been a long time since I wrote about Colin, a pretty incompetent software developer that seemed to be good friends with one of the high-ranking managers that seemed to lead to some bizarre promotions: to Senior Developer, to Principal Developer, then eventually switching to a managerial role. Talk about failing upwards.
The thing is, he came across as a bit scatter-brained so couldn’t imagine him actually being a good manager.
Here are some random stories I found from my notes and chat logs about how he performed as a manager.
Salary
Mike said Colin began sharing his screen on a meeting, and had a list of salary changes in a spreadsheet. Interesting how they have salaries lined up BEFORE the reviews which we haven’t had. Just as I have previously suspected. I suppose other managers have messed up in the past when a promotion was announced a week prior to the performance reviews.
I can imagine Colin eventually getting sacked for that type of mistake. It’s classic Colin, and as I predicted, the mistake did happen again a few months later. This time at a meeting I was involved in. We were trying to hire new developers for Colin’s teams. Colin was sharing his screen and had a list of employees that were leaving and their salaries.
When it came to my reviews, Colin kept on saying I was doing a great job but then pointing out one thing that was holding me back. It always seemed like an excuse to not give me more money or promote me. When I did switch managers, my new manager promoted me within a few months and gave me a £14k raise due to how behind I was compared to my peers.
Arranging Meetings
Colin often arranged meetings then didn’t turn up, or turned up late. He was constantly saying he was busy all day with meetings so sometimes scheduled meetings at bizarre times.
I was particularly annoyed when he arranged a weekly update meeting during lunchtimes, then half of the time doesn’t even show up. The update was mainly for him to collate info then take it to his manager, but he said we had to give our updates to the other teams, much like an Agile Scrum of Scrums meeting. So regardless if he was there, he went ahead.
There were some other meetings which he arranged, and where he was an important attendee and he turned up 25 mins late.
One time, I was about to leave for the day, and Colin said he had an end of year review meeting with someone in Chennai. That would be 10:30pm on a Friday. Indians often have a dedicated attitude towards work. I think just because they would agree to something like that, doesn’t mean you should actually book it.
An example of scatter-brained or panicky behaviour was when he started a meeting, shared the wrong screen. He declares he is “sharing the wrong screen”, but instead of stopping ‘sharing’, he leaves the meeting, then takes him a few minutes to actually rejoin the call, where he carries on like nothing weird happened.
Informing & Criticising
Colin: "he is coming in as a Solutions Architect rather than Technical Architect" Me: "what's the difference in the roles?" Colin: "I don't know, I'm just telling you the news"
I thought it was funny when he gave an update on the performance of the teams he was managing. “Last week was pretty bad for us. You guys don’t know this“, then says there were 8 Major Incidents, which got escalated to the Directors. What made it more funny to me was that the CEO had given out bonuses to his teams for apparently doing a great job. It was a fairly small bonus like a £50 Amazon gift card but still probably a regrettable action. I’ve said many times that managers seem to reward the wrong behaviour and struggle to identify the best performers. That’s another example. How can you go from doing a great job, to creating 8 disasters in one week?
I often found Colin to not practice what he preaches. So might lecture people about needing to improve code quality, but when he was a software developer, he was constantly cowboying solutions. Another example was that he says we should never put-off taking our annual leave because it can hide problems (it would illustrate a reliance on someone if they weren’t in), and show higher output for months then would suddenly drop towards the end of the year when people take annual leave at once. Then after his lecture, he then admits he hadn’t even taken 1 day off and we were 75% through the year.
Colin complained that Rob and I haven’t handled the project well, and it overran by over a month. A week or so later, the team was on a call with other stakeholders and he said “you guys have done a tremendous job”, then said the delay was caused purely by scope creep and nothing to do with the developers at all. I don’t know what to believe there. Maybe he did believe it was our fault but didn’t want to berate us publicly so was deflecting like a good manager. However, not declaring that to us meant we got mixed messages.
Near the end of that project, Colin showed me the items we had remaining and was like “you only have a few left to do…surely you can complete it all quickly”. I told Rob and he was as annoyed as me:
Rob: Its things like that that really make me nervous Blind hope without actually looking into the problems SURELY you can do it quickly right? If not you must be crap! Thanks for the morale boost!
The problem is, the project has dragged on due to complications, so the remaining work is probably quite difficult, but Colin is just seeing simple numbers. “3 tasks left; that’s not a lot”. But each task could take a week or two to get right. So even between 2 of us, it could take 2 weeks. Then Colin is setting the expectation it can be done within the week.
Closing Thoughts
When people have done a job for a while, then become a manager of those people, you would expect them to be great managers because they understand the work involved, the process, and problems they have faced with previous managers. However, time and time again, it’s like people forget their experiences and end up becoming bad managers.
In the early days, I wrote many blogs about Colin, a Senior Developer who was constantly writing bad code, cutting corners, and saying dumb stuff. After going through some old chat logs, I found a few stories that I don’t think I covered in the blog before:
Two Days For Nothing
Me 13:06: Colin asked me for help. He says he has spent 2 days on his Work Item No changes were needed; next!
Dean 13:06: haha what's the Work Item about?
Me 13:07: he was baffled by everything. He was creating a template with “Last Entry” field and he was like "why isn't it showing anything" I said "your selected record is empty"
Colin just accidentally checked in a changeset – not just a file, but everything
Me, in dismay
Misleading Braces
Usually you use braces to group together blocks of code like for an If Statement, or Methods. Colin put his logic on the same line as the “if”, but then used a brace under it. So it looked like the brace belonged to the “If Statement” but it actually did not. We weren’t even aware you could just randomly put braces around code like that.
if ((!criterianValueSets.Any() || hasConcepts)) return hasConcepts;
{
//other code here
Me 10:12: what a sneaky return. I'm surprised you can have a { after a return like that
Dean 10:12: so what does the { even mean here? like why is that code block in braces if it's not related to the if statement?
Me 10:12: just groups together a random bit of code I guess technically it is the else
Dean 10:12: so can you do that wherever you want?
Me 10:12: I was wondering that you would have thought code analysis would moan even if it is valid
Dean 10:14: you can, weird, and it affects the scope too... is that legacy code where you found it?
Me 10:15: nope. Colin. always Colin
Node Resolvers
Colin didn’t know about the Accept and Cancel properties on a windows form. His mind was blown
Colin said there were multiple Node Resolvers and he was stripping out Nodes from one of them…then a minute later he says there are only 1 Node resolver and he wasn’t stripping out Nodes. Now Steve is confused because he was calling Colin’s code and was expecting it to strip them out
Open closed principle
Me 15:12: Colin is making a bit of a fool out of himself, showing a lack of knowledge of programming concepts I said to him “do we really need 3 separate methods for this? what about 1 method with a switch?” So he simply replied “Open closed principle” So I explained he was actually violating that principle by writing it the way he did. “If there was a new Node system, you would have to change this dialog. It doesn't matter if you do my suggestion or leave it as it is. To conform to the open closed principle, surely you would need to pass in an object which can return the string. That way if a new Node system is added, you would add a new Node system object, and this class wouldn't need to be touched. Anyway, merging the 3 methods would be neater”
Dean 15:13: Urrrgh
Me 15:13: I also slagged off that class he wrote before “I reckon that the guy who came up with Polymorphism would be in tears if he saw this class.” Colin had replied “Is that a complement ? I do not see any problem with it .”
I then emailed him with how to write it, and he now realises I am right
Dean 15:14: That's good
Bugged Mindset
Colin always gets annoyed when I find a bug in his code.
But when testing miss something he loves it, even though it’s out in live and therefore it looks bad for all of us.
He’s not happy I have logged two bugs for his provenance story
NodeSystemCompatibility
Colin wrote a few similarly named methods but they did slightly different things but it wasn’t clear when to call them, and some returned a different value than what you would expect.
Me 12:45: CheckNodeSystemCompatibility , IsNodeSystemCompatible what is the difference?
Dean 12:45: Lol
Me 12:45: but don't call IsNodeSystemCompatible for documents, you need CheckDocumentForCompatibility and CheckNodeSystemCompatibility has a switch that calls different methods and then negates them case FolderItemTypes.DocumentTemplate: return !IsNodeSystemCompatibileForDocumentTemplate(selectedItem); so if it is compatible, CheckNodeSystemCompatibility returns false I think we should just delete the branch and pretend it didn't happen
Dean 12:50: Hahahahaha Why are they overcomplicating things??
Me 12:53: they want bugs. it's not even unit tested
Dean 12:57: What?!
Health and Safety
Me 14:08: Colin has a wrist rest on the windowledge and it has melted
Dean 14:08: ha
Me 14:08: the gooey stuff has dripped down towards the plug sockets bit of a health and safety hazard meanwhile, he also had a hot chocolate hidden behind his monitors that stunk of sick
Dean 14:10: nice
Me 14:13: Colin claims he got that drink this morning a bit worrying if the machine is dishing out sick
Me 15:22: Mel reported Colin's wrist rest incident the handyman dude is here to save the day
Dean 15:23: thank god
Multiple Attempts
Me is this correct? ...we can copy folders if there is one item we can copy, regardless if there are loads which it can't copy?
Colin my mistake. should be the otherway round. Will change this to "!documentItems.Any(di => di.CanCopy)"
Colin correction. documentItems.Any(di => di.CanCopy.Equals(false)); lol
Colin documentItems.All(di => di.CanCopy). sorry my brain isn't working.
if the returned object isn't null, create it again and check a property classic Colin
Dean 16:18: Wtf; that's melting my head i don't see how you can take any enjoyment out of development writing code like that
Christmas has come early
Me 16:18: seems Colin has left us with 36 failing unit tests Christmas has come early
Manager 16:19: want me to get him to sort them out?....
Me 16:19: are you going down there and punch him in the stomach Manager 16:20: gonna stove his head in!!....
No Unit Tests
Me 13:22: Colin fixed a bug “Fix bug where protocols created pre-version 1.5 shows N/A rather than the correct value” On the code review: “Me unit tests? Colin Not failing”
oh that's ok then. Just fix a bug and don't cover the missing scenario WHY DO I WORK HERE? Dean 13:22: Why would you not write one?? Me 13:22: it may fail if you write one 😀
No Root Cause
In one part of our application, we always have problems where you select some data in a grid, then the menu bar refreshes multiple times.
This time, there was a bug involving a menu option not becoming enabled until you hover the mouse over it – which was very strange.
Colin then decides to fix this new issue by adding another call to refresh the menu. Brilliant. It already flickered many times – let’s add another flicker!
The lead developer questions this change, and asks him what the root cause was. “This code is complicated, so I didn’t investigate”. Brilliant, totally lazy.
Luckily another developer stepped in and provided the proper fix.
If you don’t understand how the problem came about, then you could end up adding “hacky” code to make it work. But this just pollutes the codebase with more bad code and can cause more confusion and make the codebase harder to diagnose future issues. Good developers don’t cut corners like that.
A few years back, I was assigned to mentor one of the Software Developer Apprentices and wrote about him in a series, the last one being Mentoring #7. There, I mentioned that our manager, Colin, was supposed to be setting him challenges (with the aim of sacking him) or finding him some kind of alternative role, possibly as a Software Tester.
The Apprentice turned that idea down, but I thought it would be a good career move if he went for it, because he didn’t seem to have the problem-solving skills required to be a developer. I was increasingly thinking he was one of those people that is “all talk and no action”.
So I’ll go through a few events that’s happened since then.
Colin’s Kanban
I always thought Colin was a bit disorganised, or he’d often come up with ideas then quickly abandon them. When we hired some new developers, Colin created a Kanban board with Tasks that they need to complete for their induction. He said The Apprentice needed to do it as well to ensure we had trained him adequately. The theory was that if the new starters start writing code after completing our training, and The Apprentice doesn’t; then it’s evidence that HR will require to sack him.
After a month, I checked the Kanban board and there was no progress.
Me 15:36
Remember the new starter training programme?
The Apprentice 16:15
What do you mean remember?
This is my programme, although I'm not exactly working on it like that
Me 16:28
nothing has moved on the board for weeks
The Apprentice 16:30
I don't get your point as we haven't been asked to move anything on the board etc. Maybe it's just for managers to plan etc
Me 16:38
It's a kanban board. It's supposed to be what you are currently doing and what you have left.
I haven't heard a peep out of those new starters
The Apprentice 16:40
I haven't received any such instructions and am doing the tasks I have been asked to do. But I will speak to Colin now that you mention it cos I probably am supposed to be doing that.
So Colin had basically abandoned it, but then there’s no determination to impress from The Apprentice. He is just chilling away without a care. He could have easily provided evidence he had completed everything and impressed Colin.
LibreOffice Config
My Apprentice picked up a bug where he needed to switch the configuration from MS Word to LibreOffice. I told him to configure LibreOffice in Configuration Manager. He asks if it is a feature in the main program. I tell him it isn’t; Configuration Manager is a separate configuration tool.I want him to try and work independently so I need to give him generic advice for the future. To try and work out how to enable features in our software, I tell him that in general you can check:
the independent Configuration Manager tool (newer features are most likely here),
Organisation Configuration in the main software,
then the modules themselves.
For point 3, one example I gave is that the Users module has its own Configuration screen. 30 mins later he says
“I checked User Config and I can’t see an option for LibreOffice“.
Apprentice
Before I gave him the generic advice, I told him it was in Configuration Manager. Then when I gave him the generic advice, I listed Configuration Manager first. Why didn’t he check them in the order I said? He either doesn’t pay attention or just comes across as trolling by slowly doing the wrong thing.
Oblivious
We had some mandatory Security Training presented remotely from a third-party, which started at 9:00 and lasted half the day. It was 12:45
“Is this Security training something everyone should attend?
Apprentice
The Set Up
When he first joined, I showed him how to check out our code repository, how to build it, where to get the databases from, and we rewrote the New Starter documentation together. He had replaced his laptop recently, so he had to set it up again. He asked me a question about how to access a database backup server, so I asked him why? He mentioned he wanted a particular database from the server. So I asked him “why?” – if he is following the instructions we wrote; it doesn’t say to do that. He claimed he was following the instructions.
“I’m honestly on the instructions, I can’t see what you are referring to.”
Apprentice
The funny thing was, I didn’t have the instructions open but I remember what it said. So I open them, click the Database section in the Table of Contents, then copy the instructions into the chat that say something along the lines of “Run the following SQL script to create the database:”.
What was he looking at? Or why was he pretending the instructions said to access the database backup server? I could have all the databases configured in 20 mins at most, and he dragged it out for hours.
Performance Review
When it was time to do objectives, he obviously didn’t have much to write about because he hadn’t done any work. Apparently, he had a “spreadsheet of evidence” though, so maybe I am wrong. We had a form that we needed to submit and he spent the entire day transferring the spreadsheet to the form. The next day, I had some free time, so I told him I’d help him look into his assigned software bug. He said that he wants an extra 30 minutes to finish the form…which then became a few hours. See what I mean about being “all talk and no action”? He just makes excuses to not do his work.
False Confidence
I ran out of ideas on a bug fix I was working on. I told my colleagues in the group chat on Slack. The Apprentice says
“Fancy a call to talk your thoughts? I’m kind of getting good. And I can share my ideas”
Apprentice
I was completely baffled where this confidence was coming from. He hasn’t fixed anything himself and struggles to come up with ideas. I am not opposed to a Junior correcting/inspiring me, but there’s no evidence to suggest that he could do it.
Support
Last month, he told me he has a new job, but is actually staying within the company. He has switched to 2nd Line Support. I don’t really get how that interview went. Being a software developer is about diagnosing then fixing issues, whereas support is just about diagnosis. (If there is a known fix that they can do without assistance from development, then they can fix the problem too). So I think it makes sense that people move from Support into Development if they have learned how to code, but I have never seen the switch the other way. I am intrigued how that is going to go. He has already started making claims like “this is much more suited to my skills”, “I’m really happy with this role”, but it’s early days.
Last year, we felt slightly aggrieved that our employer made out they would match inflation with our pay rises, but then disguised it with: a one-off profit share, pension payments, and optional benefits. Our wage only increased by 2% but inflation was currently around 7% and predicted to rise further. Better than nothing though, so can’t really complain.
With inflation being 10%, we wondered what we would get this year. Then came the communication that stated that they understand inflation, and remarked that we are still highly profitable so can cover the costs:
“Further to our communication at the end of 2022, I can now update you on our remuneration approach for 2023. We know and understand that employees are continuing to experience cost pressures and we remain committed to ensuring that the overall pay budget for this year reflects the continued external inflationary environment we are in. Whilst this has been possible due to the ongoing success of the business, it will require us to again manage our costs in 2023 carefully.”
HR Director
However, then they reminded us that they gave us:
an extra £200 one-off payment
Increased leave for parents
the option to work bank holidays and take a different day off instead.
they will give us a one-off profit share just like last year
So with them clutching at straws for things they have done, you know that means they weren’t giving us 10%. Maybe we could get 5% as a compromise then?
“The exact amount of any increase to an individual’s salary and timing will be agreed locally, as normal, and will be dependent on a number of factors including performance. I believe these measures reflect our responsibility to be aware of the external inflationary environment, our immense gratitude for your efforts over the past year and our desire to become an employer of choice.”
HR Director
What did I get?
0%
“immense gratitude for your efforts over the past year” 🤨
I’ve mentioned in previous blogs that judging performance is very subjective and often bent to fit a narrative, and I got completely screwed. So let’s get into it:
The Review
“You had an average year in 2022, working on only a couple of projects, one where you worked as an individual contributor then moved onto a pair project”
Well, that seems to imply just being on 2 projects in a year was a bad thing, but that’s not really my fault is it? Since I single-handedly delivered one project, then was in a team of 2, surely that should show I can handle responsibility and pressure?
“You were good in many technical aspects but were not able to step up to the plate as a leader in the team.”
I was in a team of 2 as a Senior Developer, and I got really good feedback from that team member. What more do you want?
“You were given an opportunity to lead on defining our interview process. I expected you to lead on this but have not shown much interest in it. Ultimately someone else led it, creating the interview pack, redefining interview questions and leading live interviews, which I think is a missed opportunity to shine.”
I blogged about this process. It was a mess, but at least I tried my best to direct it. We created an interview process for Graduate Developers from Indian universities who were using Python, but set them C# and Object-oriented questions…then asked questions on Software Testing which they also don’t do. I was pretty clear we needed to focus on the people we were targeting (Python and Web programming) and not on what the job was (C# Developer); (or even better, change the people we were targeting – but that was already decided upon). I got outvoted by the other Seniors. I felt I couldn’t lead in the interviews because I didn’t believe in the questions.
“I can see that you might not see Unit testing as a productive way forward, and the target set might not be accurate”
In recent times, managers have been demanding we achieve 80% test coverage and I have highlighted how poor many tests are that people write, and the 80% is a random target. It’s not improving the quality of code at all. Due to the fact I wrote little (but high-quality tests) I got criticised and talked about between senior management. I raised in my review that I believe managers now see my output as low quality, so I will need to repair my reputation.
I also raised that I was annoyed at the frequency of team member changes. My projects had Testers switched in and out, we changed Product Owners, Software Architect, and there was talk of more changes that didn’t happen. Colin then stated “I never raised my concerns at the time”, but I definitely did.
Some of the comments received from your colleagues:
“I think that he has been a good technical lead. His knowledge is excellent, and this has been shown in how he has been able to help me with any technical problems. He has constantly been available, has a great attendance record, and will defer annual leave for the good of the project. His code review comments are always clear, concise, and helpful. He is always available to help with Testing as well.”
“He has a good insight into what he thought was and was not possible”
“He needs to make sure that just because an issue is raised he doesn’t jump on it right away as there is a priority order for things”
“He’s reliable and just gets on with the work”
“Can be a bit quiet on calls at times but whenever I specifically call him out in calls, he would answer questions”
“At weekly meetings there wasn’t enough substance in his updates. He doesn’t come across as a leader to me or perhaps he just did not want to be at those meetings.”
I definitely got good feedback from people but then the positive ones were ignored in the discussion. I had good arguments against some of the negative points as well. I think I only picked up non-prioritised work when I had finished the work that was. What do you want me to do? Just sit there idle? I often knew it was issues related to recent work so it was obviously gonna be the highest priority, and as Team Lead, I think I can make that call myself.
I’m always annoyed when people criticise me for being quiet on calls. If enough people are saying the things I am thinking, then I don’t need to speak. If no one has raised the issue I am thinking of, then I will provide it. Then, if people specifically ask what I think, then I will say, even if I am repeating what others have said. That final feedback was about a meeting similar to a Scrum of Scrums where many teams get together. But the meeting was mainly for Colin and he rarely attended. So I had the attitude of quickly going through my points then moving on. I thought the wording was harsh – they have no idea what it is like to work with me directly.
I have no idea how they can justify giving me nothing. That’s like a 10% pay-cut with today’s economy.
Colin isn’t my manager anymore, so let’s hope my new manager will actually put things right.
A few years ago, there was a period of time where I ended up being on the calls after a Major Incident (MI) with our software was declared. I was amazed at the clear failings with the process. There were all kinds of various managers, then maybe a few people from Deployment, but then barely anyone from Development.
Then you’d have these managers just theorising if the Incident was caused by hardware or software, and if it was software – which enhancement/bug fix could have caused the issue?
It was pure guesswork of course, and occasionally they were right, but what is the point theorising when you could just get the people involved that can actually investigate it?
Sometimes I would hear about a Major Incident and then see that it was actually logged days ago. I think a problem is all the process between Support and Development. Support log incidents in their system and talk about “customer reference numbers”, but we need it in our system which is currently Azure DevOps and we talk about Work Item numbers.
So sometimes there might be a delay even logging it in Support, and then there is a delay until it actually gets transferred over to our system. Often we are on these calls and we ask for a Work Item number so we can read information rather than just waiting for someone to mention it on the call… and then we are told that they haven’t created a Work Item yet.
I remember a time when users complained to Support, then they logged a Bug straight away, and did really good investigation. Then it would come to us with full details. Now, users complain for weeks, it gets escalated up to the Directors, then comes down the Development managers to Colin, then we have barely information to look into it because the users haven’t provided it, or is just “Chinese Whispers” and the information gets lost.
It’s so frustrating because how can you attempt to diagnose anything without all the required information? So the call is pointless, but when you do have the information, then you don’t want to be on a call – you want to go and start looking into it because you want to diagnose it then fix it.
So let’s look at one of the last examples I was involved in…
Example
Colin messages me about a Major Incident.
“I need some investigation…”
Colin
Apparently 179 sites are complaining about this problem and threatening to leave. Despite being complaining since the Friday release, Colin only knows about it Wednesday. Classic. Not the first time this has happened.
So what can I investigate? What is even the problem? All I know is there is a problem with a certain feature, but the thing is, we integrate with several third party API’s and I haven’t been told which one it involves, and I don’t know what the problem the users are seeing is.
I ask Colin to elaborate:
“not sure which provider. Can we look into all of them? So one of them may be broken, but we need to look at them all and hope we find it”
Colin
Wut. You want me to test them all out and hope I notice a problem? But it could involve just one and require specific steps.
When I finally got some information, it was pretty sparse.
“between 2 minutes and 12 minutes for the dialog to pop up”
the problem
I told them I would have to see it happen, and see if there is anything different the user is doing to make it go from 2 minutes to 12 minutes. It sounds like a network issue, or not our fault.
“we will test it with a happy…well not a happy user, but an ‘engaged’ user”.
Manager’s suggestion of arranging a call with a user to witness the problem
I was then on a call with all kinds of random managers, all chipping in speculative accusations. “It’s a problem with the deployment“, “it’s a problem with the amount of data in their Tasks module“, “it’s a problem with the number of user-created resources“.
Colleague Opinion
I was discussing this with one of my colleagues and he re-iterated my views:
"they red flag anything nowadays - they just wave their flags around
It’s always the case that someone knew several days ago, but now it needs fixing immediately and it’s the first time any developer has heard about it
why can it not go:
Problem logged by customer -> Support discuss with Release Management -> Release Management arrange call with the correct Team Leader -> Prioritises the work with a developer and tester
I don't see how that's difficult
What actually happens:
Problem logged by customer -> sits in a list for a while
Problem management person looks at issue -> sits in list for a while
Someone kicks off and escalates the issue -> Director gets it in the neck -> Release Management notified
Release Management hold a call -> float many theories about what the issue is about
Developer randomly hears about issue -> mistakenly joins call mid-flow -> explains that it's probably related to the work item with the same keywords as the issue in the title
Developer now late with their own work
Release management say they'll prioritise the issue, but asks if you could start working on it -> Developer says no because you are busy working on 8 different things -> everyone in a huff
Team Leader nowhere to be seen -> likely watching the TV"
Apparent Analysis
A manager recently posted an update with facts that I was sceptical of:
“Analysis conducted into 2 years worth of Major Incidents
Some interesting trends have appeared and I think it’s worth discussing:
Data shows that most of the MIs are caused by either a 3rd party or tech debt/ops related issues. The number attributed to code change is pretty low.
We are lacking ownership around domains for existing products so not obvious which Engineering Manager is accountable.
We don’t have enough SQL skills to manage our complex DB
We rely upon a small number of people to investigate MIs.
MIs should be owned with the right teams.
Further investigation required on this and changes to ownership, structure, investment needs to happen.”
Release at Pace
Another interesting claim was made by another manager:
“There’s lots of interesting developments going on at the moment; we’re delivering more than ever before.”
Manager claim
I message the Software Delivery Manager to ask if there is any truth in that, because I thought we were releasing at the slowest pace.
“Who knows? I reckon one of those blaze statements that people just say to make it sound good”
Software Delivery Manager
On a recent Development meeting, one person posed a question to the Head of Development:
“Deploying software at speed is ultimately what we want to do as a business. However, this can come at a cost. We have had more Incidents in Q1 caused by software defects than we did in the whole of last year! How do we ensure the deployed code is at the quality required if we are going to deploy at speed?”
Staff member’s concern about software quality
If we deliver more changes, I suppose there is more risk of introducing more bugs. If you are rushing, then you are more likely to create Major Incidents. I suppose you can say it is fine if there’s more bugs in general, but all considered low severity.
The Rapid Responders Group
As a response to this, I think Colin came up with the idea of the “Rapid Responders Group”
“We are deploying our software at a pace we have never done before, so we can miss scenarios that could happen in the production environments as we have seen in the last two MIs. If we can get information straightway, we can investigate the issue straightaway. We all have access to the Live environment. With our technical ability, we might be able to see things that other people might not, so this is why I have assembled this team.”
Colin on his new idea
However, it was quickly shot down by one of our architects and never mentioned again.
“With one of the MIs, there was absolutely nothing we could’ve done between the people in this channel to anticipate that as it relates to a combination of live configuration and state that can’t be replicated.
In general the problems we have with the MI process is making changes takes too long due to processes and permissions, noise from the non-experts present (it’s hard to get a word in edgeways with some people), and multiple people bugging those performing the fixes/changes for updates (when it should be one person who fronts the technical team working on sorting it out)”
Architect
“We had first-hand experience of this on the last Major Incident call. We could have fixed it within 30 minutes but was on a call discussing it for hours.”
Colin
Architect:
It's usually the fault of those running the call or lack of confidence in Dev.
I will say when we have enough information to make a fix - that I'm departing the call to concentrate. As you say, it will otherwise go on for hours, with multiple people fronting opinions on the cause of the problem, unless someone identifies it with confidence and takes the initiative.
When an MI occurs, it's always the same group of people, which is often a pretty good mix, but first we need to identify the cause.
Usually it takes a long time for the details of the MI to be logged, particularly somewhere Development can all access such as a Work Item. If you miss the start of the call, it's difficult to know what the details of the original issue were: you can guarantee you missed something of importance.
I would suggest the following to help the diagnosis run more smoothly:
When a release is made, it must identify a point of contact for each change, preferably the team email address making the change.
When an MI is started, a brief description must be provided in written form and a source-of-truth record started (such as a Work Item).
The Release Point Of Contact list is emailed with details of the MI starting.
They might not need to join the call unless there is something they can add, but at least if they feel their input valuable to the diagnosis they can join or reply with details.
After identifying the team/person working on a fix, they are protected by a single manager. The manager will be responsible for communicating with the techies and the outside world, so they can concentrate. They will update the Work Item and email those who need to know progress, what the fix entails etc.
Work out a way to expedite changes to live and retrospectively log change requests
Principal Developer:
From the MI's I've been involved in, they mostly run smoothly - the only disruption is (as Mike said) people "sticking their oar in" and having a guess at what the problem might be - sometimes forcefully.
They are not always wrong, but sometimes it can distract from getting to the route of the issue, you need to have the confidence to talk over them and get the information you need, correct misunderstanding, and to keep the discussion on track. A lot of the time the initial presentation from support can be way off the mark, but that is true of most bugs we get due the lack of technical skill in support. Only the developers on the call are going to be able to diagnose a fault as a result of a code change.
The primary focus of an MI call is to restore service ASAP, exploring workarounds is part of the developers role on the call - can we change a stored proc / setting to improve things now? This helps users and gives development more time to work on a fix. Another role is to assist the wider business (especially those in the Safety and Governance roles) to understand the issue - is it as bad as initially reported, or is it worse!?
Once we know what the problem is, and how we will resolve it, then it is OK to drop off and work on the fix.
Conclusion
I think it is clear that too much time is wasted discussing the problem with the wrong people. Managers need to find the correct group of technical people, give them all the information they need, then give them time without hounding them – in order to actually fix it.
This long blog documents what I have been working on for the past year. I had made lots of notes with the aim of writing a blog, in addition to taking extra notes from chat logs.
We actually estimated the project would take around 5 months, but then an extra 2 months for testing and go through our slow rollout process. It actually took closer to a year. I’d say it was a combination of:
realising the feature was more complicated than anticipated
the UX team had little knowledge of the actual user experience
managers changing or trying to change team members
We were told the project was important, yet we were only assigned 2 developers (as in myself and one other). As the project came to a close, we were being integrated into our new team, therefore other developers could help out during the final stages.
Here is a list of all the people involved over the project’s lifetime:
Name (Core team in bold)
Role
Me
Developer (Team Lead)
Daniel
Developer
Dean
Developer (Temporary)
Dennis
Developer (Temporary)
Tina
Tester
Tim
Tester
Colin
Technical Manager
Mary
Technical Manager
Olivia
Product Owner
Owen
Product Owner
Carl
Customer Representative
Adam
Architect
Andy
Architect
Grace
Safety & Legal Governance
Ulrika
UX
Ursula
UX
I’ve made the names start with a letter to represent their job title, apart from Colin because he is a recurring person in my blogs. I’ll put reminders throughout the blog so it is easy to follow.
Current Software
To protect anonymity, I need to come up with a different theme for what the software is for. Let’s say customers request various restricted items of different severity. So a request could come in for a Hunting Rifle, and the user needs to know if they have the adequate licence to possess firearms and they are deemed medically safe in a recent time-frame. Possible warnings are shown which the user can dismiss/acknowledge e.g. “licence is up for renewal in the next 3 months”, “recent purchase of other firearms”. Standard users can create “Awaiting Approval” tasks and assign them to users with authority to approve. To approve them, the authorised users open the task list, view the details, then click approve. Many tasks have either no warnings, or low-severity warnings, so users often just glance at the info and click Approve. The system then sends the approved request to a central system, then loads up the next task. There’s a couple of seconds delay due to the “digital signing”, a couple of seconds for sending, then loading up the next record. To sign loads of tasks, it’s a very slow and laborious process. It’s a major source of complaints from our users.
Unsafe/Unofficial Automation
Carl [Customer Representative] sent a link to a video where someone was demoing a commercial automated tool that autocompletes the tasks. It waits for the system to load, clicks the approve button, then repeat. So you could set it running, then walk away from your desk.
I thought it seemed ridiculously irresponsible and would cause people to be sacked if they got caught using such a tool:
A) The program is now the one authorising the tasks, not the qualified user. What’s the point needing to have qualifications if you aren’t even going to read what is on-screen? If a task was wrongly approved, then the user would be accountable.
B) if you walk away from your desk, you are leaving your PC unlocked, along with your physical Security Key.
The creator had actually put a bit of thought into it though. If there are any Warnings that require another click to dismiss/override, then the automation is paused.
The video claimed that some users have up to 500 tasks to sign after a weekend. They charge a fixed yearly fee of £295, plus 7p per customer on the system per year.
“the robot does not get bored, does not make human errors, and crucially is a lot cheaper than the user’s hourly wage”
Promotional video for the Automation tool
Probably just makes robotic errors instead!
I said we should change the names of the buttons to try and screw them since it probably uses something like that to locate the button to click. It would be quite funny to make them dish out refunds.
The existence of the automation tool shows how much the users desire a better solution.
UX User Feedback
Given the existence of such an automated tool, it is no surprise that one frequently requested feature is Batch Approval. Our UX team put together some kind of interactive prototype and invited a few users to provide feedback on two designs. The alternative design was actually produced by Mary [Technical Manager] who has no UX qualifications. I’m not sure how that came about and why UX agreed to trial her design, but the feedback was actually extremely favourable to her design.
This caused her to be quite smug and maybe caused some animosity as we will see later. The ratings out of 5 were:
(Option A) 4.3 for Mary’s design
(Option B) 2.3 for UX Team’s design
For additional comments, one user commented:
“I prefer Option A by a country mile – Option B feels even worse than the existing system!”
Another commented:
“Option B feels more clunky, less user friendly than option A. A lot of clicking involved”
One even gave a threatening response:
“Option A or you’re gonna lose me and my franchise”
Shortly, there was a write-up from a conference where the feature was announced:
“This item is one that really did steal the show – this is something that our customers have been very eager to see us implement and are very excited to learn that we are busy developing this solution.”
“Busy developing this solution” made me laugh, because at the time, all I had was a dialog box with a couple of lines of text and a button.
Proposed Change
The general idea, is that the user is presented with key details from the tasks in a data grid.
They can click checkboxes to select which tasks they want to approve.
These are added in a queue to send in the background.
The user can continue working as they are sending.
The “digital signing” has to take place on the user’s computer so a large part is done client-side.
The user has to remain logged in until the process is finished.
This project had actually been discussed for years, but because there wasn’t much of a “commercial drive” for it – we would be giving users this feature for free – it was always low priority.
Product Owner: Owen
I think the initial planning was done by a different Product Owner but then when the project fully began, we were assigned a new Product Owner, Owen, who was new to the company, but he also gave me the impression that he was new to the role…but also didn’t seem very clever in general.
Here are some quotes that happened in various meetings (mainly Sprint Planning and Refinement).
Owen: "which work item is it?"
Me: “the one right at the top"
Owen: slowly scrolls...chooses 2nd item
Me: "it's not a Must, it is a Could"
Owen saves it with Must tag
Tim [Tester]: "No, Owen, you tagged it wrong, go back"
Owen: "Which WI is this?"
saves it with the Must tag again
Then goes back into the work item and gets confused
then goes back into it again. I think he needs rebooting
Me: "you need to set the state"
Owen clicks to close
Me: "you need to set the state, go back"
Owen is confused
Me: "left hand side Owen!"
Owen hovers over the right
Me: "left hand side Owen!"
Owen moves down
Me: "leave it as it is"
Owen "Which one shall I take out?"
I'm sure he is intentionally 30 seconds behind to wind us all up
Owen changes Story Points from 3 to a 5 without any discussion.
"shall we keep it at 5?"
For another item, I was talking about how the requirement is either obsolete, or needs a completely different approach from the initial proposal.
Owen: "So how many points shall we add?"
"The system crashes when entering incorrect PIN and clicking 'OK' on error prompt"
Owen: "what was the behaviour before we fixed this?"
team: "It crashed"
We were discussing how we logged a bug a few months back but haven’t seen it occur since, so it will need some investigation to try work out what the recreation steps are.
“Assuming the bug still exists, how long will it take to fix it?”
Owen
Estimating software changes is hard, but I always think bugs are even harder to estimate. It’s only possible if there’s clear recreation steps, otherwise it is stupid to ask – we can’t fix it if we don’t know what the problem even is.
“depending on Grace’s [Safety & Legal Governance] feedback, do you know how long it would take to fix?”
Owen
Translation: can you predict what Grace would say, and given that she did say it, can you come up with an estimate for it?
I logged a bug about suggestions on how to improve a dialog. It would be up to Owen or UX to decide on the approach to fix it. Owen then asks questions along the lines of: “what do we need to do for this? do we need it?” I said it would be nice but it’s not my decision. Then he still asks “do we need it?” “can we close it?“
What’s the point asking me these questions, when I logged it with the aim of asking him to decide?
When the project deadline was looming, we ended up having multiple meetings to decide if there’s any features we could scrap, or defer to a later release. After the first meeting where we decided scope, he may as well have said “You know those items you said we need to do and couldn’t defer them, are you sure we can’t defer them”, because he was arranging subsequent meetings to go back over them. When we came up with estimates which showed that we would need at least another month, he was then arranging another meeting to re-estimate them.
The Architects
An important project started around the same time ours did. Our architect, Adam [Architect], was reassigned to the new project. Andy [Architect] joined our team as a replacement. He wasn’t completely new to the company but wasn’t familiar with this area of the system. Additionally, I don’t think he even looked at the software or even requested a demo.
Any question we asked him, he ended up making an excuse that he was busy and will get back to me later. Then when he did answer, I then sent a message to the original architect, Adam, and he said Andy had asked Adam about it and simply relayed the message back to us. So basically Andy wasn’t doing anything. We had him officially assigned, but it was Adam [Architect] that was answering the questions but via a middle-man.
The July Cancellation
There was a bit of disruption when our project looked to be cancelled, but there was apparently some mis-communication.
Hi All, a decision has been made by Directors to stop Batch Approval and to move resources across to pick up Project France instead. Therefore I will be cancelling the Batch Approval meetings.
Project Manager
1 day Later
The directors had decided to move you to the new project so I cancelled the meetings, but then I find that there wasn’t a firm decision from the Directors.
Project Manager
Brian has asked us to proceed with Batch Approval as originally planned. Sorry about the chaos dudes. They must be smoking some good drugs upstairs.
Olivia [Product Owner]
It was off the table, then someone put it back on the table, then someone else swept it off the table, then someone picked it up off the floor and put it back on the table.
Andy [Architect]
Coding Tales
Colin [Technical Manager]: "What sprint are you in?"
Me: "I dunno"
Colin [Technical Manager]: "you are the team lead, you should know"
Me: "No one in the team knows"
Put it in a new tab but make it behave like a dialog
The original UX designs looked like it fit nicely in the existing Task Framework. The requirements were that Batch Approval had:
Its own folder but is a sub-folder of Approvals
Opening a task opens it in a new tab
After looking at the code though, the framework didn’t actually support a sub-item. But we found a basic workaround to make it look like it did. However, there were quite a few features that we got “for free”, but we didn’t want them because they weren’t appropriate for a sub folder. So I had to disable the features by hacky code.
If you double click a task, then it opens in a new tab, which is what they wanted. However, they then didn’t want you to be able to navigate away into other parts of the system, and the Task Framework didn’t support that. With a bit of a workaround, I got that working, but the tab was designed to view one task only, and we are displaying a Batch of them. A few weeks went by and I managed to cobble something together, but the code was awful.
I took a step back and thought about it.
We have a tab that the users surely would expect to be able to move away from to view other tabs.
I’m using this “tab” which is designed for a single task, and I want multiple. So I had to make my own custom page.
We have hacked a sub folder and had to basically fight against the codebase to get it all working…
So why don’t we just have a button on the main folder, and it launches a modal dialog?
It would take a couple of days to get working,
the code would be neat,
and I think it’s what the user would expect.
After speaking to UX about it, they were happy with my proposal. I had wasted about 3 weeks trying to get it working like they previously wanted. Also, we are again telling UX what a good UX design is.
Scrollbar
The UX was also clear that we didn’t want a scrollbar to appear, and instead we use pagination. I didn’t see anything obvious in the standard DataGridView Winforms control, although I’m sure this is a common problem/requirement.
I ended up writing my own logic to add controls to the grid, keep track of the size, then stop adding when the size exceeds the height of the control. However, if there is only 1 very large task, we have no choice but to use a scrollbar.
The problem we encountered was that sometimes a scrollbar did appear when it shouldn’t. I made some tweaks to the calculation and it seemed to work fine. But then a Tester found a combination of task sizes where it still appeared. I couldn’t work out what I was missing in the calculations but it seemed about 4 pixels off, so I just added that into the calculation. Again, all seemed fine for a few days, but then the Tester found a combination of sizes where it still appeared.
Olivia [Product Owner] suggested that we detect when there is a scrollbar then disable the Approve button until the user scrolls down.
I said if we know when the scrollbar is there, why don’t we just remove the last task and check for the scrollbar again, repeat until the scrollbar has gone. I thought the code would be messy, and I’d end up writing a stupid code comment like “mate, something has gone wrong with the calculations here, so we’re gonna have to do some jiggery pokery to get out of this mess”.
Adam [Architect] did suggest some alternatives and they were just as wildly wrong.
Dean, a developer in another team agreed to help, and after a couple of days, he says “you can just set the vertical scrollbar to be disabled”.
But if the scrollbar is appearing so you have to scroll to view the content, then surely disabling the scrollbar will mean content is off the screen?
I tested his idea, and it worked fine! What must be happening is that the vertical scrollbar appears and takes some of the horizontal space… which causes the text to wrap and creates the need for more vertical space. Therefore the scrollbar is required and so remains. But if you tell the scrollbar it cannot appear, then the controls are added, and my calculations meant it fit perfectly in the grid.
It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy!
Olivia [Product Owner]: Do we have concerns about the unknowns?
Tim [Tester]: It's just the unknowns that we don't know about
I feel like you need to know the system inside and out to be able to safely implement this
Conflict With The UX Team
UX: “We want to minimise pop-ups”
Also UX: “Add a pop up after closing the dialog”
Ulrika [UX] had to take time off to deal with some personal problems. Ursula [UX] agreed to join the meeting we arranged on the Wednesday.
“I don’t work Thursday/Friday and have to leave early on a Wednesday to get the kids. I’ll get back to you next week”.
Ursula covers for Ulrika but then also has time off.
When she got back to us, she seemed to overlook how users access this restricted part of the system, and it turned out none of the UX team actually had this knowledge. So halfway through the project, we were discovering new requirements because they hadn’t designed the user flow.
Don’t Have Time
In early January, we were waiting for UX to give us some approved text but they seemed to be taking their time. I asked Olivia [Product Owner] what was going on, and she said that we don’t have time to make any more changes so they “needed to stop requesting changes”. Even though I pointed out that I was the one requesting changes, she said “we don’t have time to test” (even though it only involved quickly checking some text has changed on a message box). Nearly 2 months went by before we actually began to release.
After more protests from me, she says:
“The text is fine for now. We don’t have time to be changing it.”
Olivia [Product Owner]
When it came for the final review, reviewers questioned why we had dialogs with some ToDO comments on it saying “ToDo: Awaiting UX approval“. Even if you don’t have comments like that, I have seen developers question the user-facing messages if the grammar isn’t correct or sounds unclear. It definitely wasn’t clear because we just wrote the first thing that popped into our heads at the time; knowing the text would be replaced.
I think what had happened was that Mary [Technical Manager] and Olivia [Product Owner] had fallen out with Ulrika [UX], and then was refusing to authorise her changes. Remember, tensions will have been building since users criticised Ulrika’s design and wanted Mary’s design, and Mary’s arrogance about it wouldn’t have gone down well.
It’s just part of the process though – all text needs to be approved by the UX team; otherwise what is the point of their team?
Conflict With The Architect
When we implemented Adam [Architect]’s suggested invalidation logic, we thought the criteria was too restrictive. Adam was off on annual leave for a few weeks so we couldn’t consult him. So we made our own decision to change it, and got Carl [Customer Representative] and Grace [Safety & Legal Governance] in agreement. However, when the Architect saw it, he said it was unsafe. In many meetings, I got the impression Grace wasn’t really listening and she tended to agree with what we said. Not exactly great when your job involves telling the team what is safe and legal, and then get overruled by the Architect.
We came up with a compromise, and implemented it. Then when it came to the Code Review, Adam suggested removing one more of the sub-rules which I think would be perfect, but then Olivia [Product Owner] was reluctant for us to make more changes.
Then a week later, Olivia said she would arrange another meeting to discuss the rules because she felt it might be too restrictive. OMG. However, she then seemed to have personal grievances with Adam, so told me not to make the simple change, even though it would be what we want. She used the excuse of lack of Testing time.
Adam [Architect]
We shouldn’t be knowingly introducing bugs.
Olivia [Product Owner]
This is not a bug. It’s a change to the criteria and we are not going to change it a week before we finish. I am speaking to Carl [Customer Representative] about changing the criteria, and we’ll look at it then.
Adam [Architect]
A bug is any deviation from requirements. Why are you planning on changing it if it is not a bug?
Olivia [Product Owner]
That’s not a bug. You are right in the sense that we need to change it…we’re just not changing it now. I was happy to leave it as it was to get this out of the door. That’s my call to make.
Mary [Technical Manager]
There's a lot that's not right. But how long do we keep going until we give it to the customers?
A summary of how this situation appears to me:
There is a process, but if you declare you want to move the process to the next release, then it is fine.
It will take too long to change a few lines of code, so we ain’t doing it. Apart from when it is a comment on the Code Review, then we are doing it, apart from those that we aren’t.
It takes longer for Olivia [Product Owner] to argue against it than to fix it.
The CEO had recently posted:
“The most important thing we do every day is keep our users and their customers safe by managing risk effectively. I know you all know this, but it warrants repeating: safety is our number 1 priority all day, every day – regardless of anything else that is going on. It trumps everything. Please always remember that.”
CEO
Our Managers are like:
“Next release”
The Technical Manager change
Colin [Technical Manager] complains that Daniel [Developer] and I haven’t handled the project well – and it overran by over a month at that point. A week or so later, the team was on a call with other stakeholders and he said
“you guys have done a tremendous job”,
Colin
then said the delay “was caused purely by scope-creep and nothing to do with the developers at all”.
“Mary is in charge of the team since yesterday”
Colin [Technical Manager] with his timely announcement
I got the impression that Mary just wanted to get rid of the project, because it was dragging on for far too long.
The Testers had nothing to do since us Developers were working on the last few bug fixes. Tina [Tester] said she was just re-testing old features to pass the time, but also get extra confidence there are no remaining bugs. Mary [Technical Manager] replied:
“should we be doing testing when changes are ongoing?”
Mary
Well, in that case, this statement means testers should only be hired for a couple of weeks right at the end of a project – since changes are constantly ongoing. I think she might have intended it to mean like “you’d better not find more bugs!”, but if there are bugs, then you definitely want to find them before our users do.
On the last day of the Sprint, Tina [Tester] took annual leave. She had left her assigned items in the “To Test” column of the Kanban board. There was no evidence she had tested the item, so I don’t think it wasn’t a case of just forgetting to move to “PO Approval” column. Olivia [Product Owner] and Mary [Technical Manager] then decided to just close the items. No evidence, no demo – just close them so the Sprint looks good, and looks ready to release.
What annoys me is that Mary had criticised how we had run our team and suggested we don’t follow the process. She stated that she perfectly follows the process – which leads to her successful projects. Then I see her cutting corners like that.
Just like Colin, she criticises me to my face, but then when we are in a group she states:
“I think you’ve done a fantastic job given that there’s only 4 of you”
Mary
A few days later, I had finished what I was assigned, but there was a bug on the backlog which Mary [Technical Manager] seemed to want to defer (again, she just wanted to release the project as soon as possible). I thought it couldn’t be released without this fix. I stated that I would like to look at it and she said:
“don’t do any development work”
Mary
Seems I have the day off then. What is the point in me sat around doing nothing? If I fix it, we can decide if it goes straight in, or deferred for the next release. Or maybe I won’t even find a solution. She just seemed desperate to finish the project so wasn’t considering the seriousness of the bug, or thinking logically at all.
The Backstab
I didn’t actually sit around doing nothing. I worked hard and found a solution. I knew that there was no chance Mary would accept my changes, so I needed to come up with a way of convincing her. My plan was to get the testers to informally test it, then I can say that I have a fix, and the testers are happy that there’s low risk of introducing more issues – so she would be stupid to reject it.
Testers Tim and Tina were in agreement that the fix should definitely go out in the initial release, and they agreed Mary was making a bad decision to consider releasing without it.
Tim said he would “have to check with Mary if he was allowed to spend time testing it” since they got told not to test anything. I said “there is no way she would approve it, that’s why we are doing this informally/secretively”. If Tim and Tina test it and find a bug, my plan has failed and Mary never needs to know that I attempted it.
It’s a perfect plan, or it would have been, but Tim then goes and tells Mary that I asked them to test it.
“You gotta start being better with your comminications – it’s not just yours and Tim/Tina’s decision if something gets put into the release – it’s a whole team decision but ultimately mine and Olivia’s. You’ve messaged them directly asking if they can get it tested, and as much as they’ll also want to get it done, it then puts them under pressure. This is how you’ve all got to a stage of being all over the place and burning yourselves out, it’s got to stop please.”
Mary’s chastisement
I shouldn’t have to go behind people’s backs and make my own decisions, but the entire non-management side of the team thought it should go in, and only the managers thought it shouldn’t. As a team we care about quality, but managers are just focussed on deadlines.
I also didn’t appreciate that she is accusing my decision making of adding stress to my team.
80% coverage
As the project got towards completion, I recalled our stupid “Merge Ready” process that no one seems to care about other than the small team who came up with it. You have to justify the likes of Code Coverage, and ours was at a low figure like 10%.
I’ll write some blog posts about my reasoning on when tests are good or bad in the future. A simple explanation is that Units tests are good when covering requirements, but often developers write them to cover implementation i.e. verify a particular method is called; but not that the particular method actually works. When you switch implementation, you have to rewrite a new unit test, slowing you down. Unit Tests are supposed to help you refactor, but in this case, it is a hindrance to refactoring. We did a lot of prototyping early on, and knew there would be large re-writes, so Daniel [Developer] and I decided to worry about Unit Tests later on.
When I declared the low number of Unit Tests, Olivia ended up raising it to the Directors for some reason. Why was it their concern? Do they even know what Unit Tests are for, and what the coverage actually means?
It could jeopordise my chance of payrises (I was correct, I got 0% this year) and tarnishes my reputation.
When Mary joined the team, she berated me over this decision and made the dramatic statement:
“We can’t go on like this”
Mary
She then asked a couple of her favourite developers to write some Unit Tests for my project, completely undermining me.
The thing is, both Dean [Developer (Temporary)] and Dennis [Developer (Temporary)] spent way longer than they estimated, and they didn’t do as much as they hyped, then when it came to make the last few changes, it slowed us down.
We ended up around 22% in the end, and the managers decided that is fine.
That’s the problem with us though… Do 80% coverage because it’s important. But actually it’s not that important, so you don’t need 80%. But TRY get 80%, Why?, Dunno, but the Document says.
Tim [Tester]
On track
Dennis [Developer (Temporary)] was also asked to helping out address the Code Review comments. In some ways, this kinda slowed us down. I told him I had a branch with some changes in already and sent him a link to it so we can work together. When I caught up with him the next day, he said that he had been working on a few of the ones I already had done because he hadn’t looked at the link. What a waste of time.
When Mary asked for a progress report, Dennis reckoned it would take 1 day to go through 20 comments, but he had done 8 easy ones the day before, and we had the hard ones left. So I said it would be more like 4 days, but could take longer if they are surprisingly complicated. I was correct.
Manager: How's the project coming along? Developer: It's on track.
On the final Project Demo, Carl [Customer Representative] was saying the sending process was far too slow. He had been on most of the demos from the start and saw the progress across the project.
The original version I showed him was incredibly slow, but I had managed to speed it up significantly. So despite him witnessing the project months ago, he said the performance was a concern and maybe users would think it wasn’t a significant improvement.
We had all kinds of people turn up to this final demo. People from support, training etc. We should have had those guys on the early meetings. They were prodding holes in the requirements and asking important questions. Although we gave good answers for most of them, I couldn’t help but think our changes might not be as useful as we thought.
If only we got more users involved throughout the project, rather than just some UX mock-ups before we started, and then a year later – give them the update and hope for the best.
I’d like to reiterate just how hard the team has worked. They have worked their little socks off
Olivia [Product Owner]
Conclusion
We were told the importance of the project, but because there wasn’t a direct commercial aspect to the project, I felt it wasn’t backed up by the number of developers assigned to the project. With only 2 developers, then key staff like Architects and Product Owners switching throughout the project; it just slowed us all down and made us all feel it was actually a low-priority project.
There were other morale-reducing aspects like when we were told the project was on hold, then Mary berating my decisions, and implying the failures were down to me.
There wasn’t a great understanding of the feature in many ways, illustrated by
how many requirements we discovered throughout the project,
the UX team being clueless about many aspects,
one Product Owner so clueless – it seemed he struggled to use a computer,
then switching to a clueless Architect that just went straight to the original architect.
General Summary Of Why The Software Developer Hiring Process Is Bad
When I was involved in trying to come up with something better, I was frustrated because I didn’t have the answers, but I felt everyone else involved didn’t understand my concerns.
I hate the way Tech Interviews and tests currently are, but I think it’s hard to come up with something as a replacement. When researching example questions, I see lots of questions along the lines of “who invented Object Oriented Programming?“, and I think “I don’t care“.
Then there’s loads of aspects that you would just Google if you didn’t know it e.g. memory usage of each type.
Or you may get questions like “what is wrong with this code?“, but if you actually pasted that code in Visual Studio and try and build it, you would see the error. Or in the case it is valid but not advisable; Code Analysis would flag it. Some of these can be trick questions like mathematical logic where the order of execution is ambiguous, but Code Analysis would definitely flag to tell you to add brackets, so it’s silly having these as a question.
Then I hate all the generic Fizzbuzz stuff (check if a number is divisible by 3 or 5, or even both). These are just so cliché that people could just learn from memory anyway.
Also, what do these graduates we are targeting actually know? back in my day, I knew Java but I was terrible and didn’t know how to test properly, or even debug. So there’s no point testing them on that either.
Stupid Questions From The Internet
During our meetings, I asked the team how they were coming up with the interview questions, and they said they were just Googling for C# Interview questions. This is problematic because applicants may have read and learnt from these very sites, but also many sites had terrible questions, which were sometimes incorrect.
95. Is the use of return statement necessary in every function in C#?
Yes No
Answer: A) Yes
Explanation: Yes, the use of return statement is necessary in every function in C#.
I think some programming languages may differentiate between “methods” and “functions” where “functions” always return something. But in C# you just call them “methods” which can either return something, or be defined as “void”. So this is just incorrect.
99. Which is the first line of a C# program?
using System;
using system;
using Namespace;
namespace MyApplication
Answer: A) using System;
If you create a blank class, “using System;” is the first line, but A) you could remove it B) the order of using statements matter C) in modern C# you could move it to a “global namespace”. I also asked the question of “who are we targeting?” because everyone was coming up with C# specific questions. My colleagues told me the universities we were targeting were primarily coding using Python! So we were writing the wrong test, or targetting the wrong people.
The Performance Review
In my recent performance review, my manager Colin stated:
“You were given an opportunity to lead on defining our interview process, but have not shown much interest in it. Ultimately someone else led it, creating the interview pack, redefining interview questions and leading live interviews, which I think is a missed opportunity to shine.”
Colin
I argued that: although I didn’t have a huge impact on the end result, it would have been a bigger mess had I not pushed back on some of the questions. Although it seems some of the interviewers still asked questions I said weren’t suitable. We ended up coming up with a terrible process that some candidates dropped out of, and the ones that went through with the interview struggled and we were left with the decision to gamble based on what little we saw.
The Best Hire
One of the best hires we made was someone I didn’t interview, but I looked at the interviewer’s notes, and he didn’t exactly look like a strong hire.
Implemented the basic application to consume webapi and just printed the values based on some predefined values
No unit testcases were written
application is simple
Inheritance – simple explanation
polymorphism – no idea
interface – not good explanation
purpose of inheritance – No idea
Print the numbers and its occurrences – Not completed, but after showing the hints he completed
Print the number from 1 to 100 using Recursion – Completed
print the numbers based on divisible values – Completed
Logical, cut the cakes into 8 pieces with 3 cuts – Completed
Candidate lacks on syntactically at some areas, but has some logical solving skills and good attitude on approaching things
When I stated to Colin that it “wasn’t a great batch of hiring”, Colin said out of the people we did interview, we ended up hiring around a third of them – which he said was above the normal hiring rate. I said that it was only above the hiring rate because we hired people that should have failed. Then later, he quoted the numbers “15 interviewed. 4 hired” (more like a quarter then). But there were loads of applicants rejected before the interview stage, and others dropped out along the way.
The Polymorphism question that was asked on some of the interviews was basically “do you know the types of polymorphism?”
I didn’t even understand the question, and I probably have 10 years of experience.
I was only thinking about the usual polymorphism where you can refer to derived types as the base type:
IAnimal animal = new Dog();
animal= new Cat();
To check if I wasn’t going mad, I asked some of my colleagues. Here is how they responded:
“not sure i do, no. Inheritance and Composition, are they right?”
Dean (Senior Developer around 10 years experience)
Like covariance and contravariance? But I don’t think I could put it into words. I guess you have real polymorphism and fake…virtual functions have a virtual function table that map overridden functions from base classes. But a lot of polymorphism is just the compiler being intuitive and going “you’re not crazy” it can be treated as that type.
Adam (Software Architect)
Types? an interface can be implemented many times. A method can have the same sig but different parameter types etc
Rob (Senior Developer around 20 years experience)
According to https://www.bmc.com/blogs/polymorphism-programming/, there’s Runtime, Compile Time, Overloading, and Casting. So if very experienced developers can’t explain the concept, then why are we using the question to target Graduate developers?
Conclusion
It annoyed me that Colin stated “have not shown much interest in it”. I was trying to make sure we had well-defined objectives on the exact type of developer we were hiring. Everyone else just started copying questions for the internet without considering the knowledge and experience of the people we were targeting. I didn’t have the solution of how to make a good software development hiring process, but I really wanted to make sure we got close – but I just didn’t have any support from everyone else that was involved.
Colin said that our Sprint Burndown chart wasn’t accurately reflecting the work done. He said we were overrunning with each Work Item which meant that we would have 0 points for one Sprint, then we get the full value in the next Sprint – which shows as a sharp drop on the Burndown chart.
I told him that’s how the Burndown charts work – but he said they want more accuracy. I argued further: If the requirements haven’t been met, then it’s not complete, so you haven’t added value to the software – i.e. you have made no progress.
A few days later, our Scrum Master had been in a meeting with him and was instructing us on his new process. Colin’s idea apparently was to add a “task” for each day and link it to the Work Item. At the end of the day, you mark the task as closed.
I’m like “eeeeeeer wut”. So now it tracks your daily work.
I told her she must have misunderstood. Adding a task per day is just counting the amount of days in the week. I suppose if you take a day off, then you won’t count that day.
I questioned it, and she agreed that it didn’t sound right. So she goes back to Colin. No, he really does want a closed task per day, but also said to create a task even if you are on holiday.
Wut.
add tasks to all the things!
So they want effort more accurately tracked, but are now just counting days, even the ones you haven’t worked. Surely if you create a chart, it’s just gonna be a diagonal line with no fluctuations.
What are we supposed to write for the task’s title and description? “Carried on working on it 7.5 hours”.
I just refused to do it, but the Scrum Master did the admin on my behalf. The idea lasted about a month.
I find that Burndown Charts often look unclear anyway. Here is one from another team:
So what are we even seeing here? The chart to the left shows Tasks, although the chart doesn’t seem to show the correct Completed figure – it shows as 0%. However, you do see the average is 46 which I think is per day – which illustrates the ridiculous number of tasks that teams were creating anyway.
The chart to the right shows User Stories but I think it’s not the number created, but the total points assigned. So one might be worth 1 point, but another could be worth 8 – it depends on how complicated the work is. I think this is a typical Burndown where the first few days nothing is complete because the developers are working on fixes, then the tester will get it in a few days. In the second week, more items are completed. There were even 4 points removed, presumably a change of requirement or maybe it was deemed redundant.
This is another chart that a team posted to boast about their progress. This example is a bit more unclear, but I noticed the Tasks Burndown (start 12th September) is not for the same time period that the Stories Burndown is (start 29th August).
The Stories Burndown looks interesting doesn’t it? It looks like only a small amount of work was done and then when it gets to the end of the second week, they add even more work. I did theorise that maybe they didn’t officially start the project until after 10th September but what does the 72% Completed mean? That seems to imply they are ¾ through their project. ¯\_( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)_/¯
Stranger Coding Tings 