It's been a demotivating few months at The Job lately, what with the Google rejection, and sundry other depressing events of the new cow-orker variety.
But today I got a snootful of it. One senior colleague explained today in a meeting that the feature that I was supposed to pull into my server 2 years ago, that would solve all my performance problems, in fact will not solve them as it is currently written, but requires more work to do what it was promised to do 2 years ago.
In the meantime, every time the performance issue was discussed in conversations where this colleague was around, this feature was touted, and my lack of action was wondered at. Nevermind that changes to the core handling of a major process is not taken lightly; nor is it attempted when customers are getting bi-weekly update releases that cannot fail to work. I was an idiot for not pulling this feature into my code immediately.
So the tip for developers is this - never lie to your colleagues about what you code can do for them. If it is not complete, or plain wrong, shut up about it.
3 comments:
"never lie to your colleagues about what you code can do for them."
It's not lying. They _believe_ it will work.
I've been in meetings where people ask if their understanding is correct. For example:
"So, i can import you code and it will work with no modifications?"
"Well, it will need some minor tweaking to work in your environment."
"OK, and what tweaking is required."
"Just some code changes with the constants file."
"OK, so all i need to do is import the file, and you will make the constant file changes and it will work?"
...
"When can you make these changes? If i import the code on Monday at 3:00 when can you do you work?"
And so on. It's an annoying line of questioning, but for implementation specifics, it works wonders.
If only it were just a fervent belief at odds with reality, but this was repeated to me and others as a "why haven't you done this yet? It will solve all your problems from your crappy code!" statement.
Your examples are less troubling (IMHO) because they at least are not posturing, just errors
hmm... ok
i just sometimes think there are those masters of words.
hope maybe.
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