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Your behavior in that case will be less than ideal. It will be better to talk to your reportee and the individual and understand what's going on if you weren't

Your behavior in that case will be less than ideal. It will be better to talk to your reportee and the individual and understand what's going on if you weren't in the loop. This could have easily been the birth of a strong partnership between sales and the dev team to understand how people both really use and demo the product. Assume positive intent. This business of putting in complaints behind someone's back (bear in mind OP asked for permission!!!) is just childish

thanksgiving 9y ago
Something like this has never happened to me but I'll give you a less extreme example. My manager explained the situation to me but it still doesn't make sense in hindsight. There exists two companies in the US headquartered in two different cities. Some bankers buy both. Now the reason I bring it up is I wanted some fairly simple information about some configuration on one of the services that a team that came from the other company, based in a different city. First thing I try is message the person on Lync (imagine a shitty msn messenger). No response. I know you're online! I talked to my boss to see who else might be able to answer my question. He tried to get in touch with the other guy and cc'ed his boss. Radio silence. A week later the other boss sends a forward. The other boss explains he had been on vacation for a week and didn't check his emails. The forward also has the answer from the other developer from a week prior. We are not talking super secret missile launch codes. It is a fairly boring detail but the developer didn't hit reply all to the email, sending it only to his boss.
joshribakoff 9y ago
Exactly. The sales manager most likely perceived me as a threat. If I come in & automate her job she could be out of work. Like a bank teller afraid of being replaced by an ATM so they get in the engineer's way & cause drama. Instead she could have politely introduced herself as the sales manager, asked what I was doing & offered to help, like write up a report of what the problems were. I would have thanked her & gone back to coding at my desk while I await her report. I didn't even know she existed, let alone intend to threaten her. By the way the employee didnt complain. They were happy to have someone fixing their companies app. The sales manager was watching from afar with dissent. Plus I tried asking the programming manager about the app first, so he could follow company hierarchy. He was too busy playing video games on his PC & just shrugged his shoulders. My choices were basically slack off like him, snitch on him to the CEO, or go get the answer elsewhere. The latter seemed most appropriate.

thanksgiving 9y ago

Something like this has never happened to me but I'll give you a less extreme example. My manager explained the situation to me but it still doesn't make sense in hindsight. There exists two companies in the US headquartered in two different cities. Some bankers buy both. Now the reason I bring it up is I wanted some fairly simple information about some configuration on one of the services that a team that came from the other company, based in a different city. First thing I try is message the person on Lync (imagine a shitty msn messenger). No response. I know you're online! I talked to my boss to see who else might be able to answer my question. He tried to get in touch with the other guy and cc'ed his boss. Radio silence. A week later the other boss sends a forward. The other boss explains he had been on vacation for a week and didn't check his emails. The forward also has the answer from the other developer from a week prior. We are not talking super secret missile launch codes. It is a fairly boring detail but the developer didn't hit reply all to the email, sending it only to his boss.

joshribakoff 9y ago

Exactly. The sales manager most likely perceived me as a threat. If I come in & automate her job she could be out of work. Like a bank teller afraid of being replaced by an ATM so they get in the engineer's way & cause drama. Instead she could have politely introduced herself as the sales manager, asked what I was doing & offered to help, like write up a report of what the problems were. I would have thanked her & gone back to coding at my desk while I await her report. I didn't even know she existed, let alone intend to threaten her. By the way the employee didnt complain. They were happy to have someone fixing their companies app. The sales manager was watching from afar with dissent. Plus I tried asking the programming manager about the app first, so he could follow company hierarchy. He was too busy playing video games on his PC & just shrugged his shoulders. My choices were basically slack off like him, snitch on him to the CEO, or go get the answer elsewhere. The latter seemed most appropriate.