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I'm 4 months into my new job and was pulled into a meeting on thursday. Apparently I ruffled feathers by asking questions in an email chain, which is how I fou

I'm 4 months into my new job and was pulled into a meeting on thursday. Apparently I ruffled feathers by asking questions in an email chain, which is how I found myself spending this weekend thinking about how I'm going to transition out of this job. You don't just lose out on the opportunity to improve, you lose your best developers. And the way they went about it was just shitty. I suddenly found myself getting blamed for lost productivity because I turned on MySQL's "strict" mode in our QA DB. Apparently it was better to continue allowing MySQL to silently truncate data across the app. This was my first foray back into a "job" and I've decided it isn't for me. I don't think I'm built for it, I'm going back to working for myself.

bluGill 7y ago
You seem to be failing at listening to dissenters yourself. Turning on strict mode was wrong - yesterday. The correct thing is to understand why it isn't on, come up with a plan to get strict on, and then convince everybody the plan is correct. This is much harder and takes longer but is correct.
- celticmusic 7y ago
  I guess I'll add context since I've been "well akschually'd". There was time planned for this in that we were updating MariaDB and we had estimated extra time for unforeseen problems.. The defaults changed to strict, I realized we had severe data integrity problems and as the senior developer on the team I made the decision to turn off strict mode in production and turn it on in QA and our dev environments so we can prioritize the integrity of the data. This is literally my job as a senior developer. If this is not what a senior developer is for in most companies, it goes back to what I said before about not being built for such environments. I made a judgement call here, and I'll continue to defend that judgement call as me doing my damned job. Maybe in your world data integrity sits behind the newest dropdown on the UI, but not in mine. But the thing is, everyone was ok with it until about a week later when this VP sent it down the line that I was to be reprimanded for "behavioral" problems because they mistook me asking questions as me not wanting to do the work. And I got reprimanded, and then the QA environment wasn't changed because this reprimand was insisted on by a VP, my direct manager was forced to do it, and then ignored it afterwards. I'd rather go back to working for myself than to deal with this shit. edit: as for why strict mode wasn't on before, this application was developed by an incompetent. To give an example of the level of skill that built this app. I once came across code the following (psuedocode): foreach(object) sql += generate_insert_statement(object). $parts = split("INSERT INTO", sql); foreach(part from parts): sql = "INSERT INTO" + part; do_query(sql) I've been tempted to send in submissions to the daily WTF on more than 1 occasion.
  - fiestaman 7y ago
    Regardless of your reasons for your decision, responding to dissent by calling it a "well akschually” isn’t a good way to respond to dissent.
    - celticmusic 7y ago
      this smacks of the "intolerance of intolerance is itself intolerance" arguments. My response to a bullshit power play is to use the mobility of my profession to remove myself from the situation. I will not continue to subject myself to such bullshit just for sake of appearing as if I'm accepting of "dissent". edit: and yes, I'm still angry about it. Which is part of the reason why I'm leaving. In 20+ years of development I've never experiences something like this, and I refuse to deal with it. And the entire thing about the DB is a red herring anyways, it was the asking of questions that pissed off a VP that started the entire mudslide.
  - harshalizee 7y ago
    Your reply aptly explains why your peers aren't a fan of working with you. You sound like an a-hole. Even if you were the principal engineer of the entire org and made dumb, rash decisions like this, I'd tell you to go pound sand irrespective of your seniority and title. So you're 4 months in, you made a hasty prod change on a database with very little oversight. That tells me you're neither senior nor someone who can work well with others. I'm not saying having 'strict' turned off was a good idea, but nobody working at your firm wants to deal with some new unexpected behavior over the weekend caused by some over zealous dev who made some change because he/she believed they were right.
    - celticmusic 7y ago
      It's obvious that something about this is personal for you. You're making specific claims here that directly contradict what I've stated. I'd list them out, but really I don't want to waste my time on someone who is obviously angry about something unrelated.
    - flukus 7y ago

bluGill 7y ago

You seem to be failing at listening to dissenters yourself. Turning on strict mode was wrong - yesterday. The correct thing is to understand why it isn't on, come up with a plan to get strict on, and then convince everybody the plan is correct. This is much harder and takes longer but is correct.

celticmusic 7y ago
I guess I'll add context since I've been "well akschually'd". There was time planned for this in that we were updating MariaDB and we had estimated extra time for unforeseen problems.. The defaults changed to strict, I realized we had severe data integrity problems and as the senior developer on the team I made the decision to turn off strict mode in production and turn it on in QA and our dev environments so we can prioritize the integrity of the data. This is literally my job as a senior developer. If this is not what a senior developer is for in most companies, it goes back to what I said before about not being built for such environments. I made a judgement call here, and I'll continue to defend that judgement call as me doing my damned job. Maybe in your world data integrity sits behind the newest dropdown on the UI, but not in mine. But the thing is, everyone was ok with it until about a week later when this VP sent it down the line that I was to be reprimanded for "behavioral" problems because they mistook me asking questions as me not wanting to do the work. And I got reprimanded, and then the QA environment wasn't changed because this reprimand was insisted on by a VP, my direct manager was forced to do it, and then ignored it afterwards. I'd rather go back to working for myself than to deal with this shit. edit: as for why strict mode wasn't on before, this application was developed by an incompetent. To give an example of the level of skill that built this app. I once came across code the following (psuedocode): foreach(object) sql += generate_insert_statement(object). $parts = split("INSERT INTO", sql); foreach(part from parts): sql = "INSERT INTO" + part; do_query(sql) I've been tempted to send in submissions to the daily WTF on more than 1 occasion.
- fiestaman 7y ago
  Regardless of your reasons for your decision, responding to dissent by calling it a "well akschually” isn’t a good way to respond to dissent.
  - celticmusic 7y ago
    this smacks of the "intolerance of intolerance is itself intolerance" arguments. My response to a bullshit power play is to use the mobility of my profession to remove myself from the situation. I will not continue to subject myself to such bullshit just for sake of appearing as if I'm accepting of "dissent". edit: and yes, I'm still angry about it. Which is part of the reason why I'm leaving. In 20+ years of development I've never experiences something like this, and I refuse to deal with it. And the entire thing about the DB is a red herring anyways, it was the asking of questions that pissed off a VP that started the entire mudslide.
- harshalizee 7y ago
  Your reply aptly explains why your peers aren't a fan of working with you. You sound like an a-hole. Even if you were the principal engineer of the entire org and made dumb, rash decisions like this, I'd tell you to go pound sand irrespective of your seniority and title. So you're 4 months in, you made a hasty prod change on a database with very little oversight. That tells me you're neither senior nor someone who can work well with others. I'm not saying having 'strict' turned off was a good idea, but nobody working at your firm wants to deal with some new unexpected behavior over the weekend caused by some over zealous dev who made some change because he/she believed they were right.
  - celticmusic 7y ago
    It's obvious that something about this is personal for you. You're making specific claims here that directly contradict what I've stated. I'd list them out, but really I don't want to waste my time on someone who is obviously angry about something unrelated.
  - flukus 7y ago