5 ms·

I was once the sole report of a "senior developer", and the article nails every pain point that caused me to leave. His code had tons and tons of serious probl

by Timpy 4y ago

I was once the sole report of a "senior developer", and the article nails every pain point that caused me to leave. His code had tons and tons of serious problems. The database was a mess; he insisted on storing multiple data points in a single column, querying the entire table, then regexing out the information he wanted in php foreach loops. This was because the database was so bad you couldn't join more than two tables without crashing it. He vetoed everything I tried to do to improve the codebase, really normal best practices. I read books and books and tried coming to him with sources on why we ought to normalize our data, or use prepared statements instead of the unreliable homemade sanitizer function he brewed up. He had been insisting for years that long load times were unavoidable. I was so frustrated with the situation that I didn't bother to help him save face when I fixed everything with a couple of indexes. I spoke my grievances to the owner who listened with open ears, but he told me directly that it was hard for him to know what to do because it was outside his field of specialty and the senior dev had more experience and a long tenure at the company. I appreciated his honesty, and started job hunting immediately. I only worked under that senior dev for 7 months.

cpursley 4y ago
Yikes. Sounds like you at least leaned a whole lot!
snapetom 4y ago
I was a very junior dev when I worked for a huge health insurance company, I was placed under a senior dev to learn JSP and Java Servlets using an internal app. I quickly ran through a book on JSP to prepare for the project. When I get there, the guy had already written one page of the app, and he did it by doing System.out.println in the servlet for ALL THE HTML. In other words, he didn't use JSP templates at all. System.out.println("<html>"); System.out.println("<head>"); System.out.println("<title>This janky ass code</title>"); I looked at that abomination and said, "This isn't JSP at all...." He rambled on about sometimes in a project, we just need to get things done with the tools we knew, etc. etc. I went to our boss and told him I wasn't learning JSP, which was the mandate of the company back then. He just kind of smirked and said, "Yeah, that sounds like Ken. He knows programming, though, blah blah blah." 2nd worse boss I ever had, the dev was a lunatic, and that company was a joke.
- justforaskin 4y ago
  A friend of mine lost his mind on a JSP that was doing too much. In protest he printed it out to paper multiple cubicles with the content.
- mstipetic 4y ago
  Are you serious? You’re not exaggerating?
  - snapetom 4y ago
    As a heart attack. Guy was a trip. So many stories about that guy, many of them very disturbing. Even worst was the manager that let him get away with that shit. These were the days when technical managers weren't a thing. He had an accounting degree and he managed engineers. I, a junior dev, spent about 40% of my time explaining basic things to the guy. Joke of a company.
    - agumonkey 4y ago
      were they large ? I'm curious about the amount of money wasted through them :)
      - snapetom 4y ago
        Vision Service Plan. I don't mind calling them out because they were god-awful up and down the chain. They basically were IBM's lap dog and gave them a blank check on whatever IBM told them to buy.
  - nus07 4y ago
    This is often the case in Indian IT offshoring companies back in the early 2000s . Worked at one myself and had such a manager and senior developer .
- mateo411 4y ago
  Somebody should tell this dev about StringBuilder. Think of the productivity and servlet performance improvement!
pc86 4y ago
> he insisted on storing multiple data points in a single column, querying the entire table, then regexing out the information he wanted in php foreach loops. This is not a senior developer, this is a [bad] intern who has two months of experience 60 times. Although now I see you have senior dev in quotes and maybe that's why!
- darthrupert 4y ago
  There's a term for this: expert beginner. I've met a couple. Often they are more irritating than harmful, but one was the tech founder of the company. That was probably the worst work experience I have ever had.
dvtrn 4y ago
he told me directly that it was hard for him to know what to do because it was outside his field of specialty and the senior dev had more experience and a long tenure at the company. This is what lead me to leave what was otherwise one of the most fulfilling jobs I’d ever had working as an engineer for a B Corp that provided tech consulting exclusively to non-profits humanitarian organizations. Loved the mission, appreciated the leadership team, but absolutely loathed the this one developer on my team. So did the rest of the team. Guy went through a divorce and became the worst kind of person imaginable. The engineering director suddenly retired due to a life-threatening medical condition, and this fella made it his mission to usurp as much power as he could. Pretty soon people started leaving the company because of the guy, leaving me and the other juniors as the only people behind. Guess who was made the new engineering director. His code was fine and performant but he was an absolutely miserable, awful, truly rage-filled person but those open ears when anyone tried reporting up just happened to be attached to the same body that would shrug and point to his seniority and tenure as a means to not do anything about it. He’s still there. I can see his picture on the company about page to this day. Everyone else is smiling jovially and he’s literally, actually, I’m not kidding you scowling at the camera. And I’m still remiss because aside from that and that alone, I really enjoyed what I was doing there.
- feoren 4y ago
  I cannot imagine what causes company leadership to see a whole team fall apart in short order, with everyone saying it's the fault of this one person, and the leadership shrugging and going "no way to know!". It's the absolute height of lazy, awful leadership.
  - leaflets2 4y ago
    More convenient, short term, to do nothing? Then the leaders can avoid having a conflict with that angry person. And long term, when this affects the company negatively -- maybe they don't care? What if they're in it for the money and status (they had nice sounding job titles?). Seems like possibly rational "leadership" to me :-(
matrix_overload 4y ago
That's because the business owner wanted stability and predictability. He needed somebody to go and fix that server when it crashes due to an update, or to add a new column to the database when the customers request it, at the lowest price possible. The dev needed peace of mind and job security. To do as little work/thinking as possible at the stable pay. They kinda found each other and it was working just fine for both of them. Then you came into play, bringing more work to the dev at the same pay, if he agreed with you. Had the company owner taken your side, he would likely lose the senior dev, and lose you in a couple of months once you get everything working and decide to move on (I doubt you would be happy with the kind of work the previous dev was doing).

by Timpy 4y ago

cpursley 4y ago

Yikes. Sounds like you at least leaned a whole lot!

snapetom 4y ago

I was a very junior dev when I worked for a huge health insurance company, I was placed under a senior dev to learn JSP and Java Servlets using an internal app. I quickly ran through a book on JSP to prepare for the project. When I get there, the guy had already written one page of the app, and he did it by doing System.out.println in the servlet for ALL THE HTML. In other words, he didn't use JSP templates at all. System.out.println("<html>"); System.out.println("<head>"); System.out.println("<title>This janky ass code</title>"); I looked at that abomination and said, "This isn't JSP at all...." He rambled on about sometimes in a project, we just need to get things done with the tools we knew, etc. etc. I went to our boss and told him I wasn't learning JSP, which was the mandate of the company back then. He just kind of smirked and said, "Yeah, that sounds like Ken. He knows programming, though, blah blah blah." 2nd worse boss I ever had, the dev was a lunatic, and that company was a joke.

justforaskin 4y ago
A friend of mine lost his mind on a JSP that was doing too much. In protest he printed it out to paper multiple cubicles with the content.
mstipetic 4y ago
Are you serious? You’re not exaggerating?
- snapetom 4y ago
  As a heart attack. Guy was a trip. So many stories about that guy, many of them very disturbing. Even worst was the manager that let him get away with that shit. These were the days when technical managers weren't a thing. He had an accounting degree and he managed engineers. I, a junior dev, spent about 40% of my time explaining basic things to the guy. Joke of a company.
  - agumonkey 4y ago
    were they large ? I'm curious about the amount of money wasted through them :)
    - snapetom 4y ago
      Vision Service Plan. I don't mind calling them out because they were god-awful up and down the chain. They basically were IBM's lap dog and gave them a blank check on whatever IBM told them to buy.
- nus07 4y ago
  This is often the case in Indian IT offshoring companies back in the early 2000s . Worked at one myself and had such a manager and senior developer .
mateo411 4y ago
Somebody should tell this dev about StringBuilder. Think of the productivity and servlet performance improvement!

pc86 4y ago

> he insisted on storing multiple data points in a single column, querying the entire table, then regexing out the information he wanted in php foreach loops. This is not a senior developer, this is a [bad] intern who has two months of experience 60 times. Although now I see you have senior dev in quotes and maybe that's why!

darthrupert 4y ago
There's a term for this: expert beginner. I've met a couple. Often they are more irritating than harmful, but one was the tech founder of the company. That was probably the worst work experience I have ever had.

dvtrn 4y ago

he told me directly that it was hard for him to know what to do because it was outside his field of specialty and the senior dev had more experience and a long tenure at the company. This is what lead me to leave what was otherwise one of the most fulfilling jobs I’d ever had working as an engineer for a B Corp that provided tech consulting exclusively to non-profits humanitarian organizations. Loved the mission, appreciated the leadership team, but absolutely loathed the this one developer on my team. So did the rest of the team. Guy went through a divorce and became the worst kind of person imaginable. The engineering director suddenly retired due to a life-threatening medical condition, and this fella made it his mission to usurp as much power as he could. Pretty soon people started leaving the company because of the guy, leaving me and the other juniors as the only people behind. Guess who was made the new engineering director. His code was fine and performant but he was an absolutely miserable, awful, truly rage-filled person but those open ears when anyone tried reporting up just happened to be attached to the same body that would shrug and point to his seniority and tenure as a means to not do anything about it. He’s still there. I can see his picture on the company about page to this day. Everyone else is smiling jovially and he’s literally, actually, I’m not kidding you scowling at the camera. And I’m still remiss because aside from that and that alone, I really enjoyed what I was doing there.

feoren 4y ago
I cannot imagine what causes company leadership to see a whole team fall apart in short order, with everyone saying it's the fault of this one person, and the leadership shrugging and going "no way to know!". It's the absolute height of lazy, awful leadership.
- leaflets2 4y ago
  More convenient, short term, to do nothing? Then the leaders can avoid having a conflict with that angry person. And long term, when this affects the company negatively -- maybe they don't care? What if they're in it for the money and status (they had nice sounding job titles?). Seems like possibly rational "leadership" to me :-(

matrix_overload 4y ago

That's because the business owner wanted stability and predictability. He needed somebody to go and fix that server when it crashes due to an update, or to add a new column to the database when the customers request it, at the lowest price possible. The dev needed peace of mind and job security. To do as little work/thinking as possible at the stable pay. They kinda found each other and it was working just fine for both of them. Then you came into play, bringing more work to the dev at the same pay, if he agreed with you. Had the company owner taken your side, he would likely lose the senior dev, and lose you in a couple of months once you get everything working and decide to move on (I doubt you would be happy with the kind of work the previous dev was doing).