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I really enjoy the flexibility of my current job - being able to set my own hours, run to a doctor appointment without any prior notice, work at my own pace. Fr

by donatj 3y ago

I really enjoy the flexibility of my current job - being able to set my own hours, run to a doctor appointment without any prior notice, work at my own pace. Frankly part of why I have stayed so many years. We have a person on our team that has been as best I can tell really abusing it basically since we started working from home at the beginning of the pandemic. Turns in very little work, takes literal days(!) to respond on slack, almost entirely ignores requests for code review and has a project that is now six months late. Less important but they’ve also never shown to an in-person event or even turned their camera on in a meeting - not necessary but adds to the mystery. Literally have not seen their face since the start of the pandemic. If I hadn’t worked with the guy physically in an office pre-pandemic I’d be worried he wasn’t who he said he was. It’s been beyond frustrating to see, as someone who genuinely tries to gives his all and cares. Please for the love of peat, don’t ruin this for the rest of us. Do you want metrics, because this is how we get metrics. This only continues to work if our output is good. People higher than me have begun to notice (finally) - mostly because the late project is becoming more and more of an issue. It was supposed to be his project to design and lead. Because it’s so late however, the rest of us have been getting bumped from other projects to help. Mythical man month, I know. Best of all he’s been almost entirely unavailable to answer design questions or even review code. On top of everything else and despite the goal being to get it done by the end of the year, he took almost all of December off - because there’s no review of our PTO - another wonderful freedom being abused. I am very hopeful he can just get a stern talking to and kicked back onto track, but I am not going to hold my breath.

fragmede 3y ago
What did you manager say when you told them you noticed this person has been slacking off and how it's demotivating for you to work with this person?
- leosanchez 3y ago
  Shouldn't the manager already notice though?
- donatj 3y ago
  My manager is well aware and pissed. I only really became aware after getting pulled onto the project a little over a month ago, seeing how little existed followed by being able to get basically zero feedback on how things should fit into the project. It was easy to not see (for me) when we were supposed to be heads down on separate projects. We’re given a lot of rope when it comes to what we’re working on so other than hearing about what others are working on in standup, often I’ll never see it. That said, I’m not sure he knows what to do about it. I’ve worked under him for over a decade and this is the first time we’ve had a real problem like this. I suspect he’s working with his own manager on how to handle it.
  - ShamelessC 3y ago
    Generally the employee should be given a warning, then reprimanded on repeat behavior, then fired. Ideally the manager would have noticed this without you having to "rat out" the employee - that's the manager's job, not yours. This stuff isn't really unheard of outside of tech. It's common even. Is it shitty? Sure. But the rest of the world deals with it and makes far less money on average. I've seen this same inability to punish incompetence in my own coding career at [insert large retailer]. No one got in trouble despite my protests but rather were moved around the organization. Alongside lots of other signs, it was clear to me that the tech work being done there wasn't important to many or any people who would be using it. It seemed to mostly be about the value of the company's stock.
    - donatj 3y ago
      For what it is worth I did not have to rat them out. By the time I got pulled onto the project my manager had figured it out. I didn’t know the extent though before complaining about lack of reply/feedback from the dev, at which point I started looking at the commits across projects see what he had been doing. Not much so it seems. In the time I have been here we’ve fired three people, but it was all for much worse. We’re not untouchable but it takes a lot. I would honestly far rather he just get back on track. We’re already short staffed and it’s becoming harder and harder to hire devs in our tech stack.
    - scruple 3y ago
moonshinefe 3y ago
Sounds eerily familiar. We've got someone who has done almost no work in their first 10 months. They were already assigned to a project I was on once, lied about progress repeatedly forcing me to pick up the work when it came time for us to integrate that piece. I made the situation well known to managers and they acknowledged it and even apologized. Yet this person is still somehow around and doing the same old, despite their kanban not moving for months and it being glaringly obvious. This worker abuses the low oversight, flexible hours and time off, and disappears on Slack all the time. I kind of gave up caring and expecting anything will get done about it; it's way beyond ridiculous or any personal / health issue excuse at this point (and the company has a leave of absence policy for this stuff). I think this actually might just happen sometimes in the industry, but it was the first time I've seen it and it's absolutely baffling. I just hope to not be on the same project as this person again, because if I am I'm going to have to have an awkward conversation with my manager about it since I'm not there to do 2 people's jobs. I really like the job in every other regard and don't typically work with that person, so it's a weird situation to say the least..
- puika 3y ago
  Looks like someone working more than one job. However, it's weird that they're doing nothing from the get-go. Don't you have probation in your company?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
Pxtl 3y ago
It's possible he's working very hard... at a different job.

by donatj 3y ago

fragmede 3y ago

What did you manager say when you told them you noticed this person has been slacking off and how it's demotivating for you to work with this person?

leosanchez 3y ago
Shouldn't the manager already notice though?
donatj 3y ago
My manager is well aware and pissed. I only really became aware after getting pulled onto the project a little over a month ago, seeing how little existed followed by being able to get basically zero feedback on how things should fit into the project. It was easy to not see (for me) when we were supposed to be heads down on separate projects. We’re given a lot of rope when it comes to what we’re working on so other than hearing about what others are working on in standup, often I’ll never see it. That said, I’m not sure he knows what to do about it. I’ve worked under him for over a decade and this is the first time we’ve had a real problem like this. I suspect he’s working with his own manager on how to handle it.
- ShamelessC 3y ago
  Generally the employee should be given a warning, then reprimanded on repeat behavior, then fired. Ideally the manager would have noticed this without you having to "rat out" the employee - that's the manager's job, not yours. This stuff isn't really unheard of outside of tech. It's common even. Is it shitty? Sure. But the rest of the world deals with it and makes far less money on average. I've seen this same inability to punish incompetence in my own coding career at [insert large retailer]. No one got in trouble despite my protests but rather were moved around the organization. Alongside lots of other signs, it was clear to me that the tech work being done there wasn't important to many or any people who would be using it. It seemed to mostly be about the value of the company's stock.
  - donatj 3y ago
    For what it is worth I did not have to rat them out. By the time I got pulled onto the project my manager had figured it out. I didn’t know the extent though before complaining about lack of reply/feedback from the dev, at which point I started looking at the commits across projects see what he had been doing. Not much so it seems. In the time I have been here we’ve fired three people, but it was all for much worse. We’re not untouchable but it takes a lot. I would honestly far rather he just get back on track. We’re already short staffed and it’s becoming harder and harder to hire devs in our tech stack.
  - scruple 3y ago

moonshinefe 3y ago

Sounds eerily familiar. We've got someone who has done almost no work in their first 10 months. They were already assigned to a project I was on once, lied about progress repeatedly forcing me to pick up the work when it came time for us to integrate that piece. I made the situation well known to managers and they acknowledged it and even apologized. Yet this person is still somehow around and doing the same old, despite their kanban not moving for months and it being glaringly obvious. This worker abuses the low oversight, flexible hours and time off, and disappears on Slack all the time. I kind of gave up caring and expecting anything will get done about it; it's way beyond ridiculous or any personal / health issue excuse at this point (and the company has a leave of absence policy for this stuff). I think this actually might just happen sometimes in the industry, but it was the first time I've seen it and it's absolutely baffling. I just hope to not be on the same project as this person again, because if I am I'm going to have to have an awkward conversation with my manager about it since I'm not there to do 2 people's jobs. I really like the job in every other regard and don't typically work with that person, so it's a weird situation to say the least..

puika 3y ago
Looks like someone working more than one job. However, it's weird that they're doing nothing from the get-go. Don't you have probation in your company?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

Pxtl 3y ago

It's possible he's working very hard... at a different job.