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Heh,when I was a junior dev we had a senior guy on our team who would stay after hours and refactor literally every line of code our team of four devs had writt

by skc 11y ago

Heh,when I was a junior dev we had a senior guy on our team who would stay after hours and refactor literally every line of code our team of four devs had written that day. What was even more infuriating than his condescending smugness about it is that he was a really, really brilliant developer, so you couldn't really win an argument with him over it. His code was indeed better, but never enough to justify his being such a prick about it. Also, during planning and architecture discussions he wouldn't say a word, just go and rewrite everything we discussed. I left for another team after about 3 months of this.

pessimizer 11y ago
If he had time to consistently rewrite all of the code to a better standard that the entire team produced while also covering what he himself was responsible for, he was probably working in hell. That shouldn't be possible unless the code was generally pretty bad. > Also, during planning and architecture discussions he wouldn't say a word, just go and rewrite everything we discussed. Wild-assed speculation here, but if he didn't think that the rest of the team would listen to his expertise (which you admit was strictly dominant over the rest of the team) and didn't think they were qualified to argue with them about it or teachable enough to learn from him - that could lead to a strategy of silence and just fixing it after everybody else was done. There are some things that one just can't argue about with some people without it being a complete waste of time. If he was basically running the show and ultimately responsible for the high quality of the product, IMO he probably should have been tested as the manager of the team. Being able to dictate the standards of the final product would remove the need to argue, and require the team to learn what he wanted them to learn. > I left for another team after about 3 months of this. If you were consistently wrong in your disagreements with the best member of the team and instead of using that as motivation to improve, it simply resulted in (traditional anti-egghead/smartypants) rage at the person who had the nerve to be better than you at everything, it was probably better for everyone.
- skc 11y ago
  No, I left because he had poor interpersonal skills. I'm a senior developer now in a position similar to his and I would never behave in the manner he did. I enjoy mentoring junior devs and I can't recall this ever being at odds with getting shit done correctly in the end.
AdrianRossouw 11y ago
one of the most difficult things to learn when you become more senior is that 'not how i would do it' is a different thing to 'this is broken'.

by skc 11y ago

pessimizer 11y ago

If he had time to consistently rewrite all of the code to a better standard that the entire team produced while also covering what he himself was responsible for, he was probably working in hell. That shouldn't be possible unless the code was generally pretty bad. > Also, during planning and architecture discussions he wouldn't say a word, just go and rewrite everything we discussed. Wild-assed speculation here, but if he didn't think that the rest of the team would listen to his expertise (which you admit was strictly dominant over the rest of the team) and didn't think they were qualified to argue with them about it or teachable enough to learn from him - that could lead to a strategy of silence and just fixing it after everybody else was done. There are some things that one just can't argue about with some people without it being a complete waste of time. If he was basically running the show and ultimately responsible for the high quality of the product, IMO he probably should have been tested as the manager of the team. Being able to dictate the standards of the final product would remove the need to argue, and require the team to learn what he wanted them to learn. > I left for another team after about 3 months of this. If you were consistently wrong in your disagreements with the best member of the team and instead of using that as motivation to improve, it simply resulted in (traditional anti-egghead/smartypants) rage at the person who had the nerve to be better than you at everything, it was probably better for everyone.

skc 11y ago
No, I left because he had poor interpersonal skills. I'm a senior developer now in a position similar to his and I would never behave in the manner he did. I enjoy mentoring junior devs and I can't recall this ever being at odds with getting shit done correctly in the end.

AdrianRossouw 11y ago

one of the most difficult things to learn when you become more senior is that 'not how i would do it' is a different thing to 'this is broken'.