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Here's a true story about a "fight" between me and my project manager...

I've been working as a Frontend developer for nearly two years, managed to acquire a decent amount of knowledge, in some cases well above the rest of my coworkers, and one day I got into a bit of a disagreement with my project manager.

Basically he wanted me to copy/paste some feature from another project (needless to say, that... "thing" has more bugs than an ant farm), and against his orders I started doing that feature from scratch, to build a solid foundation from the very start.
I had a lengthy deadline to deliver that feature, they were expecting me to take some time to fix some of the bugs as well, but my idea was to make it bug-free from the moment the feature was released. Both my method and the one I should be copying worked the exact same, but mine was superior in every way, had no bugs, was scalable and upgradeable with little effort, there was no reason not to accept it.

We use scrum as our work methodology, so we have daily meetings. In one of those, the project manager asked me how was the progress on that new feature, and I told him I was just polishing up the code and integrating it with the rest of the project, to make sure everything was working properly. I still had a full day left before the deadline set for that feature, and I was expecting to take about half an hour to finish up a couple lines of code and test everything, no issues so far...

But then he exploded, and demanded to know why wasn't I copying the code from the other project, to which I answered "because this way things will work better".
Right after he said that the feature was working on the other project, copying and pasting it should take a few minutes to do and maybe a couple of extra hours to fix any issues that might have appeared...
The problem here is, the other project was made by trainees, I honestly can't navigate through 3 pages without bumping into an average of 2 errors per page, I was placed into this new project because they know I do quality code, and they wanted this project to be properly made, unlike the previous one, so I was baffled when he said that he preferred me to copy code instead of doing "good" code...
My next reply was "just because something has been made and is working that doesn't mean that it has been properly made nor will work as it should, I could save a few hours copying code (except I wouldn't save any, it would take me more time to adapt the code than to do it from scratch) but then I'll be wasting weeks of work because of new bugs that will be reported over time, because trust me, they will appear... "

I told him this in a very calm manner, but everybody in the meeting room paused and started staring at me, not many dare challenge that specific project manager, and I had just done that...
After a few seconds of silence the PM finally said... "look, if you manage to finish your task inside the set deadline I'll forget we ever had this conversation, but I'll leave a note on my book, just in case..."

I finished that task in about 30 mins, as expected, still had 7 hours till deadline, and I completely forgot about that feature until now because it has never given any issues whatsoever, and is now being used for other projects as well.

It was one of my proudest/rage inducing moments in this project, and honestly, I think I have hit my PM with a very big white glove because some weeks after this event the CEO himself came to the whole team to congratulate us on the outstanding work being made so far, in a project that acted against the PM's orders 90% of the time.

Comments
  • 12
    The irony in all of this is that the PM went back to the old project and is now leading the new trainee team in a desperate attempt to fix all of the bugs it has... Some people just never learn.

    We now have a new PM and had no issues to this very day, so luckily things are working out alright, unlike the first few months with the first PM...
  • 4
    "but I'll leave a note on my book, just in case..."

    At that stage I would've told him/her to tread very carefully.

    Great story though and you clearly have incredible self control.
  • 0
    @MrCSharp why? Be glad he keeps it in his book, if you ever make a fuckup than he has a good thing in the book.
  • 1
    @Codex404 the PM was threatening him dude...
  • 0
    @MrCSharp that is the exact opposite of what I should do, that PM is known for being quite aggressive when it comes to punishing people, hence not many daring to challenge him, the best thing you can do in situations like these is to prove them you are right, that way they can't argue because they have no reason to
  • 1
    @MrCSharp so? You cannot be fired for it and OP did a good thing. Even though the manager didnt see it at the time, he will probably see it as a good thing if he remembers it at all.
  • 0
    @Codex404 ohh trust me, he has noticed, because the PM is one of the persons who have always supported me for being someone always in search of doing everything with the highest quality possible, yet another reason for me to be baffled by his decision at the time...
    He wouldn't fire me, obviously, but the PM could damage my productivity scores or place me in a shitty project that would end up doing the exact same to my scores, it wouldn't be the first time I'd see that sort of behaviour
  • 1
    @joaonunes don't get me wrong. You handled it very well but from what I read, and I might be wrong here because the tone of the conversation is not clear here, but what he said last, to me, is insulting. He is basically scaring you and even treating you like a child.

    Again, you handled it well and I wasn't telling you how to handle it.
  • 0
    “Had no bugs”, “scalable”
  • 0
    @aviophile exactly, surprised? XD
  • 0
    @MrCSharp nahh, I got you, and you are not far from the truth, indeed that PM is a harsh person and should be handled carefully, I only pressed forwards with my point of view because I was 100% certain I was right and my idea was the best option for the project, otherwise I'd keep it quiet and not say anything. Some people are just like this, and we developers have to learn how to deal with them...
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