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So it's been a while since I've posted as my first few months at the new job have been amazing. But now I'm running into issues with a team member that I need to get off my chest.
So my new job is front end development in React. I'm brand new to it but I was promised time to learn on the job. On my first day the team member I'm now having a conflict with offered me help. He's the most experienced so I gladly took it.
But now several months in I've noticed his teaching style doesn't work for me. He'll go into long theoretical explanations whenever I ask a question and I get overwhelmed with info. And he gets frustrated with my inability to process all that, because he feels I waste his time. So frustrated that at one time he just walked out of work and drove home, which was really upsetting to everyone.
My direct manager and my mentor in the company (our software architect), as well as our scrum master (a consultant) are all aware of the conflict. I've been assigned another colleague to help me out. Things were going ok but he got sick so I had to turn back to the team member with the conflict for assistance. Of course frustrations arose again.
Now yesterday during our sprint planning meeting we had to say what we liked and didn't like about the past sprint. And I brought up I feel I need time for learning and that I don't know where to put that, since we don't have a task for it. I said I also felt past approaches weren't working out and that I'd like to take up the offer to go on training. I was trying to word it very neutral to not upset my colleagues, as they tried their best. But the colleague who I had previous conflicts with took it personal and accused me of not listening and that is why my code is awful. While all I've been doing is rely on his code to learn. Long story short it got very heated and direct manager and scrum master who were present had to shut it down.
I'm thinking of talking to my manager and mentor today. It really hurts when you're accused of maliciousness when all you did was try. I know my code isn't perfect. But I get no help in improving it beyond long winded explanations about theory. If I ask for practical help he says he won't write my code for me. Which isn't what I expect. When I say I followed his example he says I shouldn't copy. But two sentences later he says if I don't know what I am doing I should listen to him. It's really very confused and demotivating as a beginner, but he makes it about how I waste his time and ruin his job for him. I understand he tries his best and that it has to be hard when someone seemingly is as dumb as a bag of bricks. But my manager and mentor told me they support me as long as I continue to show improvement. So I asked for alternatives (training, time to study, or whatever I haven't thought of) and now I feel like the bad person. I'm already someone with crippling low self esteem, and I'm thrown into the deep end. It kinda sucks when someone then tells you from the sideline you can't swim and how swimming works. How about tossing me one of those floaty things and then maybe accept I need to hold on to that for a bit and my technique will need work until I can make it on my own? :(2 -
Sorry I haven't been as active lately, however this is one of the better prompts, so I feel I should have it in my track record. Beware, it's a long one...
Let's trace the roots: My uncle was building desktops and he told my dad he'd build him one if my dad paid him for the components. These days I know builds aren't rocket science, but back then my parents didn't do their research. So my dad paid him.
Give or take some time, and most of the parts are complete. He underestimated the prices of a few things and had to ask for $200 more to complete the build. This...caused my dad to explode.
Later, I heard my dad ranting to my stepmom in January 2017 about how the last convo he had with his brother was a "Fuck-you conversation" - it was the last because my uncle had died in 2003.
Flash forward to March 2017. My mom and I are sitting in a Fazoli's, a nice sunset out of the full-length windows. I had to probe. HAD TO.
"You promise you won't tell your dad I told you this?" she asked.
"You know Kellie and I can't stand to be around him." I replied.
As the story goes, that last "Fuck-you conversation"? Over a fucking measly $200. Yup, the last conversation between my dad and his brother to ever happen was a shouting match over a relatively short amount of money. I wish I could say my dad had remorse, but he doesn't. He still talks shit. He's also technologically illiterate, so I doubt there was a way his brother was going to be able to reason with him.
In late 2003, my uncle, who had been a smoker, passed away due to cardiac arrest. The build was still not finished. This was one of the OTHER things that I have mixed feelings about.
After my uncle passed, my aunt paid someone to finish the build and get it shipped to my dad. We'll get back to why I feel this is fucked up, stay tuned...
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It's Spring 2004. I'm in the last half of what I think is Kindergarten or some shit...too lazy to do the math. Anyway, my dad announces we have a family computer - however, I couldn't read yet. That didn't stop the waste of oxygen that is my father from going in the Windows XP screensavers and putting text in that said "GAGE MORGAN WILL NOT TOUCH THIS COMPUTER." He's such a fuckin' dick, now AND back then.
My mom had an issue with this. I don't know why, but she did. Later, I was slowly taught how to use the mouse, under heavy supervision. Then I went to my grandma's house. She taught me one very specific thing on her old Win98 (386, maybe? IDK my old hw shit man), and because I know you guys are gonna love this one:
"The blue "e" opens up your games!"
The blue "e" does not open up your games, it opens something that can lead to your games.
I went home and tried this...without permission. My dad came down and discovered my lollygagging on the homepage - this is fucking weird. It was before Nextel, IIRC, so Sprint's logo was red still. Yes, we had broadband from Sprint. I don't know what saga led to that going the way of the dodo, but...
Back on track, I literally got my pants pulled down and had my bare bottom beat. He was gonna drag my ass upstairs and lock me in my room, but before he could, he accidentally slammed MY FUCKING RIGHT TEMPLE into the corner of a hardwood table at the bottom of the staircase.
The wailing that resulted probably was different than the previous form, which is probably what got my mom involved. My dad had a way of going too far, and in retrospect I'm more terrified now of what could've happened than I was then.
Later, I was given access to games in the form of my own account and bookmarks bar. That wasn't the end of the madness/drama from my use of that machine, but it was the earliest form.
Ever since Kindergarten, that one fateful day, I've been defying any/all imposed limitations on tech set on me by my parents...well, not anymore, but literally grades K-12. I'm living on my own, aka "adulting" now. It sucks more than you think, man.
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Let's tie this up before I reach the limit. I said I thought it was fucked up when my aunt paid to have the build finished and shipped to us after my uncle's death.
Yes, my aunt's intervention led to me ultimately majoring in computer science.
That doesn't change the fact that she shouldn't have done it.
My dad was an asshole to her husband, who passed. She is ultimately too caring. I don't think my jackass father should've been able to get by with that, he didn't deserve the freebie. Someone else should've told him his brother did in fact need that $200.
I haven't seen her IRL since the funeral when my grandpa passed in 2005. 2006 spelled the end of my parents' marriage.
Hope you guys enjoyed this - it's only a small segment of how I got to where I am now - tiny, actually.2 -
I googled "scrum sucks" and now I can see a pattern described as an argument against the whole scrum/agile/whatever thing, which is already happening since we started adopting agile: we're consciously incurring technical debt and being allowed to create a mess out of the previously existing code architecture just to "get this ticket out of the way"
We're also refraining from acting immediately on negative user feedback on a feature just released, which I think can wear user perception of the company as a whole, all because it's "not the focus" of the current sprint9 -
Today at 'Derp & Co' is the end of the last sprint, no one have close all the task asigned. Myself included.
- that sucks...
Because there are task from previos sprints still in TODO that block other tasks.
- oof
But there is more... Yesterday was the deadline of the project. From today and onwards the client get discount.
- oof (but fair to the client)
Management have in mind AT LEAST 4 more weeks of development.
- But... how... wtf?
In 2 weeks part of the hardware we need for the project will return to the client.
- <smash the door and leave>
Management still is asking if we can do it on time...
- yeah... just call the Doctor, we need a TARDIS ASAP2 -
We are a remote team of two android developers for this startup. I have 3 years of experience and my protege has 1 year of experience.
One month a new guy with 10 years experience joined our team and hes working onsite. He's supposed to be scrum master and be good ad dividing and delegating tasks, but what he's doing past two weeks is appaling to me.
Basically we got a request for a new feature. He skipped discovery and planning steps, went straight to implementation and one week later showed us his implementation.
Note that at that moment my remote team was not informed about anything. He started reinventing a library to capture a picture and video, while there are tons of other well developed libraries out there.
What makes things more difficult is that his english sucks.
I don't understand what he's doing but now it seems that either he's playing office politics and is trying to stay ahead by not informing us so we would be forced to follow his implementation. Or maybe he is totally oblivious and don't have any sprint management experience, so he's just trying his best by working hard and trying to prove his own worth.
Eitherway it sucks that he is not able to communicate specifications from HQ to us, because even I did a better work with planning our sprints by communicating remotely.
So now I started asking him questions and turns out the guy doesn't even understand specification. He already half implemented the feature and can't tell us why we need it and why we are not using what we already have in the app. So now he's back to square one: doing discovery. It's fcking ridiculous.1 -
Submenu Boards doesn't show in Firefox 45.5.0 when viewing a single issue. This is really frustrating as I can't move quickly between the sprint board and a specific issue. What also sucks about jira is that there is no way to report bugs like this (perhaps Atlassian sincerely believe that they never have any bugs in their products), leaving devrant as the only resort to let out steam ;)
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