Another "is this normal" question before I effing rip someone's head off.
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Thank you everyone for the comments on my last question. It helped me gain some idea on what to expect.
I have another question though.
It's the director of IT.
The director of IT is the head of the dev teams and devops and the QA team.
A lot of people go to his office to discuss higher level stuff like business policy or process.
He delegates day to day development to dev team leads.Something funny I noticed is though, people hesitate before they go in his room.
They ask people, "Is he in a good mood today?"One time, something went wrong and he came out into the office from his office and said,
"I'm about to rip someone's fucking head off".He doesn't actually scream at people but he uses the F word casually in the office for everyone to hear.
I can see that he has some short fuses that he gets upset quickly. People walk on eggshells around him.
I was in a situation where I needed confirmation from higher authority in order for me to proceed with a task.
That day, someone had updated a table without a where clause in the production database. Ouch.
So one of the team leads advised me that I do not approach him for the rest of the day for he will not be in a talking mood at all.
Is this realistically something that is common in the U.S.?
Obviously it is not ideal but I'm wondering if this is just something that happens a lot with the heads of departments.
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@Ascendant said in Another "is this normal" question before I effing rip someone's head off.:
Is this realistically something that is common in the U.S.?
It varies a lot; it's just one person's personality type, really. I don't believe it is anything very special to the US either.
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@dkf Good point. So.. this is just something that happens sometimes I guess
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@Ascendant I'm sorry you've got one of them. It's probably easiest to try to have things arranged so that you're not stuck for things to do if they're having a bad day.
OTOH, they might be well disposed to people who bring them good news on a day when it feels (to them) like everything is against them. Can't predict that for sure, but many people with anger problems don't actually like being that way so being able to give them something to feel good about can lead to being taken very well. But be careful with that; if they're really off the deep end, it can backfire.
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@Ascendant said in Another "is this normal" question before I effing rip someone's head off.:
@dkf Good point. So.. this is just something that happens sometimes I guess
Can do. But having to 'choose your moment' with a hothead is very different than being bullied by someone. Don't stand for abusive behaviour.
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@Ascendant said in Another "is this normal" question before I effing rip someone's head off.:
That day, someone had updated a table without a where clause in the production database. Ouch.
...
Is this realistically something that is common in the U.S.?I fucking hope it's not common anywhere for randos to have production access like that!
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@Tsaukpaetra said in Another "is this normal" question before I effing rip someone's head off.:
@Ascendant said in Another "is this normal" question before I effing rip someone's head off.:
That day, someone had updated a table without a where clause in the production database. Ouch.
...
Is this realistically something that is common in the U.S.?I fucking hope it's not common anywhere for randos to have production access like that!
I've been given root access and full prod db access everywhere I've worked. My current gig, I specifically asked not to be given access to production to skip out on doing all the support work as well as keeping all the test systems and build system alive. So, every single programming job I've ever had, I also had the opportunity to execute SQL in prod that nuked the whole DB. I've never done a booboo in prod though.
The worst I've done is merge the wrong branch into master the day before release builds, in clearcase. Boy was that fun to fix.
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@Carnage said in Another "is this normal" question before I effing rip someone's head off.:
I've been given root access and full prod db access everywhere I've worked. [...] So, every single programming job I've ever had, I also had the opportunity to execute SQL in prod that nuked the whole DB. I've never done a booboo in prod though.
Any sane setup keeps developers out of production databases and even gives DBAs two sets of credentials: one for monitoring + day-to-day followup, and another for dropping tables or nuking indexes.
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@Ascendant said in Another "is this normal" question before I effing rip someone's head off.:
The director of IT is the head of the dev teams and devops and the QA team.
A lot of people go to his office to discuss higher level stuff like business policy or process.
He delegates day to day development to dev team leads.
Does he really want to be aware of anything and everything? OK, you did preempt that somewhat with "higher level stuff", but does he really need to give the thumbs-up or is this more of a "FYI"?
It could be a red-flag as a disguised micro-manager.
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@JBert said in Another "is this normal" question before I effing rip someone's head off.:
@Carnage said in Another "is this normal" question before I effing rip someone's head off.:
I've been given root access and full prod db access everywhere I've worked. [...] So, every single programming job I've ever had, I also had the opportunity to execute SQL in prod that nuked the whole DB. I've never done a booboo in prod though.
Any sane setup keeps developers out of production databases and even gives DBA's two sets of credentials: one for monitoring an day-to-day followup and another for dropping tables or nuking indexes.
I haven't seen a proper DBA in years now. Same with proper system admins. It's all devops, or whatever the latest faddy manglementese name for "Lets not hire actual specialists and let the halfwit programmers do everything!" is at CURRENT_TIME. At least most places keep the junior devs out of prod, but not all places.
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@Ascendant said in Another "is this normal" question before I effing rip someone's head off.:
he uses the F word casually in the office for everyone to hear.
Away from customers? Not an issue, IMO.
@Ascendant said in Another "is this normal" question before I effing rip someone's head off.:
Is this realistically something that is common in the U.S.?
This isn't common, this is just working for a director who's not professional enough.
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@Ascendant said in Another "is this normal" question before I effing rip someone's head off.:
"I'm about to rip someone's fucking head off"
he uses the F word casually in the office for everyone to hear.
eggshells
Is this realistically something that is common
This is the sort of thing that crops up on Ask A Manager. And I'm sure her answer would be "no" and "nor should it be even a thing."
Unfortunately, while I can find numerous columns on people copiously using the word Fuck, I can't find any where it's specifically the manager doing it, and in the process creating an extremely hostile atmosphere at work, to the point where work doesn't get done because people are too scared to approach him while he's in this state
Do you have the confidence/ability/standing to approach him about how his behaviour is affecting others when he's in this state?
Failing that, do you have an HR department which you could possibly approach about this?
I'd also possibly suggest writing into AAM with this - just to see if she picks it up?
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@Carnage said in Another "is this normal" question before I effing rip someone's head off.:
@JBert said in Another "is this normal" question before I effing rip someone's head off.:
@Carnage said in Another "is this normal" question before I effing rip someone's head off.:
I've been given root access and full prod db access everywhere I've worked. [...] So, every single programming job I've ever had, I also had the opportunity to execute SQL in prod that nuked the whole DB. I've never done a booboo in prod though.
Any sane setup keeps developers out of production databases and even gives DBA's two sets of credentials: one for monitoring an day-to-day followup and another for dropping tables or nuking indexes.
I haven't seen a proper DBA in years now. Same with proper system admins. It's all devops, or whatever the latest faddy manglementese name for "Lets not hire actual specialists and let the halfwit programmers do everything!" is at CURRENT_TIME. At least most places keep the junior devs out of prod, but not all places.
Oh this must be that fullstack developer everyone's looking for.
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@PJH said in Another "is this normal" question before I effing rip someone's head off.:
@Ascendant said in Another "is this normal" question before I effing rip someone's head off.:
"I'm about to rip someone's fucking head off"
he uses the F word casually in the office for everyone to hear.
eggshells
Is this realistically something that is common
This is the sort of thing that crops up on Ask A Manager. And I'm sure her answer would be "no" and "nor should it be even a thing."
Unfortunately, while I can find numerous columns on people copiously using the word Fuck, I can't find any where it's specifically the manager doing it, and in the process creating an extremely hostile atmosphere at work, to the point where work doesn't get done because people are too scared to approach him while he's in this state
Do you have the confidence/ability/standing to approach him about how his behaviour is affecting others when he's in this state?
Oh yes. Business analysts have to go talk to him a lot and they seem really nervous or sometimes straight out ask people, "Is he in a good mood today?".
Failing that, do you have an HR department which you could possibly approach about this?
I think the upper management already know this. He's been here for years already. They can not - not know it at this point. Well, that is my assumption.
So I'm assuming that the upper management is really ok with this.
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@Carnage said in Another "is this normal" question before I effing rip someone's head off.:
I haven't seen a proper DBA in years now. Same with proper system admins. It's all devops, or whatever the latest faddy manglementese name for "Lets not hire actual specialists and let the halfwit programmers do everything!" is at CURRENT_TIME. At least most places keep the junior devs out of prod, but not all places.
That's the job of your continuous delivery tooling. It should get prod rights, not developers or DBAs.
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@Ascendant said in Another "is this normal" question before I effing rip someone's head off.:
So I'm assuming that the upper management is really ok with this.
I wouldn't. I'm for assuming they've let it go on so long now, that they don't know how to handle/correct for it now.
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Ugh, hit submit too soon..
@Ascendant said in Another "is this normal" question before I effing rip someone's head off.:
Do you have the confidence/ability/standing to approach him about how his behaviour is affecting others when he's in this state?
Oh yes. Business analysts have to go talk to him a lot and they seem really nervous or sometimes straight out ask people, "Is he in a good mood today?".
No - what I mean was, when he's in a calm mood, can you go talk to him and say something along the lines of:
"Hey, Cecil, you know when you're in a bad mood, you're affecting everyone else in the office, because they're too scared to come near you and work gets delayed - is there anything we can do to reduce the number of times this situation arises? Is there something we should be aware of to try and understand your change in behaviour when things don't quite go to plan?"
"Not screwing up" is not a suitable answer to that last - you're after things to change his reaction to "screwing up" happening, because you're not going to get rid of "screwing up" happening completely, and his reactions are totally out of whack.
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@PJH said in Another "is this normal" question before I effing rip someone's head off.:
Ugh, hit submit too soon..
@Ascendant said in Another "is this normal" question before I effing rip someone's head off.:
Do you have the confidence/ability/standing to approach him about how his behaviour is affecting others when he's in this state?
Oh yes. Business analysts have to go talk to him a lot and they seem really nervous or sometimes straight out ask people, "Is he in a good mood today?".
No - what I mean was, when he's in a calm mood, can you go talk to him and say something along the lines of:
"Hey, Cecil, you know when you're in a bad mood, you're affecting everyone else in the office, because they're too scared to come near you and work gets delayed - is there anything we can do to reduce the number of times this situation arises? Is there something we should be aware of to try and understand your change in behaviour when things don't quite go to plan?"
"Not screwing up" is not a suitable answer to that last - you're after things to change his reaction to "screwing up" happening, because you're not going to get rid of "screwing up" happening completely, and his reactions are totally out of whack.
Errrm I probably wont' feel comfortable talking to him about his mood.
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@Ascendant said in Another "is this normal" question before I effing rip someone's head off.:
Errrm I probably wont' feel comfortable talking to him about his mood.
So, the answer to my question is "no" :).
I'm presuming there's no-one else around who could have that conversation with him. So we're back to HR, his boss, putting up with it, or finding other employment.
Because I suspect AAM would probably reply in much the same way. Might be interesting if you could get her to answer it....
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@PJH said in Another "is this normal" question before I effing rip someone's head off.:
"Not screwing up" is not a suitable answer to that last - you're after things to change his reaction to "screwing up" happening, because you're not going to get rid of "screwing up" happening completely, and his reactions are totally out of whack.
I think it's a good idea to think that we're all humans and humans are fallible.
So that makes it more important to have backups and redundancy.But unfortunately, I don't think they care right now.
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@JBert
I think this one was something that needed a confirmation on how to process some stuff business process wise.I'm not so concerned about micro management at the moment as I find it odd to people to actually ask around if the director is in a good mood to talk to.
But yes, I wouldn't find it enjoyable to work under a micro-manager.
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@Unperverted-Vixen said in Another "is this normal" question before I effing rip someone's head off.:
@Carnage said in Another "is this normal" question before I effing rip someone's head off.:
I haven't seen a proper DBA in years now. Same with proper system admins. It's all devops, or whatever the latest faddy manglementese name for "Lets not hire actual specialists and let the halfwit programmers do everything!" is at CURRENT_TIME. At least most places keep the junior devs out of prod, but not all places.
That's the job of your continuous delivery tooling. It should get prod rights, not developers or DBAs.
Yeah, and when there is strange data in prod that need correction?
Not that I disagree, but there are times when someone needs to look at the systems because they are not acting properly. Most places still haven gotten around to running everything in containers.
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@Ascendant said in Another "is this normal" question before I effing rip someone's head off.:
@Carnage said in Another "is this normal" question before I effing rip someone's head off.:
@JBert said in Another "is this normal" question before I effing rip someone's head off.:
@Carnage said in Another "is this normal" question before I effing rip someone's head off.:
I've been given root access and full prod db access everywhere I've worked. [...] So, every single programming job I've ever had, I also had the opportunity to execute SQL in prod that nuked the whole DB. I've never done a booboo in prod though.
Any sane setup keeps developers out of production databases and even gives DBA's two sets of credentials: one for monitoring an day-to-day followup and another for dropping tables or nuking indexes.
I haven't seen a proper DBA in years now. Same with proper system admins. It's all devops, or whatever the latest faddy manglementese name for "Lets not hire actual specialists and let the halfwit programmers do everything!" is at CURRENT_TIME. At least most places keep the junior devs out of prod, but not all places.
Oh this must be that fullstack developer everyone's looking for.
I used to do full stack development like you describe, I think "halfwit programmers" is a more apt description of what places are looking for,
@Ascendant Also I don't recall ever having a yelling boss. Absentee, micromanaging, passive aggressive, sure. No yellers yet though. So close to that bingo prize...
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@Unperverted-Vixen
Yeah, but then places give ${ALL_THE_DEVS} permissions to the continuous delivery tooling, either via merge permissions or actual abilities to edit/activate the deploy chains, which means that everyone has prod access.Don't get me wrong, scripted deploys are a very good idea... but you need to have MORE access control & auditing over them, not less, since you've now created an account that can be impersonated that has the keys to the kingdom.
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@Carnage said in Another "is this normal" question before I effing rip someone's head off.:
Yeah, and when there is strange data in prod that need correction?
Deploying ad-hoc SQL scripts should be something that your tooling can do. (It's certainly something that we built into ours!)
@izzion said in Another "is this normal" question before I effing rip someone's head off.:
Yeah, but then places give ${ALL_THE_DEVS} permissions to the continuous delivery tooling, either via merge permissions or actual abilities to edit/activate the deploy chains, which means that everyone has prod access.
If you're willing to give the dev the ability to activate the deploy chains, then you obviously don't care anyways and might as well give them write rights to prod.
Your point about merge permissions or editing the process is true - a sufficiently devious developer could (ab)use that to sneak stuff in if they wanted. But then, nothing can truly eliminate that. It's still an improvement on devs having direct prod access - if nothing else it eliminates the ability for them to make mistakes.Don't get me wrong, scripted deploys are a very good idea... but you need to have MORE access control & auditing over them, not less, since you've now created an account that can be impersonated that has the keys to the kingdom.
Isn't it basically the same amount of auditing as before? Whether it's a service account or the dev's own account that has the keys to the kingdom, it's something that should be tracked.
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@Unperverted-Vixen said in Another "is this normal" question before I effing rip someone's head off.:
It's still an improvement on devs having direct prod access - if nothing else it eliminates the ability for them to make mistakes.
I would actually argue the opposite, since it abstracts "this is a production change" away from the developer. In my experience, automated build processes tend toward increasing the frequency of severe mistakes, since people don't see a code check-in as a production change in their mind's eye. On the other hand, a well set up process (with a good backup step in the middle) can at least improve rollback/recovery, and often will discover the OOPS faster so that it can start the recovery (possibly automatically) before actual data changes come through that you need to keep/rebuild.
Isn't it basically the same amount of auditing as before? Whether it's a service account or the dev's own account that has the keys to the kingdom, it's something that should be tracked.
Yes and no. It's the same amount of total auditing, but since the changes on the production server itself are now all coming from BuildServiceAccount$, you have to move the auditing up a layer to get whodunnit. Again, a well-implemented build process will handle this... but it's another layer of abstraction & complexity, which is another shell in the foot-seeking-shotgun to deal with... and a lot of places don't audit the access to their code base or release pipelines as well as they do the access to their production servers, since the people responsible for the auditing often don't think in terms of "development systems".
Edit: Disclaimer, in case it isn't obvious from my posts... I'm a sysadmin with some DBA experience, so obviously my bias is toward "quit moving my cheese" and "why can't you young dev whippersnappers just work within the process". Given my experiences with systems automation (mostly on the monitoring & service recovery sides of sysadmin), I tend to view automated deployments with an iceberg sized grain of salt... especially given the number of Good System Titanics(tm) that have sunk to the bottom of the server farm seafloor because the automated monitoring missed warning signs or automated recovery made a small problem big.
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@Unperverted-Vixen said in Another "is this normal" question before I effing rip someone's head off.:
Deploying ad-hoc SQL scripts should be something that your tooling can do. (It's certainly something that we built into ours!)
Perhaps, but looking for data problems in the dB gets an obnoxious turnaround when doing it via deployed scripts if you don't know what the problem is.
And at my current gig a deploy to prod has a 100000 euro price tag, and can only be done on specific slot times.
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@Carnage said in Another "is this normal" question before I effing rip someone's head off.:
Perhaps, but looking for data problems in the dB gets an obnoxious turnaround when doing it via deployed scripts if you don't know what the problem is.
Devs can have read access to look. It's just write access that should be verboten.
And at my current gig a deploy to prod has a 100000 euro price tag, and can only be done on specific slot times.
Sweet zombie Jesus.
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@Ascendant said in Another "is this normal" question before I effing rip someone's head off.:
I think the upper management already know this. He's been here for years already. They can not - not know it at this point. Well, that is my assumption.
So I'm assuming that the upper management is really ok with this.They may know about it, but they may not realize how it effects day to day operations. If people are waiting until better times to bring up critical things, that is an issue.
My two cents: I do not see cursing in the workplace as being a bad thing. Last week we had two installs go completely fucking sideways and there was lots of cursing going on. But there is a huge difference between cursing around people and cursing at people.
"Well, you really fucked up this time, now what do we do to fix this?"Is acceptable (to me). Cursing at an employee is not.
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@Ascendant said in Another "is this normal" question before I effing rip someone's head off.:
I think it's a good idea to think that we're all humans and humans are fallible.
So that makes it more important to have backups and redundancy.Well, yes, but it depends upon degree and frequency. People who fuck up a lot still need to be culled from the pack.
As I have said to an employee before: "No one bats a thousand, but statistically speaking you should have gotten one right by accident by now".
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@Unperverted-Vixen said in Another "is this normal" question before I effing rip someone's head off.:
@Carnage said in Another "is this normal" question before I effing rip someone's head off.:
Perhaps, but looking for data problems in the dB gets an obnoxious turnaround when doing it via deployed scripts if you don't know what the problem is.
Devs can have read access to look. It's just write access that should be verboten.
Ah, true, didn't think of that.
I haven't had just read access to anything since I was in school, I'll blame that.
Most places seem to hand out write access to prod like candy to children.And at my current gig a deploy to prod has a 100000 euro price tag, and can only be done on specific slot times.
Sweet zombie Jesus.
It's outright retarded. They want a CI/CD workflow for the team, but there is a massive fucking roadblock for such a thing in the deploy rules. Utterly daft. And the only reason for the rules is because the service providers are lazy, and also, they created a horrible blob of perl scripts around everything that are subtly (or really in your face) broken so everything is way harder than it ought to be, and it's impossible to google any problems you have.
Setting up a local dev env takes somewhere between 2-3 days and a week or two, depending on how much the snowflaky scripts decide to break.And, sometime within the next few months we are going to go from one team to two teams 600 kilometers apart. Gonna be fun.
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@Polygeekery said in Another "is this normal" question before I effing rip someone's head off.:
@Ascendant said in Another "is this normal" question before I effing rip someone's head off.:
I think the upper management already know this. He's been here for years already. They can not - not know it at this point. Well, that is my assumption.
So I'm assuming that the upper management is really ok with this.They may know about it, but they may not realize how it effects day to day operations. If people are waiting until better times to bring up critical things, that is an issue.
My two cents: I do not see cursing in the workplace as being a bad thing. Last week we had two installs go completely fucking sideways and there was lots of cursing going on. But there is a huge difference between cursing around people and cursing at people.
"Well, you really fucked up this time, now what do we do to fix this?"Is acceptable (to me). Cursing at an employee is not.
In your example, aren't you cursing at that employee?
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@mikehurley said in Another "is this normal" question before I effing rip someone's head off.:
In your example, aren't you cursing at that employee?
No. Not in my opinion. Everyone is entitled to set their own standards and boundaries. In my mind the cursing conveys severity, but is not demeaning them or calling them names.
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@mikehurley said in Another "is this normal" question before I effing rip someone's head off.:
@Polygeekery said in Another "is this normal" question before I effing rip someone's head off.:
@Ascendant said in Another "is this normal" question before I effing rip someone's head off.:
I think the upper management already know this. He's been here for years already. They can not - not know it at this point. Well, that is my assumption.
So I'm assuming that the upper management is really ok with this.They may know about it, but they may not realize how it effects day to day operations. If people are waiting until better times to bring up critical things, that is an issue.
My two cents: I do not see cursing in the workplace as being a bad thing. Last week we had two installs go completely fucking sideways and there was lots of cursing going on. But there is a huge difference between cursing around people and cursing at people.
"Well, you really fucked up this time, now what do we do to fix this?"Is acceptable (to me). Cursing at an employee is not.
In your example, aren't you cursing at that employee?
"you really fucked up this time" could still be seen as "you did a bad job", even if a bit uncouth.
If the second part was "How are you fuckers going to fix this?" or "Can't you get anything fucking right" then it would be either calling people names or severely defaming.
(The latter can also be done without any F-words, which might then be the mark of a psychopath).
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@Zenith said in Another "is this normal" question before I effing rip someone's head off.:
Also I don't recall ever having a yelling boss. Absentee, micromanaging, passive aggressive, sure. No yellers yet though.
I've never had a direct manager like that. I've worked in at least a couple places where higher levels of management were like that, but I've always been fortunate to have good managers who deflected or absorbed the stuff flowing downhill and sheltering their subordinates from it.
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@izzion said in Another "is this normal" question before I effing rip someone's head off.:
another shell in the foot-seeking-shotgun
I'm totally stealing this.
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@HardwareGeek This reminds me of alot of projects:
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@izzion said in Another "is this normal" question before I effing rip someone's head off.:
I would actually argue the opposite, since it abstracts "this is a production change" away from the developer. In my experience, automated build processes tend toward increasing the frequency of severe mistakes, since people don't see a code check-in as a production change in their mind's eye.
If it is in any sense then there's some severe
going on there. A production change should be a deliberate deployment after things have been reviewed / tested / etc.
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@boomzilla said in Another "is this normal" question before I effing rip someone's head off.:
@izzion said in Another "is this normal" question before I effing rip someone's head off.:
I would actually argue the opposite, since it abstracts "this is a production change" away from the developer. In my experience, automated build processes tend toward increasing the frequency of severe mistakes, since people don't see a code check-in as a production change in their mind's eye.
If it is in any sense then there's some severe
going on there. A production change should be a deliberate deployment after things have been reviewed / tested / etc.Party pooper! How can you be agile if you don't automatically deploy all changes!
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@boomzilla said in Another "is this normal" question before I effing rip someone's head off.:
A production change should be a deliberate deployment after things have been reviewed / tested / etc.
We let users select (in the web interface, where meaningful) which version of the software to run, either the fully tested production version or the “lightly tested” (
) master branch version. The production version is default; I can't remember if selecting the other one brings up some kind of warning about the lack of promises about actually working but it should. (It depends on how easy it is to actually hack things to make that happen.)We need to do another production release in the next few months, as soon as we've stabilized a few key features (of the “nobody else in the world can do this stuff” variety, so strong management push to have them).
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@Zenith said in Another "is this normal" question before I effing rip someone's head off.:
This reminds me of alot of projects:
Edit: it should be wearing a badge around its neck. Unfortunately, my graphic skills and will to work are too small.
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@dkf said in Another "is this normal" question before I effing rip someone's head off.:
We let users select
As time goes on my goal is to remove as much choice as possible from users. They always fuck it up.
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@boomzilla "This page is intentionally left blank" seems like the ultimate
of design (apart from a really empty page, which would be indiscernible from an error).
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@JBert said in Another "is this normal" question before I effing rip someone's head off.:
@boomzilla "This page is intentionally left blank" seems like the ultimate
of design (apart from a really empty page, which would be indiscernible from an error).BRB, updating my
500page.
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@boomzilla said in Another "is this normal" question before I effing rip someone's head off.:
As time goes on my goal is to remove as much choice as possible from users.
True, but this is an area where we need to support it anyway. But at least they're just picking which set menu to have: boring, or exciting.
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@Ascendant said in Another "is this normal" question before I effing rip someone's head off.:
That day, someone had updated a table without a where clause in the production database. Ouch.
In all fairness, I'm pretty soft spoken but if that happened, I'd probably start sharpening a broom handle and decide where in the office could use a decorative head on a stake.
Sure, I'd also ensure the table is backed up, but it is still a rage inducing mistake.
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@The_Quiet_One said in Another "is this normal" question before I effing rip someone's head off.:
decorative head on a stake
Very few of my cow-orkers would I consider decorative.
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@Ascendant said in Another "is this normal" question before I effing rip someone's head off.:
Thank you everyone for the comments on my last question. It helped me gain some idea on what to expect.
I have another question though.
It's the director of IT.
The director of IT is the head of the dev teams and devops and the QA team.
A lot of people go to his office to discuss higher level stuff like business policy or process.
He delegates day to day development to dev team leads.Something funny I noticed is though, people hesitate before they go in his room.
They ask people, "Is he in a good mood today?"One time, something went wrong and he came out into the office from his office and said,
"I'm about to rip someone's fucking head off".He doesn't actually scream at people but he uses the F word casually in the office for everyone to hear.
I can see that he has some short fuses that he gets upset quickly. People walk on eggshells around him.
I was in a situation where I needed confirmation from higher authority in order for me to proceed with a task.
That day, someone had updated a table without a where clause in the production database. Ouch.
So one of the team leads advised me that I do not approach him for the rest of the day for he will not be in a talking mood at all.
Is this realistically something that is common in the U.S.?
Obviously it is not ideal but I'm wondering if this is just something that happens a lot with the heads of departments.
There was a now-disputed study making the rounds a few years ago about how if you were a prisoner looking for parole, your chances improved dramatically if your hearing was right after lunch instead of right before.
But yes, walking on eggshells around hot-tempered people who can make your job disappear is a prudent survival strategy in the short term, at least. In the longer term, sane people will eventually tire of the abuse and leave for greener pastures.
I don't think this is so much a US cultural issue as it is a human issue.
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@Zenith said in Another "is this normal" question before I effing rip someone's head off.:
@Ascendant Also I don't recall ever having a yelling boss. Absentee, micromanaging, passive aggressive, sure. No yellers yet though. So close to that bingo prize...
Lucky you. Which reminds me that we're due for a Lounge thread.
