...At least he's honest...
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So I've been on a bonafide death march since January, and have had several confrontations with one of the contractors on the team. He's apparently on a long term contract with my company and has been working on this project since its inception over 8 months ago. He's effectively the lead and only backend developer, the lead architect, the lead and only database designer, and the lead and only QA tester.
His "Bug Reports" amount to "This tab on the admin screen doesn't work." Despite my constant requests for more information he refuses to give it to me, instead waiting for me to ask him specific questions. I have explained that this applies generically, I need to understand a problem to fix it and "Does not work" doesn't help me do that.
His specs are derived from emails or phone calls and change constantly. I say derived because he seldom gives a straight answer, so most of my implementation is guesswork.
He frequently demands a change from the other GUI guy, and then just tells me to ask the other guy what he just asked for.
He holds the keys to the websphere server, and will frequently cycle the backend to point to a different DB server or update code. When he does this he refuses to tell anyone until people ask him if the app is down.
Today, I finally ask him "You just really hate fully describing a situation, don't you?", to which he responded "Yes. I hate typing a lot.".
While I admire honesty like that, I do have to wonder why someone who doesn't like to type would decide to be a software engineer or take several roles which require them to communicate with others through textual documentation.
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@Sloloem said:
While I admire honesty like that, I do have to wonder why someone who doesn't like to type would decide to be a software engineer or take several roles which require them to communicate with others through textual documentation.
Clearly he was born years ahead of his time, and will find the world a better place when all we'll have to do is speak to the machine and it will do our bidings (a la Blade Runner).
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[quote user="Renan "C#" Sousa"]@Sloloem said:
Clearly he was born years ahead of his time, and will find the world a better place when all we'll have to do is speak to the machine and it will do our bidings (a la Blade Runner).[/quote]While I admire honesty like that, I do have to wonder why someone who doesn't like to type would decide to be a software engineer or take several roles which require them to communicate with others through textual documentation.
Didn't the robots in blade runner go nuts and start killing people?
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@Sloloem said:
"You just really hate fully describing a situation, don't you?"
"Yes. I hate typing a lot.".
"Well, maybe I hate fixing bugs for you."
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If he's alsoa star trek nerd maybe you convince him to use a dictaphone.
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But I bet he only hates typing a lot because he can't think what to type.
In other words this reminds me of my boss who likes to pretend he has a big plan in his head but in reality is making most of it up as he goes along.
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@Medezark said:
Didn't the robots in blade runner go nuts and start killing people?
You said that as if you consider it a bad thing.
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@ComputerForumUser said:
But I bet he only hates typing a lot because he can't think what to type.
In other words this reminds me of my boss who likes to pretend he has a big plan in his head but in reality is making most of it up as he goes along.
Considering how often he flipflops on spec details, that makes sense. It doesn't explain anything about why he can't file a bug report worth a damn (even after coaching) and won't tell anyone when he takes the server down.
Did your boss' plans suck as badly as this guy's?
