Need Help with Office politics
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As I understand from that link, the company cannot enforce you to stay employed if you quit. You can threat them to go to court to get that stupid letter and I'm pretty sure they won't want the hastle and let you go. Also, you can explain the situation to new employer and if it's a sane place they might bulge for it.
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I asked - they didn't have a problem with my tone or delivery, my manager's manager actually told me that if I treated everyone as if they did great work, then they would produce great work. He used to send out emails congratulating people for getting one tenth of their job right.
And this worked?Everyone got better and better?
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Nope, I left and they lost the only guy that recognized that their stuff sucked. They all feel much better now, but they get no more work done than they used to.
I still know a few people on the business side and they are still constantly frustrated that IT takes forever to do little things and gets them all wrong at least three times before getting them right.
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India is apparently a terrible country for worker's rights. See also: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/q/20945/373
The creepiest thing there is that the guy explaining the law seems to be completely in agreement with it and thinks this slavery crap is a good thing.
Fuck.
EDIT: BTW this is the guy who wrote that
wha?
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Do being good at work and at politics go together?Can this be done?
It always seems to be that people who are good at what they do resent office politics and people who are good at it hardly do any work.
If you don't want politics, get a job in a small company. The smaller it is, the less politics there is. But also, you get less money and have to wear more hats (you don't get away with "I'm a middle-level backend and services .NET developer special snowflake" crap).
Not sure how's the situation in India, but on Balkan, you can get a job in a small company (~ dozen people) doing outsourcing sort of stuff, have flexible-ish work hours and work with .NET.
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EDIT: BTW this is the guy who wrote that
wha?
Ha ha he is an indian actor.People call him the Chuck Norris of India or some shit like that .
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What's the penalty for breaking the contract?
I have to pay so much money that I dont have right now.And the sad thing being I am not even doing anything wrong.
There's your answer. Continue not doing anything wrong. While you're at it, stop doing anything right. Come in, read magazines, surf the web, and when they complain ignore it. Since according to your OP you're the only one doing any useful work, this should cause the entire company to collapse around you. When that happens, you're off the hook for the contract.
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Continue not doing anything wrong. While you're at it, stop doing anything right. Come in, read magazines, surf the web, and when they complain ignore it.
+1
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While you're at it, stop doing anything right. Come in, read magazines, surf the web, and when they complain ignore it.
Or the likes thread... that should shave off a few months...
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We're Fortune 500, which basically means we're as political as it can get. Drinks and shit flow freely whenever anyone travels. A bigger expense account limit means the person is more politically important, and that's very important to show off (and very important to use it). My limit is $2k, which makes me higher status than the $1k'ers (entry sales) but lower than managers ($4k)
Ran a $4000 bar tab on my previous director.
I can't even imagine what would have happened to him in an East Coast company. Do they do public hangings?
Either executed or worshipped as a god. One or the other.So you're a salesman? Well, I think you're brave to frequent TDWTF.
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No. I'm a developer. (Or dev-manager or some shit like that). My expense account is just bigger than the one some n00b who hasn't landed any big deals gets.
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My Manager is a complete dumbfuck.Thinks he knows shit but does not . Constantly interrupts every developer every hour.Holds a scrum meeting in the morning for about an hour.Holds a mini scrum meeting every hour with each developer for about 7- 10 mins.Sometimes gets to personal insults on the developer's ability to do stuff.How do I tell him to fuck off?
As everyone else has said, leaving as soon as possible would be in your best interest.
My co-workers are complete shit.I am not an expert.I am not bragging here.I write decent code.I dont break old code.The Team leader acknowledges this and gives me code to work on that is critical.I work on them and my fellow developers fuck it up.How do I tell these gentlemen and ladies to pull their shit together?
One thing to keep in mind is that sometimes managers like to apply different standards to workers. At one of my jobs, my coworkers and manager gave me crap for taking extra time to test and verify code (and not pushing out changes fast enough), but if I wrote something sloppy, I would catch ten times as much hell as they would. That you're given the critical work may be a tacit compliment.
The problem being I have been working here for just around 1.5 years and is my second official job and owing to my experience the manager thinks I m just young and reckless and dont know enough.
Great, he doesn't respect you as a professional. One more reason to get out. Professional relationships should be based on mutual respect and trust.
I actually do care for the product I am working on.It is a Hospital management system and for fuck's sake somebody is gonna actually use it and trust the software to get things done the right way.I want it to WORK. I like the product and I think I might indirectly touch somebody's life(even if it is in the tiniest way possible).
This would be taking pride in your work. It is a virtue your coworkers and management do not share.
Leaving the team or job would make me feel bad.I've written code that makes up atleast 30-40% of the application just by myself.I've invested so much effort into it and it just feels wrong to quit.The team can all die for all i care,but I do want to make this product work.
It's a huge investment, yes, and you can be proud that you have contributed so much, but you should cut your losses if your peers or superiors do not value your contributions. Think of all of the @snoofle stories.
Seattle techies always make fun of East Coast tech companies which have things like "dress codes" and other bullshit that's just comical on the west coast. (Even companies that don't officially have dress codes, look at their east coast branches. The employees still dress alike. Voluntarily! It's weird as shit.)
Is there a dress code when clients are visiting the office? That's pretty much the only time we have a dress code.
Stuff that flies on the East Coast won't fly here. A slacker who's good at politics could probably become King Of Everything at a bloated government contractor, he wouldn't be able to clean the toilets at Amazon.
There aren't any incompetent politickers in IT on the West Coast?!
If you don't want politics, get a job in a small company. The smaller it is, the less politics there is.
Not necessarily. All it takes is one scheming sociopath to trample over you and your coworkers in a mad dash for power.
But also, you get less money and have to wear more hats (you don't get away with "I'm a middle-level backend and services .NET developer special snowflake" crap).
I would argue that early on in one's career, there are more benefits there than drawbacks.
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mmm... excellent wall of text. 9/10 would use to prop the roof up again.
;-)
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My Manager is a complete dumbfuck.Thinks he knows shit but does not . Constantly interrupts every developer every hour.Holds a scrum meeting in the morning for about an hour.Holds a mini scrum meeting every hour with each developer for about 7- 10 mins.Sometimes gets to personal insults on the developer's ability to do stuff.
I have signed a legal contract to work for the company till next August.Leaving is out of the question right now.
Should i basically be passive aggressive in this situation?
What you're going to do is keep personal records. You are going to keep them on a backed-up media under your control that the company doesn't know enough about to be able to even break laws to access. That is, not your computer or the company drive. I mention the law because I've no idea what other stuff your company gets up to. It's clearly being run by psychopathic middle-management.
You're going to work your exact day schedule with no additional hours (unless you get paid for additional hours, in which case, y'know) until you start enjoying your job again instead of considering it a waste of time that you want to leave behind.
You're going to spend your spare time either writing TDWTF articles, posts and comments about your workplace or doing something fun.
You're going to make sure your CV is up to date ready for August.
You're going to attempt to make friends in spite of your aggression. The aggression might fade, but you don't need it.
This is an exercise in staying sane until you can leave. If they try to fire you, the aim is to have enough information on them to either pursue legal action or at least give them a bad reputation. If you're going to do the latter, make sure you do it after you have a new job. The information you keep can be used to write. You will find your writing and analytical skills improve as a direct result. You don't need your aggression to do any of this, so don't worry if it goes away. This is more about informing the human race on how people should NOT treat each other, and the consequences when people misbehave. Apparently art is derived form pain, or something.
When you feel the need to drink, spend the time instead planning how you're going to keep better records, or some way you can improve your strategy.
I don't know if this could be called passive aggression, I'd call it active defence.
Oh and definitely post. I want to hear more about your stupid manager, the things he says, etc.
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mmm... excellent wall of text. 9/10 would use to prop the roof up again.
Some of us just like building walls.
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@Intercourse said:
Ahhhhh, never worked a government job so I did not think of that
How much you can charge for an employee in a govt contract (depends on the type: time and materials, fixed price, cost plus, etc) is often related to experience and education, where you can replace one with another, e.g., 5 years experience instead of a master's degree (or whatever).
I doubt the govt checks in most cases, but if something comes up and there's an audit, I imagine the contractor can get into some shit.
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It kinda feels like the market is drying up again, globally. Too many decent developers in bad situations that can't easily move.
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If you'd prefer, I could make nine individual replies instead, but that would make Jeff grumpy and require slightly more effort.
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well Jeff doesn't come round these parts much that i've seen and grumpy, well.... i'm sure i'm causing him far more headaches than your 9 individual posts would.
still, post however you want to. ;-)
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still, post however you want to.
I'm perfectly fine with causing my post count to grow faster than at its ambient rate. Hence this post.
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you have a long way to go to oust me from my position as top poster.
I look forward to seeing your progress (and i wonder how hard it would be for @pjh to exclude PMs from that query to make it a bit more fair, as it is i could have a few of my posts play fizzbuzz with each other in PM ad infinitum and drive their posts counts up like crazy)
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and i wonder how hard it would be for @pjh to exclude PMs from that query to make it a bit more fair
I'd probably have to swipe the
badge_postsdefinition and use a simplified version of it...View definition: SELECT p.id, p.user_id, p.topic_id, p.post_number, p.raw, p.cooked, p.created_at, p.updated_at, p.reply_to_post_number, p.reply_count, p.quote_count, p.deleted_at, p.off_topic_count, p.like_c ount, p.incoming_link_count, p.bookmark_count, p.avg_time, p.score, p.reads, p.post_type, p.vote_count, p.sort_order, p.last_editor_id, p.hidden, p.hidden_reason_id, p.notify_moderators_count, p.spam_count, p.illegal_count, p.inappropriate_count, p.last_version_at, p.user_deleted, p.reply_to_user_id, p.percent_rank, p.notify_user_count, p.like_score, p.deleted_by_id, p.edit_reason, p.word_count, p.version, p.cook_method, p.wiki, p.baked_at, p.baked_version, p.hidden_at, p.self_edits, p.reply_quoted FROM posts p JOIN topics t ON t.id = p.topic_id JOIN categories c ON c.id = t.category_id WHERE c.allow_badges AND p.deleted_at IS NULL AND t.deleted_at IS NULL AND NOT c.read_restricted AND t.visible;
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might be worth looking into if you are at all interested.
i mean, i'm not planning on abusing the badge system, but others might try it.
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Surpassing you was never the plan. Surpassing me is the plan.
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then fair sailing my friend.
May the wind always blow at your back and so speed you to your destination where'er you go.edit: formatting FAIL
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Btw, which query were you alluding to? The 5%, et alia badges, are already based off
badge_posts.
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ooh. what one was the one you were talking about today in the 5% thread about including PMs? that wasn't the % badges?
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The query with the full table of the top 25%+1 was using
badge_posts- the other queries were comparing the numbers in that table with all posts (i.e. excluded topics, categories, PMs and deleted posts.)
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oooh! that's what i get for skimming that topic then....
nevermind....
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I wonder if you already consulted this guy for your office issues
sorry I had a late epiphany
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If you'd prefer, I could make nine individual replies instead, but that would make Jeff grumpy
All the more reason to do it.
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Hi,
I have been very busy lately.
Updates on what has happened meanwhile
1.I still have not gotten around to getting a lawyer about my contract
2.The Team lead has come forward listened to our woes and has helped make things smoother.Things have been relatively quiet for a while
3.I have a new WTF now I dont know how to deal with.
The Team/Project is in a phase where it is mostly Testing and Fixing bugs.I have to tell a few words about my testing team.These are a nice bunch of people ,mean no harm,sociable friendly people .Bugs are input into a Bug tracking system.Bugs in each developer's code are assigned to them by the Team lead,blah blah pretty standard stuff( Don't know how the process is in the West).
Anyway some of these folks who are either lazy or CBA type in stuff like "Module x-Failed to work" or "Feature does not work in the expected way" and so on.No clear bug descriptions whatsoever.This was taking up our time trying to recreate the bugs and fix them.Some of them are total edge-cases.This was brought up in a meeting and the testers were told to provide detailed bug desriptions and so on.Everything went okay for a while before things got fucked.
1.Testers still do not provide detailed info.They're too forgetful and I think,they CBA most of the time out of sheer laziness/Non-seriousness.How do i get this point across ?
2.Testers are forever not available when needed for clarification.Pinging through lync either has no response or a standard " I am busy,will see later ".Two hours later they're having a fucking carnival with their neighbours.No Remorse and a passing comment along the lines of "Hey you free now? Sorry totally forgot your shit bro!" to which I say No I am busy
3.We re a small team and have to almost talk with everyone on a daily basis.Anything too direct or stern would make things comfortable for me,the people involved and the innocent co-workers.
4.These people always forget to double check if their data is right .Always .All the fucking time.I dig through the code all the way to the value in the database column and motherfuck goddamn invalid data(Not Invalid per se,just data that does not fit the case being tested)
How do i tell them to pick their shit up and act more responsible.Every problem we've had and I've written about has been discussed with them in the nicest way possible.NICEST WAY!.I dont wanna be passive aggressive,I dont wanna shout,I just want to be fair but direct in a way they dont take it personally.These are Men and women ranging from 23 to 35 with varying years of Experience and understanding.I gave it a week for my anger to settle but fuck I am still pissed about this.I've roughly arrived at approx. 3 hrs wasted time everyday running behind them trying to get shit done . I am on the edge about to flip out any fucking time.
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Module x-Failed to work
Module x working fine given (1) The following steps: A, B, C and (2) is not in contradiction with the available expectations provided in the bug report.
CLOSED-NOTABUGFeature does not work in the expected way
Feature working precisely as described in Document XYZ, and is not in contraction with the circumstances indicated on bug report.
CLOSED-NOTABUG
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I did a Not a Bug,Feature and a Cant Replicate,Closed and I got two days of complete shit from the testing team for replies that were "Unprofessional and uncalled for and irrelevant/not useful in fixing the issue"
Mind you,these are people who are not there ,like not in there most of the time ,like in the head,i dont know how to put it
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No - you don't simply close them out with a solely negative reply, you explain (Steps A,B,C or Document XYZ) why you think it's behaving as it should.
It should be up to them to put a bit more effort into refuting your refutations...
If you simply close them without that supporting evidence then they will feel fully entitled to call you out on not trying, despite the hypocrisy that it's their initial laziness that's causing issues.
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Why am I supposed to account for somebody else's laziness?
Are things like these too common and am I too naive and should just let this whole thing go?
It feels like I should do my job and then do their job for them too.I have only so much time on my hands.
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Are things like these too common and am I too naive and should just let this whole thing go?
Entirely common, even from normally diligent people.
It feels like I should do my job and then do their job for them too.I have only so much time on my hands.
I try to think of it as just doing my job. I'll put in the steps I used to reproduce and then let them elaborate that they did something differently. If it happens a lot I may get more passive aggressive. But I think I have better relations with my testers / end users.
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No, you're not doing their job, you're forcing hem to do theirs by CYA and documenting your decision to close the bug.
I mean, you do have documents and procedures you can point to that were instrumental in producing the software in the first place don't you?
For example:
- You have documentation that says: "The frobinitor is for frobinating frobinaters"
- You produce a frobinator that frobinates frobinaters without error, so you think
- You get a bug report saying "The frobinator doesn't work."
- You reply back that "Document X says that 'The frobinitor is for frobinating frobinaters' and having tested it locally, it is quite successful in frobinating frobinaters. Please see the attached test results showing it. This is clearly at odds with the initial bug report."
It is at this point that you discover that they've been using your frobinator on the local wildlife and since it wasn't designed for that then you say so. Unless it was, in which case it's a legitimate bug and you get to test it on the local wildlife yourself while you fix it.
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But I think I have better relations with my testers / end users.
I can't really say the same
If it happens a lot I may get more passive aggressive
Please,please elaborate.I dont like confrontation really and If being passive aggressive helps,It'd make my life a tad bit easier
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You reply back that "Document X says that 'The frobinitor is for frobinating frobinaters' and having tested it locally, it is quite successful in frobinating frobinaters. Please see the attached test results showing it. This is clearly at odds with the initial bug report."
Frobinator frobinates frobinater-Type A when given A.
Frobinator frobinates frobinater-Type B when given B.What I've got here is "Hey Frobinater does not frobinate frobinater-Type A,what's up with that?"
And I go digging and in the end find the bug and go "Hey why are you giving the frobinator "B" and expecting it to frobinate frobinater-Type A"
All I get back is "Holy shit is that even a thing,Do I have to give frobinator A to get frobinater-Type A.fucking fuck.I did not know that "
Time wasted: 90 mins
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Please,please elaborate.I dont like confrontation really and If being passive aggressive helps,It'd make my life a tad bit easier
It tends to consist of closing stuff as not a bug or whatever instead of asking for clarification. Sometimes I put snarky messages in when they kick back my fixes because they didn't notice that they're testing an earlier version than what I marked as the fixed version.
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when they kick back my fixes because they didn't notice that they're testing an earlier version than what I marked as the fixed version.
+1
Haha classic.Happens all the time.
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And I go digging and in the end find the bug and go "Hey why are you giving the frobinator "B" and expecting it to frobinate frobinater-Type A"
If they don't supply the actual data or whatever that they used, I'll try it on a random thing. If it doesn't reproduce easily, I tell them which one I used and ask for the example they used. If you have to do this every time, I can see the cause for anger, and that's why people have recommended leaving.
Still, this is a better use of your time than trying to read their mind and discover the bug by doing extensive testing on your part.
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Haha classic.Happens all the time.
I gotta say, though, most of the time this happens because the guy who cuts releases and updates Jira with the latest version number forgot to do the stuff in Jira. And I totally throw him under the bus.
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Frobinator frobinates frobinater-Type A when given A.
Frobinator frobinates frobinater-Type B when given B.What I've got here is "Hey Frobinater does not frobinate frobinater-Type A,what's up with that?"
Reply: Frobinator reliably frobinates frobinater-Type A when given an A, please see attached unit test results, which is clearly at odds with the initial bug report."
And leave it at that. Time wasted: however long it took to type/research that answer and get the results together.
If they decide to volunteer the information that they aren't passing an A, you close the ticket as 'Behaving as intended'
Don't bother doing this bit - this is their job:
I go digging and in the end find the bug and go "Hey why are you giving the frobinator "B" and expecting it to frobinate frobinater-Type A"
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What you do is you spend a week attempting and failing to reproduce every bug they send your way. Then, at the end of the week, you go to your manager and say "I have spend X hours extra this week tracking down problems that the test team didn't give me enough information on. I could have done productive things if they had bothered to include more information." and let him and the test team manager fight it out.
Edit: Not sure why this is replied to Boomzilla."you" refers to @stillwater
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"I have spend X hours extra this week tracking down problems that the test team didn't give me enough information on. I could have done productive things if they had bothered to include more information." and let him and the test team manager fight it out.
I don't want to make things uncomfortable even in the slightest bit.I'm just trying to put it in a way that seems more professional and honest than trying to start a fight inside the team.Asked once about including more info and I was told "See,these guys have a lot of testing to do,so why dont you do some more work.Don't expect everything to be handed on a platter".
whaaaaaaaat.........
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His manager is an idiot though, keep that in mind.
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And leave it at that. Time wasted: however long it took to type/research that answer and get the results together.
If they decide to volunteer the information that they aren't passing an A, you close the ticket as 'Behaving as intended'
Don't bother doing this bit - this is their job:
The problem here being the manager glances over the issues on the Bug tracker and basically goes like dude you are inefficient.It takes so much back and forth for you to find and fix a bug.Not goooood!!!!!!
Me: Hey need more info
Tester: oh what do you need (after around 8 hrs)
Me:Hey frobinator was frobinating fine until yesterday evening .what did you give the frobinator today?
Tester: Oh I dont remember,let me get back on that to you(after another 8 hrs maybe)
Me:waiting
Me:Still waiting
Me:Hellooooo?
Tester:Hey we gave the frobinator "A" I think,It's been two days so i dont remember much!
Me:omg you were supposed to give me.How is you forgetting this my problem?
Tester:lolwut.kthx fix itAll the above happens in the Comments section of the Bug tracker.Lync or Skype pings are treated with "I'm busy"(But I ll actually be taking a long tea break in a while and no time for you)
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That's the thing though. I'm an SQA professional and if I was leading a team that produced such vague reports, I'd be ashamed on their behalf. They're not behaving professionally and they're wasting your time. If your boss doesn't mind your time being wasted, then you'll just have to put up with the wasted time, but any decent boss won't want your time treated so lightly.
I just did my ISTQB foundation certification recently, so the training course's recommendations are fresh in my mind. Before filing a bug report, a good tester will isolate the problem, generalize it to any other areas that might take the same kind of data, and produce concise and clear steps to repeat. A lot of time was spent discussing the delicate nature of reporting bugs; testers have the unfortunate job of telling the dev team their baby is ugly, and putting things badly or seeming to put blame on the dev team is going to breed ill will. When they don't value your time, it tells me they're probably assuming you're all idiots and probably reporting things that aren't even broken because they think they're so much smarter that anything they do that's unexpected is a sign of shitty code. From what you've said about your coworkers, they might not be wrong, but that doesn't excuse their own unprofessional behavior.
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