I finally got myself in trouble at work
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Joe Q wrote:
[putting on my process hat] The processes are there to make sure everything is done right and to try to make sure nothing else is getting screwed with the fix. [taking off process hat] If it has to get done quick, typically, the official processes are not the way to go. We're a CMMI level 5 company and it would take about 3 weeks to do the "Hello World" program.
True. We're CMMI3 working towards 4, but a hello world app would fall below our cutoff for not having to follow full processes.
dan neely wrote:
True. We're CMMI3 working towards 4, but a hello world app would fall below our cutoff for not having to follow full processes.
Technically, we have no low cut off point for when the process is to be applied. I'm working that issue right now. We were orignally directed by our VP to make no distictions. Everyone at the lower levels immediatly saw the problem. We've convinced the VP but now we're coming up with some "tayloring" for small projects. With the way it will probably get changed it will still take a day to do the "hello world" program. So I'll probably get in trouble again for not following the process. ;)
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If it's a relatively quick change (1 day or less), then you're probably right that it's easier to simply get it implemented and get a test ready to show the fix. However, if you spend more time on an issue than a day, you start messing with your manager's time scheduling. There might be things in the pipe that you don't know about yet, that your manager is waiting to assign. So it could be understandable that while you're on-time with assigned tasks, your manager sees the time you spent on the fix as missed opportunity to get something else accomplished. Just a thought, it's tough to say what the right reaction should be from the outside.
BW
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
-- Steven Wrightbrianwelsch wrote:
If it's a relatively quick change (1 day or less), then you're probably right that it's easier to simply get it implemented and get a test ready to show the fix. However, if you spend more time on an issue than a day, you start messing with your manager's time scheduling.
It is complicated work but I did it rather quickly. It will definitely turn into a multi-months long project if all the rules are followed. I would like to focus my "spare" time on doing things I like. That is the main reason (besides pension) that I stayed on the current job. I love to work but I am not foolish enough to ask for more assignments when I am already ahead on delivering things. The ironical thing is, if I just raised the issue (which I did) and did nothing else (nobody asked me for further action), there will be no problem for myself at all. Even if the whole system breaks down tomorrow because we did not act, no one can blame anything on me. The difference is, now that they have a workable solution I provided, the most important thing becomes make sure I do not do it again!
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The management discovered that I have written code that changes the way the system works. The new code will solve a real urgent problem we are facing and I never said it has to go the way I designed and coded. We don't have any workable solution for this problem and any solution including mine involves regression testing everything. However, that is not the issue. The issue is that I have been doing the work while working on a lot of other projects assigned to me, and they don't know about it. Process, Process, Process, ... Can you predict what kind of punishment I will get? What will you do if you are my manager?
If you were on my team, and you got everything else done you were supposed to, I'd give you an award or something. But I'd also probably give you a lecture on letting me know what you are working on and your idea prior to releasing something. What if it blew up? What if it caused problems with something completly unrelated? Also I might have been telling my boss that we don't have the resources to work on the problem. If you come out and fix it you make me look like I was lying.
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If you were on my team, and you got everything else done you were supposed to, I'd give you an award or something. But I'd also probably give you a lecture on letting me know what you are working on and your idea prior to releasing something. What if it blew up? What if it caused problems with something completly unrelated? Also I might have been telling my boss that we don't have the resources to work on the problem. If you come out and fix it you make me look like I was lying.
Tad McClellan wrote:
What if it blew up? What if it caused problems with something completly unrelated?
It is not like that at all. I am not trying to sneak in anything in the release. We are still more than a month away to release the solution I came up with if they decide to accept it. There is plenty of time for testing, etc. Any other solution will require the same amount of testing.
Tad McClellan wrote:
Also I might have been telling my boss that we don't have the resources to work on the problem. If you come out and fix it you make me look like I was lying.
Good point. I never thought about that before. [Joke] How would I know about the lies other people told? Instead of boss blaming me for not letting him/her know about my ideas earlier, shouldn't I blame him/her for lying to his/her boss and not letting me know about it? :laugh: [/Joke] -- modified at 12:15 Friday 27th October, 2006
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The management discovered that I have written code that changes the way the system works. The new code will solve a real urgent problem we are facing and I never said it has to go the way I designed and coded. We don't have any workable solution for this problem and any solution including mine involves regression testing everything. However, that is not the issue. The issue is that I have been doing the work while working on a lot of other projects assigned to me, and they don't know about it. Process, Process, Process, ... Can you predict what kind of punishment I will get? What will you do if you are my manager?
Xiangyang Liu wrote:
The issue is that I have been doing the work while working on a lot of other projects assigned to me
Xiangyang Liu wrote:
What will you do if you are my manager?
Say thank you maybe?
cheers, Chris Maunder
CodeProject.com : C++ MVP
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Xiangyang Liu wrote:
The issue is that I have been doing the work while working on a lot of other projects assigned to me
Xiangyang Liu wrote:
What will you do if you are my manager?
Say thank you maybe?
cheers, Chris Maunder
CodeProject.com : C++ MVP
Chris Maunder wrote:
Say thank you maybe?
Wow. Is CP hiring? :)
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The management discovered that I have written code that changes the way the system works. The new code will solve a real urgent problem we are facing and I never said it has to go the way I designed and coded. We don't have any workable solution for this problem and any solution including mine involves regression testing everything. However, that is not the issue. The issue is that I have been doing the work while working on a lot of other projects assigned to me, and they don't know about it. Process, Process, Process, ... Can you predict what kind of punishment I will get? What will you do if you are my manager?
Why do you expect to be punished? :confused: A proper response should be to consider the pros and cons of your actions. First off, you are showing initiative to take on work not assigned to you. This is a good thing and is usually rewarded. Evidently you also have some plan associatted with this extra work, which is also good. On the negative side, did you miss any deadlines for work that has been assigned to you. During this period of 'extra effort' on your part, can anyone show that the code you produced was of any less value or had more bugs in it than normal? Unless your boss and management are doing this analysis before acting, then they are reacting emotionally and that is no good at all.
Chris Meech I am Canadian. [heard in a local bar] Nobody likes jerks. [espeir] The zen of the soapbox is hard to attain...[Jörgen Sigvardsson] I wish I could remember what it was like to only have a short term memory.[David Kentley]
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The management discovered that I have written code that changes the way the system works. The new code will solve a real urgent problem we are facing and I never said it has to go the way I designed and coded. We don't have any workable solution for this problem and any solution including mine involves regression testing everything. However, that is not the issue. The issue is that I have been doing the work while working on a lot of other projects assigned to me, and they don't know about it. Process, Process, Process, ... Can you predict what kind of punishment I will get? What will you do if you are my manager?
It's a really dangerous thing to do. They are correct, doing things the way they were planned in processes is better. People can track what you have been doing and reproduce the results. You have to ask yourself the question: What will happen if you leave or become ill? I hope everything still works when you're gone and people know how to fix the code if it gets broken for any reason. Don't get me wrong, I know that sometimes just doing things gives you result much faster and some procedures and process definition are rubbish, but if the company has a high quality standard they know what processes are necessary and what processes can be removed or changed to optimize things. Let's hope they see the positive side of your actions and don't fire you, but instead thank you for the good work you deliver. I think they tell you not to do that again and document the things you repaired. (At least I hope they do that ;))
WM
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It's a really dangerous thing to do. They are correct, doing things the way they were planned in processes is better. People can track what you have been doing and reproduce the results. You have to ask yourself the question: What will happen if you leave or become ill? I hope everything still works when you're gone and people know how to fix the code if it gets broken for any reason. Don't get me wrong, I know that sometimes just doing things gives you result much faster and some procedures and process definition are rubbish, but if the company has a high quality standard they know what processes are necessary and what processes can be removed or changed to optimize things. Let's hope they see the positive side of your actions and don't fire you, but instead thank you for the good work you deliver. I think they tell you not to do that again and document the things you repaired. (At least I hope they do that ;))
WM
Well, your points are valid, but he has explicitly said he had NOT put it in the release. The issue is that he was working on something w/o all the managers knowing about it. I agree with the sane types - I'd give you a slap on the back for being proactive, aggressive, and helpful. But, I would want you to communicate what you are doing so that there is no duplication of effort. Managers NEED surprises like this. It's a good thing. The plus side - if they fire you, then they just proved what idiots they are.
Charlie Gilley Will program for food... Whoever said children were cheaper by the dozen... lied. My son's PDA is an M249 SAW. My other son commutes in an M1A2 Abrams
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The management discovered that I have written code that changes the way the system works. The new code will solve a real urgent problem we are facing and I never said it has to go the way I designed and coded. We don't have any workable solution for this problem and any solution including mine involves regression testing everything. However, that is not the issue. The issue is that I have been doing the work while working on a lot of other projects assigned to me, and they don't know about it. Process, Process, Process, ... Can you predict what kind of punishment I will get? What will you do if you are my manager?
Xiangyang Liu wrote:
Process, Process, Process, ...
Hey now, processes are important! They keep process designers employed designing them. That stunt you pulled, well, who knows how many budding statisticians and wanna-be dictators it'll deprive of work?
Xiangyang Liu wrote:
Can you predict what kind of punishment I will get?
Ten months writing after-the-fact justifications for what you did. Complete with pages and pages of bogus numbers and colorful graphs and charts.
Xiangyang Liu wrote:
What will you do if you are my manager?
Nothing. But, i like it when work gets done. That's why i'm not in management.
every night, i kneel at the foot of my bed and thank the Great Overseeing Politicians for protecting my freedoms by reducing their number, as if they were deer in a state park. -- Chris Losinger, Online Poker Players?
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Why do you expect to be punished? :confused: A proper response should be to consider the pros and cons of your actions. First off, you are showing initiative to take on work not assigned to you. This is a good thing and is usually rewarded. Evidently you also have some plan associatted with this extra work, which is also good. On the negative side, did you miss any deadlines for work that has been assigned to you. During this period of 'extra effort' on your part, can anyone show that the code you produced was of any less value or had more bugs in it than normal? Unless your boss and management are doing this analysis before acting, then they are reacting emotionally and that is no good at all.
Chris Meech I am Canadian. [heard in a local bar] Nobody likes jerks. [espeir] The zen of the soapbox is hard to attain...[Jörgen Sigvardsson] I wish I could remember what it was like to only have a short term memory.[David Kentley]
Chris Meech wrote:
Why do you expect to be punished?
I don't think I should be punished, but I cannot think for others. I somehow sense that they are pretty upset with my action. As I said in another post, the ironic thing is, if I did not do the actual work, nobody can blame me even if the whole system breaks down because we did not take any action. In that case, they cannot even blame me for not raising the issue because I did two months ago and nobody got back to me.
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If it's a relatively quick change (1 day or less), then you're probably right that it's easier to simply get it implemented and get a test ready to show the fix. However, if you spend more time on an issue than a day, you start messing with your manager's time scheduling. There might be things in the pipe that you don't know about yet, that your manager is waiting to assign. So it could be understandable that while you're on-time with assigned tasks, your manager sees the time you spent on the fix as missed opportunity to get something else accomplished. Just a thought, it's tough to say what the right reaction should be from the outside.
BW
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
-- Steven Wrightbrianwelsch wrote:
However, if you spend more time on an issue than a day, you start messing with your manager's time scheduling. There might be things in the pipe that you don't know about yet, that your manager is waiting to assign. So it could be understandable that while you're on-time with assigned tasks, your manager sees the time you spent on the fix as missed opportunity to get something else accomplished.
Not just that, but the problem may already be known and assigned to someone elsewhere in the organization. Now you've messed with thier tasking.
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Well, your points are valid, but he has explicitly said he had NOT put it in the release. The issue is that he was working on something w/o all the managers knowing about it. I agree with the sane types - I'd give you a slap on the back for being proactive, aggressive, and helpful. But, I would want you to communicate what you are doing so that there is no duplication of effort. Managers NEED surprises like this. It's a good thing. The plus side - if they fire you, then they just proved what idiots they are.
Charlie Gilley Will program for food... Whoever said children were cheaper by the dozen... lied. My son's PDA is an M249 SAW. My other son commutes in an M1A2 Abrams
I agree, its very important to be open about what you're doing, this prevents a lot of serious problems that might occur, like duplicate efforts, a misunderstanding about people not doing a good job, while they actually prevent projects from going down the drain. As a development manager on two teams I don't like surprises, no matter how big they are. Its a sign that my management has gone bad and I need to improve stuff so that I can see the nasty and nice surprises coming. So you're right if you mean that surprises can help improve the management, but it's always better to prevent such things from happening in the first place. It's really a two-way street, developers need to update the management and management needs to communicate with the developers, so both parties know what to do. It reminds me of a great book "Building a software engineering culture" from Carl Wiegers. You should read it when you got the time and the money to buy the book (of course I would try and let my boss pay for it ;P). It provides great tips that help in these cases.
WM
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Xiangyang Liu wrote:
Process, Process, Process, ...
Hey now, processes are important! They keep process designers employed designing them. That stunt you pulled, well, who knows how many budding statisticians and wanna-be dictators it'll deprive of work?
Xiangyang Liu wrote:
Can you predict what kind of punishment I will get?
Ten months writing after-the-fact justifications for what you did. Complete with pages and pages of bogus numbers and colorful graphs and charts.
Xiangyang Liu wrote:
What will you do if you are my manager?
Nothing. But, i like it when work gets done. That's why i'm not in management.
every night, i kneel at the foot of my bed and thank the Great Overseeing Politicians for protecting my freedoms by reducing their number, as if they were deer in a state park. -- Chris Losinger, Online Poker Players?
Shog9 wrote:
Ten months writing after-the-fact justifications for what you did. Complete with pages and pages of bogus numbers and colorful graphs and charts.
:laugh: :laugh: :laugh: While I was "in power" in my own team for a short period, I did punish a developer by demanding her do documentation work only. But it was not because she did more work, it was because the work she did were totally crap, she had no talent in programming at all. But she talked to the management and my decision was over-turned.
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brianwelsch wrote:
However, if you spend more time on an issue than a day, you start messing with your manager's time scheduling. There might be things in the pipe that you don't know about yet, that your manager is waiting to assign. So it could be understandable that while you're on-time with assigned tasks, your manager sees the time you spent on the fix as missed opportunity to get something else accomplished.
Not just that, but the problem may already be known and assigned to someone elsewhere in the organization. Now you've messed with thier tasking.
dan neely wrote:
Not just that, but the problem may already be known and assigned to someone elsewhere in the organization. Now you've messed with thier tasking.
I realize there could be many situations that would turn my action into a really bad thing, but they don't apply in this case. I raised the issue with the management two months ago, they did not get back to me nor did they assign someone else working on it. If they did, I would not present my solution to them: only me and the man up stairs would know it ever existed. P.S. Yes, they "discovered" my work because I told them.
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Paul Watson wrote:
Xiangyang. You're fired
Well, it probably won't be that bad this time. The thing is, I can't imagine myself changing the way I work. It has been great in the past and nobody seems to mind that I deliver things much faster and with high quality (but done them in a politically incorrect way). No matter what happens, my life could be harder from now on, they will be watching me closely.
Xiangyang Liu wrote:
I can't imagine myself changing the way I work.
You need to find a company that thinks like you then. Being a programmer isn't just about code. It is about the company too and how it works. Different companies have different styles. Your manager might have good reason not to want programmers doing their own thing. If you disagree with the policy then you should discuss it with him, not just ignore it.
regards, Paul Watson Ireland FeedHenry needs you
eh, stop bugging me about it, give it a couple of days, see what happens.
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Xiangyang Liu wrote:
I can't imagine myself changing the way I work.
You need to find a company that thinks like you then. Being a programmer isn't just about code. It is about the company too and how it works. Different companies have different styles. Your manager might have good reason not to want programmers doing their own thing. If you disagree with the policy then you should discuss it with him, not just ignore it.
regards, Paul Watson Ireland FeedHenry needs you
eh, stop bugging me about it, give it a couple of days, see what happens.
Paul Watson wrote:
You need to find a company that thinks like you then.
I thought the current place works for me very well, until now.
Paul Watson wrote:
If you disagree with the policy then you should discuss it with him, not just ignore it.
There is no hope I will win any such argument, none. The reason for ignoring somethings selectively is to keep my mental health.
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The management discovered that I have written code that changes the way the system works. The new code will solve a real urgent problem we are facing and I never said it has to go the way I designed and coded. We don't have any workable solution for this problem and any solution including mine involves regression testing everything. However, that is not the issue. The issue is that I have been doing the work while working on a lot of other projects assigned to me, and they don't know about it. Process, Process, Process, ... Can you predict what kind of punishment I will get? What will you do if you are my manager?
Software development is not like a doctor in a battlefield. If you be able to do all your assigments and get a solution to this problem with in extra time or in time, you manage very well your time at work to get the appropiate solution for this issue, you are OK, but if the others projects are dalayed becose this one, you are in troubles, big troubles. Now talking about punishment one good will be to promote you to Programmers' Supervisor. :cool:
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The management discovered that I have written code that changes the way the system works. The new code will solve a real urgent problem we are facing and I never said it has to go the way I designed and coded. We don't have any workable solution for this problem and any solution including mine involves regression testing everything. However, that is not the issue. The issue is that I have been doing the work while working on a lot of other projects assigned to me, and they don't know about it. Process, Process, Process, ... Can you predict what kind of punishment I will get? What will you do if you are my manager?
Xiangyang Liu wrote:
However, that is not the issue. The issue is that I have been doing the work while working on a lot of other projects assigned to me, and they don't know about it. Process, Process, Process, ...
That's the way it is everywhere. In order to get the real work done you have to do it on the side.
Xiangyang Liu wrote:
Can you predict what kind of punishment I will get? What will you do if you are my manager?
likely nothing will happen. If I were your manager, I'd make a "show" of punishment and then secretly reward you.
Silence is the voice of complicity. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. -- monty python Might I suggest that the universe was always the size of the cosmos. It is just that at one point the cosmos was the size of a marble. -- Colin Angus Mackay
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brianwelsch wrote:
However, if you spend more time on an issue than a day, you start messing with your manager's time scheduling. There might be things in the pipe that you don't know about yet, that your manager is waiting to assign. So it could be understandable that while you're on-time with assigned tasks, your manager sees the time you spent on the fix as missed opportunity to get something else accomplished.
Not just that, but the problem may already be known and assigned to someone elsewhere in the organization. Now you've messed with thier tasking.
Right, good point.
BW
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
-- Steven Wright