When to escalate

[Dario Solera]

Vasudevan Deepak Kumar wrote:

At least in India on Earth, you can find tons of such crappy lazy arses.

If you truly believe you need to pick a mobile phone that "says something" about your personality, don't bother. You don't have a personality. A mental illness, maybe - but not a personality. - Charlie Brooker My Photos/CP Flickr Group - ScrewTurn Wiki

[realJSOP]

hopingToCode wrote:

But I don't know if I've caused bad blood.

It depends on the level of maturity of the senior programmer. Personally, I escalate after three requests for action.

"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
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[Vikram A Punathambekar]

Why do you think India has a monopoly on this kind of people?

Cheers, Vikram.

Current activities: Films: Philadelphia TV series: Friends, season 4 Books: Six Thinking Hats, by Edward de Bono.

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Carpe Diem.

[Chris Austin]

hopingToCode wrote:

So I thought I'd do a straw poll of the people here and ask when do you escalate a problem you have at work.

I'd escalate the moment the problem appears to affect my ability to get my portion done on time without having to work asinine hours.

Sovereign ingredient for a happy marriage: Pay cash or do without. Interest charges not only eat up a household budget; awareness of debt eats up domestic felicity. --Lazarus Long Avoid the crowd. Do your own thinking independently. Be the chess player, not the chess piece. --Ralph Charell

[Chris Austin]

Trollslayer wrote:

Escalate if your due date isn't met.

It's too late then isn't it?

Sovereign ingredient for a happy marriage: Pay cash or do without. Interest charges not only eat up a household budget; awareness of debt eats up domestic felicity. --Lazarus Long Avoid the crowd. Do your own thinking independently. Be the chess player, not the chess piece. --Ralph Charell

[Vasudevan Deepak Kumar]

John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote:

I escalate after three requests for action.

I agree. But there are more sensitive occasions wherein even such mercy towards dilly-dallying can not be tolerated. For me, if my Todolist (www.codeproject.com/KB/applications/todolist2.aspx) says the task is overdue and if I find such blocking calls, I don't see any valid reason(s) whatsoever to hold back my escalation request.

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[Vasudevan Deepak Kumar]

Lot of quick examples which we can immediatly cite on the same though not for fault-finding but at least for as on the learner's gesture with the goal that such attitude should avoided by us.

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Tech Gossips
The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep!

[Dario Solera]

Maybe the morons/total people ratio in India is the same as in the rest of the world, but given that India accounts for - how much? - 1/6 of world's population, the absolute number of morons is pretty high. But this reasoning also goes for geniuses (there are a lot of excellent scientists from India, right?).

If you truly believe you need to pick a mobile phone that "says something" about your personality, don't bother. You don't have a personality. A mental illness, maybe - but not a personality. - Charlie Brooker My Photos/CP Flickr Group - ScrewTurn Wiki

[Chris Maunder]

How important was your problem vs. the 50 problems your team lead may have been trying to deal with?

cheers, Chris Maunder The Code Project Co-founder Microsoft C++ MVP

[Michael Bookatz]

At least tell me and let me know instead of everyday saying it will be done today. For example. someone came upto e this afternoon and said I have this problem can you look at it and I said I won't have time today but should be able to do it tomorrow. Say that!

[Todd Smith]

It could be supply and demand. If the demand is very high in India for tech people they probably have to lower their standards to meet the demand. This happened in a restaurant I worked at while in college. During a certain time of year it was hard to find people to work so management finally had to lower their standards to fill the spots. So this new guy is carrying a tray of food to his table and as he's putting the tray down on the stand a batch of fries slide off the plate and onto the tray (which isn't very sanitary btw). What does he do? Right in front of the customers he picks up the fries, places them back on the plate then serves them to the customer. While he might not be lazy, he certainly was stupid and below standards for such a restaurant. Management had to profusely apologize to the customers, give them a free meal and fired the guy on the spot. At the end of the day, people are people and stupidity is everywhere.

Todd Smith

[Todd Smith]

How do you know he doesn't have a list of 10 other items which aren't higher priority? It's hard to say without more details. But at the very least tell your boss what you need and leave it up to him to escalate the problem as they see fit. And keep him up to date on status and progress. Unfortunately sometimes things need to fail before something is done about it. Just make sure you don't look bad in the process.

Todd Smith

[Lost User]

You put some margin in.

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[kenrentz]

PIEBALDconsult wrote:

It sounds like your team needs to have weekly meetings where such bottlenecks can be detected and resolved.

Sounds like an instance where daily scrum's would work. If properly done, they quickly identify bottlenecks and people who are not able to deliver when they say they will. unfortunately in this case, with the developers being in different time zones, frequent meetings may not be very practical.

[RichardM1]

Todd Smith wrote:

How do you know he doesn't have a list of 10 other items which aren't higher priority?

Because he doesn't say he had 10 other things that were more important. If I ask someone to do something, their answer is their word. If they break their word to me, I ask them why. If they do it often enough, I learn not to trust them. Someone asks me what to do, and I can't, I explain why. If I get started and can't meet the deadline, I explain as soon as I understand I will not be able to meet it.

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[Joe Woodbury]

There is no good way to escalate problems. Sometimes, everything works out, sometimes it comes back to you in a very nasty, job losing, way. I've experienced both. In one case, I wrote an extremely tactful (especially for me) email to my new boss only to get raked over the coals days later for "not being a team player" with the irony that the developer in question ended up doing everything I'd asked my boss to have him do. (That, and me daring to argue with my boss about his absurdly optimistic time estimates, led to me being added to the roster for a layoff several weeks later.)

Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke

[BillWoodruff]

Hi HopingToCode, In this case I would find fault with your boss : imho he's "passing the buck" : you've done your job, I think, when you have pursued said Senior Dev a few times, and been blown-off. At that point, I think, it becomes your boss' responsibility to pursue a solution. Of course, such "one-size-fits-all" answers don't take into account the "culture" and "norms" of your workplace, the extent to which there is "strict" vs. "loose" hierarchy, the extent of informal communications, etc. Something that may be useful is to try asking said Senior Dev. an open-ended question like "do you mind my asking you what your priorities are in your work right now, and how that may be creating a delay here ?" Contrast that with asking the question : "How come it isn't done this week ?" Of course that puts you in a role you may not want to take, and may be just an unrealistic fantasy. imho that's the kind of question your boss should be asking the Senior Dev's boss. best, Bill

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