Smart individuals
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If they happen to know the theory, they are worth a lot - even if they don't know how to use a keyboard. One can use such people to extend his own knowledge and get new ideas. If they are only good at self-marketing, one can even learn from that! :) One can't learn anything from arrogant folks, though.
If they don't know how to apply the theory then they actually don't understand it all. And they probably can't actually explain it other than to parrot back the words they memorized reading the latest article. Nothing to learn from them except that what you do is more important than what you say.
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draghu wrote:
According to him, writing i18n bundles (for the error codes you add), reviewing test cases, updating sprint backlogs are very low level jobs and they should be assigned to jr developers.
If he were really smart...he wouldn't have applied for a job that was so low level and beneath him.
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Hello Great People, Recently, we had a new hire in our team joined as a Sr. Software Eng (I am called the same). The management was very happy about the new join, they were thrilled and believed he was one of the smartest; and was smarter than most of us. The new guy is chess champ, won few programming contests etc. Yes, when you talk to him you can definitely say he was smart and he knew it too; all confident etc. Some of us were annoyed, some worried about all the hype/attention he was getting. Couple of months passed as the management is not happy with him. According to him, writing i18n bundles (for the error codes you add), reviewing test cases, updating sprint backlogs are very low level jobs and they should be assigned to jr developers. I happened to review his code (along with an sr architect) and his code is not as smart as he talks. I am sure that I am not a smart individual as my new colleague; I was curious why the management gave so much hype about him. Any comments?
This guy really reminds of Steve Jobs' first job: http://classicgaming.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Articles.Detail&id=395[^] Basically he lied to his bosses about how good he was, tricked Steve Wozniak to do the real work for him and got all the money and credit in the end. I'll now get back to making this damn iPhone app I'm working on behave properly... Oh, the irony!
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Sometimes people market themselves so well that they continue to be regarded as geniuses, despite all the mistakes they make. There's nothing you can do about it, and no good reason to 'compete' with a colleague. Keep doing the best you can, and working towards making sure your projects are delivered on time and to a good quality. If this guy really sucks that bad, they'll notice eventually.
Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista. Read my blog to find out how I've worked around bugs in Microsoft tools and frameworks.
You are SO optimistic. Non-technical managers or management have no idea who's good or not, how much they produce or not.
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There are many books teaching you to behavior like that. Is it part of American culture?
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Hello Great People, Recently, we had a new hire in our team joined as a Sr. Software Eng (I am called the same). The management was very happy about the new join, they were thrilled and believed he was one of the smartest; and was smarter than most of us. The new guy is chess champ, won few programming contests etc. Yes, when you talk to him you can definitely say he was smart and he knew it too; all confident etc. Some of us were annoyed, some worried about all the hype/attention he was getting. Couple of months passed as the management is not happy with him. According to him, writing i18n bundles (for the error codes you add), reviewing test cases, updating sprint backlogs are very low level jobs and they should be assigned to jr developers. I happened to review his code (along with an sr architect) and his code is not as smart as he talks. I am sure that I am not a smart individual as my new colleague; I was curious why the management gave so much hype about him. Any comments?
Your smart guy is completely right about his position, but was completely wrong when deciding to get a job in your company. If you ask well-qualified programmer to clean a room or bring a coffee to his manager - first, you offend him. Second, you can't expect he'll clean the room as accurate as a cleaner:) Furthermore, his possible actions, in return, will include a kind of italian strike (in your case - he writes stupid cumbersome code) and looking for another occupation (that's smarter). Asking *really* good programmer to do things like localization is just inefficient. Very inefficient. So, the problem not in the smart guy, but in dumb project managers.
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Your smart guy is completely right about his position, but was completely wrong when deciding to get a job in your company. If you ask well-qualified programmer to clean a room or bring a coffee to his manager - first, you offend him. Second, you can't expect he'll clean the room as accurate as a cleaner:) Furthermore, his possible actions, in return, will include a kind of italian strike (in your case - he writes stupid cumbersome code) and looking for another occupation (that's smarter). Asking *really* good programmer to do things like localization is just inefficient. Very inefficient. So, the problem not in the smart guy, but in dumb project managers.
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I am glad that you have a different view. I feel writing one line English equivalent for an error code you introduced in not equivalent to cleaning a room. If I am wrong, I am a room cleaner.
It was a kind of exaggeration about cleaning:) Really, I just mean that effective development supposes separation of duties. For instance, I'm a Sr.Dev/Architect for the project. I've got 2 Jr.Devs in my group. And I know that they can create a nice form in designer, write basic event-handlers/validators, test-cases, so on. And I have ENOUGH other work like creating business-logic, more complex parts of code, profiling/optimizations, etc. When some part is trivial, I may tell one of Jrs: "look here, could you finish this? If you have any questions or need help - just call me!" - and then switch to harder and not that obvious things.
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It was a kind of exaggeration about cleaning:) Really, I just mean that effective development supposes separation of duties. For instance, I'm a Sr.Dev/Architect for the project. I've got 2 Jr.Devs in my group. And I know that they can create a nice form in designer, write basic event-handlers/validators, test-cases, so on. And I have ENOUGH other work like creating business-logic, more complex parts of code, profiling/optimizations, etc. When some part is trivial, I may tell one of Jrs: "look here, could you finish this? If you have any questions or need help - just call me!" - and then switch to harder and not that obvious things.
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IMHO, the best you can do is to give this guy *really* hard, almost impossible tasks, and see if he copes with. Got some part of app that slows it down and everyone else failed to speed it up? Well, ask this guy to look at it! Got strange and mysterious bug? Well, the work for smart guy! There are two alternatives: if he doesn't succeed - then he's not that smart, and this will lower his self-esteem (and yes, he WILL write i18n stuff, or will be fired:) But if he does - then everyone will be happy: smart guy will have interesting things to dig into, others will have a person who can save your day in hopeless situations.
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Sometimes people market themselves so well that they continue to be regarded as geniuses, despite all the mistakes they make. There's nothing you can do about it, and no good reason to 'compete' with a colleague. Keep doing the best you can, and working towards making sure your projects are delivered on time and to a good quality. If this guy really sucks that bad, they'll notice eventually.
Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista. Read my blog to find out how I've worked around bugs in Microsoft tools and frameworks.
Happened to me a couple of times, those geniuses follow a profile IMO: - They think no one knows better than them - If they find someone smarter, they do the impossible to make that someone's life impossible - The managers believe them because managers like to lose money just because is pleasant to hear that kind of people - If they are software developers: - They don't use source control software - They think they are the best developers, but don't even know what a design pattern is - They do not follow the most basic coding standards - They only know what they learn in high school - If they are IT but not software developers: - They think ERP's are written by a couple of developers in less than 3 months - They don't know what QA means
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IMHO, the best you can do is to give this guy *really* hard, almost impossible tasks, and see if he copes with. Got some part of app that slows it down and everyone else failed to speed it up? Well, ask this guy to look at it! Got strange and mysterious bug? Well, the work for smart guy! There are two alternatives: if he doesn't succeed - then he's not that smart, and this will lower his self-esteem (and yes, he WILL write i18n stuff, or will be fired:) But if he does - then everyone will be happy: smart guy will have interesting things to dig into, others will have a person who can save your day in hopeless situations.
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Hello Great People, Recently, we had a new hire in our team joined as a Sr. Software Eng (I am called the same). The management was very happy about the new join, they were thrilled and believed he was one of the smartest; and was smarter than most of us. The new guy is chess champ, won few programming contests etc. Yes, when you talk to him you can definitely say he was smart and he knew it too; all confident etc. Some of us were annoyed, some worried about all the hype/attention he was getting. Couple of months passed as the management is not happy with him. According to him, writing i18n bundles (for the error codes you add), reviewing test cases, updating sprint backlogs are very low level jobs and they should be assigned to jr developers. I happened to review his code (along with an sr architect) and his code is not as smart as he talks. I am sure that I am not a smart individual as my new colleague; I was curious why the management gave so much hype about him. Any comments?
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Hello Great People, Recently, we had a new hire in our team joined as a Sr. Software Eng (I am called the same). The management was very happy about the new join, they were thrilled and believed he was one of the smartest; and was smarter than most of us. The new guy is chess champ, won few programming contests etc. Yes, when you talk to him you can definitely say he was smart and he knew it too; all confident etc. Some of us were annoyed, some worried about all the hype/attention he was getting. Couple of months passed as the management is not happy with him. According to him, writing i18n bundles (for the error codes you add), reviewing test cases, updating sprint backlogs are very low level jobs and they should be assigned to jr developers. I happened to review his code (along with an sr architect) and his code is not as smart as he talks. I am sure that I am not a smart individual as my new colleague; I was curious why the management gave so much hype about him. Any comments?
Anyone not working for your company implies they are smarter. ;P My observation is that management thinks they know what you are capable of and have already placed you in a little mental pigeon hole, not realizing that their perceptions are mostly driven by the work they have assigned you. Someone outside the company is a blank slate and the only thing they have to fill with, is the press release of consultants or someone's resume. They read wonders into those. You, on the other hand have no knowledge of anything outside of what they assigned you to do. The last place I was at wanted to get rid of me for health reasons (I had a medical test go very wrong and spent 2 1/2 months trying to stay alive), but that would be illegal. So they accused me of technical incompetence (this is where I tell my friends to stop laughing, it was serious at the time) and assigned me a task none of them could do. Since they had never used more than a quarter of my capabilities (and paid quite well for that), I shall forever treasure the sound of surprise and dismay in their voices when I handed it in. But recently I had to argue with my current management that I could do what they were investigating two outside consulting companies for. They kept saying these people were experienced in these activities and that my task would be to integrate their code with our system. I kept asking them what they wanted and they never said anything I couldn't do. Finally my boss said go for it. So over a weekend I put together a preliminary system that did 80% of what they wanted. So they finally green lighted my implementation. Saved the company $45,000.00 from what the consultants wanted for their preliminary program and $14 out of $15 for each document processed. We're talking thousands of documents per day. They just could not believe they had the talent on hand to get the job done. They had convinced themselves these unknown quantities were inherently better. Right now we're dealing with another consulting firm they brought in to teach us how to do our systems. Every e-mail stated they were putting their top [fill in the blank] person on it. They wanted a copy of our entire system before they could start. And management told us to do it. :wtf: We sent them the scripts for all our work. Their "Top Database Person" e-mailed us that the scripts did not work and sent us an attachment of errors asking us to explain them. The first one read, "Database not found." We are waiting for management to accept that they hire
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Anyone not working for your company implies they are smarter. ;P My observation is that management thinks they know what you are capable of and have already placed you in a little mental pigeon hole, not realizing that their perceptions are mostly driven by the work they have assigned you. Someone outside the company is a blank slate and the only thing they have to fill with, is the press release of consultants or someone's resume. They read wonders into those. You, on the other hand have no knowledge of anything outside of what they assigned you to do. The last place I was at wanted to get rid of me for health reasons (I had a medical test go very wrong and spent 2 1/2 months trying to stay alive), but that would be illegal. So they accused me of technical incompetence (this is where I tell my friends to stop laughing, it was serious at the time) and assigned me a task none of them could do. Since they had never used more than a quarter of my capabilities (and paid quite well for that), I shall forever treasure the sound of surprise and dismay in their voices when I handed it in. But recently I had to argue with my current management that I could do what they were investigating two outside consulting companies for. They kept saying these people were experienced in these activities and that my task would be to integrate their code with our system. I kept asking them what they wanted and they never said anything I couldn't do. Finally my boss said go for it. So over a weekend I put together a preliminary system that did 80% of what they wanted. So they finally green lighted my implementation. Saved the company $45,000.00 from what the consultants wanted for their preliminary program and $14 out of $15 for each document processed. We're talking thousands of documents per day. They just could not believe they had the talent on hand to get the job done. They had convinced themselves these unknown quantities were inherently better. Right now we're dealing with another consulting firm they brought in to teach us how to do our systems. Every e-mail stated they were putting their top [fill in the blank] person on it. They wanted a copy of our entire system before they could start. And management told us to do it. :wtf: We sent them the scripts for all our work. Their "Top Database Person" e-mailed us that the scripts did not work and sent us an attachment of errors asking us to explain them. The first one read, "Database not found." We are waiting for management to accept that they hire
BrainiacV: I don't have enough words to thank you for letting me know many things (we call it 'Gyan' in Hindi, meaning divine knowledge). I completely agree with your 'mental pigeon hole' theory, completely goes with my manager. He makes very quick judgments (many time very effective) and has a preset mind with a notion that a person cannot scale to a higher level. In my country, we ought to fight for many things unrelated out of work (more than you can image) to make a living. I am glad the you fought. Sometimes you are tired or you have too many things to fight. I don't know if it's just me, my tolerance towards being unappreciated seem to be very less and most of the times I don't take it good.
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BrainiacV: I don't have enough words to thank you for letting me know many things (we call it 'Gyan' in Hindi, meaning divine knowledge). I completely agree with your 'mental pigeon hole' theory, completely goes with my manager. He makes very quick judgments (many time very effective) and has a preset mind with a notion that a person cannot scale to a higher level. In my country, we ought to fight for many things unrelated out of work (more than you can image) to make a living. I am glad the you fought. Sometimes you are tired or you have too many things to fight. I don't know if it's just me, my tolerance towards being unappreciated seem to be very less and most of the times I don't take it good.
Well thank you. I'm not used to getting any praise and don't know how to deal with it, please abuse me, it will feel more normal. :laugh: I would say my success in getting through to management is about 1:99. Mostly I get shot down and then later someone in management comes up with this brilliant idea that sounds suspiciously like mine. But by then the serial numbers have been filed off and it couldn't possibly be related, mine was a stupid idea and theirs is brilliant. If I can demonstrate my idea will save the company money, I have a better chance than showing it can make money. After being assigned the task to determine whether I would use $500/copy software or $500/piece hardware to generate barcodes from a text file and writing the program to use whatever my choice was, I demonstrated a $10 off the shelf program that did the job with minimal user intervention (rather than totally automated, but it was only a once a day affair). They decided to go with my solution and gave me a $250 bonus. Telling them you have something that can make money, not so much, that is their domain.
Psychosis at 10 Film at 11