Quote:
Originally Posted by jmakin
Lol welcome to my hell. dont have direct authority or seniority to tell anyone on my team what to do, but the project success usually falls to me
It took many months of building relationships and rapport with everyone and even now they only listen to me about half the time but it’s gotten way better
But why don’t you have support from higher up? I would think that’s an absolute bare minimum
Here's the timeline and what I know (I get to the boss support at the end I promise):
3 weeks ago I am still working on architecting the AWS middle layer stuff while the boss is basically managing the project, working with the prototyper and this crappy dev who is supposedly building the front end.
About that time things are coming to a head with the crappy dev so I
volunteer to help do some of the front end work - integrating react with AWS Cognito stuff - that he's struggling with.
Also around that same time my boss (who is spread very very thin) asks me to work with the prototyper to clear up loose ends and flesh out details. Cool - no problem.
2 weeks ago - after the boss realizes the crappy dev is no good - he suddenly has a visa problem and has to leave in 2 days. No idea if that's what really happened. But great - he's one of those devs that it's literally much more work to try to get productivity out of than to just do it yourself. Problem solved.
So she pulls off the good react dev (who actually seems to like collaborating with me) and the CSS dev (who seems to hate collaborating with me) to work on this project - which we keep hearing is priority 1, but didn't seem to actually be that high of priority until now.
So a week goes by with them and I think things are going ok. I refactored some of the flame-out contractor's code, and the good react dev took over to continue the job (I am assuming he's going to own the front end from here forward). The CSS dev starts working on finishing and refactoring the styling that the crappy flame out dev started.
Then the good react dev goes on vacation for a week, last week.
The week starts out fine. But on Wed a meeting happens and the **** hits the fan with the other business partners that this project is showing no progress.
So the next meeting is our normal meeting about the project - except my boss' boss (who's normally completely hands off and non-technical) is now in the meeting. Ok.
We're clearly nowhere near done with registration and sign/in. But my boss starts freaking out that things aren't ready and somehow finds a bug. So she's telling me I need to fix the bug and make jira tickets for the stuff that was never really established - like interstitials to show on form submit, or password tooltips to show our password strength rules - etc.
After the first couple freakouts I push back and say we're working on all this stuff, but we're not done yet so it's not gonna be a polished thing. She says "well I just said we were done in the previous meeting". And I'm thinking - I have no idea what your definition of done is around here. Do all the flows work? Ye.? Is everything buttoned down? No - and you should know that as I've got a bunch of open tickets for it - which you asked me to create. So clearly a lot of that was just a show for her boss. Ok.
So whatever - that sucked but at least now I have a clear mandate to make and assign jira tickets and get this **** wrapped up, right?
Well by the end of the week the CSS dev is barely speaking to me and just checking in whatever she felt like working on. On Friday she literally made a pull request, tagged me to review, then bolted w/o saying anything - even though her cube is like 4 feet away from me. None of the extremely simple bugs I asked her to clear up have been touched. Nor has she commented on are acknowledged the existence of any of the jira tickets.
I feel like she thinks her requirements are the prototype, and her boss is our boss, and I am just way overstepping my bounds in telling her what to do. Even though literally a few days earlier she saw me get called out in a meeting, by my boss, and told me make jira tickets to get this stuff done. Great.
The only thing I can think of is maybe she got annoyed that I kept bringing up the little bugs. Also she started moving the CSS inline into the JS files for the react route components - which means to see JS you have to scroll past 200 lines of CSS. I asked her if there's anyway we could put that in another file and she said no. So I pressed a little further and realized what she means is they decided it doesn't work as a separate CSS file import, but obviously you can still import it as a separate JS file import. When I pointed that out she didn't seem pleased.
Also she doesn't really get git at all, and even though my boss specifically assigned me to clean up the git workflows - she gets really annoyed when I try to give her any advice on how to do git properly. Yay.
So why do I think my boss might be undermining me? Well on Friday I heard my boss tell the CSS dev that she would work with her directly on this stuff on Tuesday (while I am off). And also my boss made a big point that I wouldn't need to call the react dev on Tuesday to fill him in on the current situation (as I told her I would even though I am out in the desert). So those are things that make you go hmmmm.
So that's the genesis of the email I pasted above. If I go down it's not going to be for lack of being clear about my position, nor w/o showing them that I clearly am thinking on a detailed level about everything we need to do, and that I have the project's best interests at heart.
No one replied to the email at all. Nor did my boss reply to my email telling her I might be in late tomorrow because I'm driving from the desert. Yay - passive aggressiveness ftw!
Oh yeah - the other weird development is the .net dev who I thought was going to take over the C# lambda layer (which talks to our CRM system over SOAP) now seems not to want to have anything to do with the project. And the boss is pretty much gaslighting me acting like she didn't even know I needed him for anything. Um ok. This guy actually pre-dates her on the original failed .net/drupal version of this project. I'm starting to wonder if he's trying to avoid having anything to do with a sinking ship based on experience.
I worked on a side app with two people who work for the LA Fire Department. When it came time to delegate stuff that needed to get done - you could tell they just reflexively started jockeying to not have it land on them. I'm starting to get a feeling this state university has a similar work culture. Anyone who's ever worked in the public sector probably knows what I'm talking about.
The hilarious part is this is the simplest damn project I've ever been involved with. All I need is one front end dev, and dedicated non-foot-dragging part-time back-end dev help to interface with our university login and CRM system. I've been on projects where we pulled off much much harder things.
Oh yeah, my boss has also literally cut me off twice when trying to explain a technical thing to our business partners and her boss. This was a situation where they asked, and I'm pretty good at explaining technical things to non-technical people, so I started doing so. I think she either thinks they're idiots, or wants to keep a mystique about that stuff and is afraid I'm going to pull back the curtain.
Also she's gone out of her way to joke about my lack of CSS or aesthetic design skills. Which I always joke about but the times she's brought it up feel over the top. Best case scenario is she's trying to convince the CSS dev I'm not going to take her job, or that she's valuable or something. Worst case scenario is - I have no idea - she's just trying to knock me down a peg.
Bleh - this has been suzzer's feels blog. Thanks for listening.
TL;DR - **** this ****, I just realized typing all that that I need to quit. Life's too short, I already have a decent chunk of change, and my brain still works so it's not like I'm gonna be unemployed for the rest of my life if I quit this job and become a digital vagabond for my 50s.
TL;DR 2 - Actually I think this is just the day I give up and decide to milk the system until I can leave on my own terms. I hate doing that, because I'll be miserable until the day I'm gone. But just quitting now makes no sense on a bunch of levels.
Last edited by suzzer99; 02-20-2019 at 02:34 AM.