I thought your deal was you've worked mostly with financial firms and spent so much time at a small number of companies that it's had a noticeable impact on your network and career progression? Do you ever stop and think "maybe my experience isn't relevant here?"

You're not the first to notice. If you're not familiar with cb, the question posed above was rhetorical, and the answer is no, he has not.

I'm confused too. I'm pretty sure he said the job title was "software engineer", and everyone responded saying the job description sounded like a project manager.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G925A using Tapatalk

That's quite outdated but even if it wasn't, you do realize it's possible to be aware of how people dress at other companies without actually working there right? Interviews, tech events, social events, visiting friends, etc, etc. Are you disputing my point or are you just making a pointless epistemological argument about how I can't possibly know this? What percentage of people would you guess work at companies where just about everyone shows up to work in sweatpants?

He initially told me i was going to be a software engineer but the description was project manager-ish. Then the job title on the offer was technical PM.

What I’m actually doing seems like a bit of both.

I emailed him a recap of my first sprint and brought up my 1 week idea and he didnt like it, oh well

That seems like a fair summary.

Like I literally just posted, he told me software engineer, the offer said something different.

Like I also said this has been discussed ad nauseum here and I don’t see the fascination about it other than trying to needle.

And besides titles not meaning **** in general, in conversations with my coworkers, I've learned everyone has pretty poorly defined roles and kind of does a little of everything. If I want to do developing, I will have plenty of freedom for that. If I'm given an opportunity to manage, which at this point seems dubious at best, I can do that. If I want to sit around and browse FB all day and drink, I can do that too - that's all that one aspy guy does.

When you got this offer, did you actually know enough about the differences to protest or did you think TPM is some kind of a more senior role within software engineering? What I remember is that you were excited to have these types of responsibilities because it felt more senior.

I'm done indulging you.

No this wasn't discussed at all - as you can see, most people including myself under the impression that you were in this strange role where you were technically a software engineer, but had a whole bunch of project management responsibilities. And IIRC, at the time I defended this as plausible because some companies don't quite have things together and it wasn't clear how much of this was them trying to sell you the role vs what they were actually hiring for. But since then, you've tripped my anomaly detection threshold.

Given how much you're posting about yourself here, did it ever occur to you to correct the record and say, oh yeah, you guys were right and I was mistaken, I'm now a technical project manager but that's cool because I get to do project management stuff but also get to do technical work if I want to.

I need some advice.

New co-worker is turning out to be fairly toxic and also lazy. He's also prone to acting like a know-it-all. Today I reviewed code of his and mentioned his error handling is a bit broad. That handling all API error responses with a hard coded string isn't ideal. He responds that the response is being wrapped by something and he can't access the response object directly. I mention that I wrote code recently that he saw that handled multiple potential error responses, he gives me a flippant response about of course he saw my code but his situation is different.

I checked his code and and literally .catch((data) => {console.log (data) } logs a very nice complex API response that even includes the exact same error message for this specific error that he is hard coding for all errors.

I am weighing a few different next steps.

A) speak with our manager (vp responsible for dept)
B) speak with a senior backend engineer and get his take on how to handle it (I liked this at first but now I'm thinking against it)
C) speak to colleague directly, being gracious, giving him a chance to redeem himself
D) ignore the situation and just find another job soon (i see more things like this coming though if nothing is done)
E) something else

Potentially of note. A project he was on and I wasn't missed a Friday deadline so I worked on it to help out over the weekend. The tasks I took were very simple and I spent ~2 hours on them total, I would expect a 5-7+ year developer to be at least as fast as me on these tasks and have completed them easily in the time provided.

I think escalating to a higher up is a bad idea

Larry - bad situation and you're probably more emotionally invested than you realize. I don't know how much clout you have. If it's less than him you should probably just swallow your whistle. Let his crappy code stand and wait for him to flame out.

Can you just fix his code for him or would that be toe-stepping? Sometimes embarrassment works to snap people in line.

Also for the love of God please never write any error handling code that keys on the existence of a string (not sure if you are I'm just ranting). Any error-handling code that behaves differently for different error should always key on error key - preferably a human readable one.

Also make sure to distinguish between serious errors like USER_API_NOT_AVAILABLE and expected exceptions like CREDIT_CARD_DECLINED.

How have you been communicating with him so far? If it was just on the PR, I would try to discuss this in private since people tend to be more defensive in public and it can be a little awkward for a new guy to defend his reasoning even if it seems correct to himself (not worth it is a valid reason but depending on the culture people may be reluctant to write it where everyone can see it). Also how new is he?

Unless you've already talked to him in person and/or have had these types of issues repeatedly, you may be overreacting a little. I mean, it sounds like it probably won't work but kind of like how HR uses PIP, you want to exhaust your options not because they are likely to solve the problem but so that you can say you've tried all that you could. They help document the problem and make it easier to jump to more extreme means.

I know you can't help but make this kind of comparison but generally speaking people don't become necessarily faster as they become more experienced beyond a certain level (and that level may be some time in college for many), especially on simple tasks. It's possible that you're just fundamentally good in a way this guy isn't and never will be. It's also possible he's just not ramped up properly on the code base or the tech stack or whatever he needs to become productive there.

My error handling is typically looking for the status code or key and then if applicable using the returned string to display to the user. That's the ideal but sometimes the error code is nonsense and I substitute in a human legible message.

Hmm yea I like the idea of just fixing the code and providing it as a PR.

In terms of clout/etc. I would be doing this more for the benefit of other people that work with him now and in the future (including myself into the near future and likely not much further beyond) I'm not considered nearly as good of a coder as I have become (I asked for a raise after 6 months and they said they never have given a raise that fast before and gave me a tiny one in acknowledgement of my growth/contributions) but in terms of relative clout/ability to communicate/ the merits of my arguments, I would be a massive favorite, probably like 10-1. I don't want it to come to that tho.

I agree I'm more emotionally invested than I realize. Part of it is I have experienced multiple rounds of exponential improvement in my abilities recently, and I'm becoming really really good at the javascript language and more specifically react and it's ecosystem. I know deep down I would enjoy recognition for my growth but am not really in a position for it to be acknowledged based on my current environment.

our error codes are all integer constants in powers of 2, but we have error handlers that print human readable messages

Yeah but when a client dev or ops person sees a new error code come out of the API - they have to go look it up somewhere. With human readable error keys they have a lot more clue what just happened and how to deal with it.

Hmm maybe this isn't what you're saying but are you possibly saying that your feelings about not being acknowledged properly for your contributions and abilities are spilling over into how you feel about your interactions with this presumably more senior person who's nevertheless not as good as you are? I could be misreading but it sounds like you're more upset about this new guy ignoring your code review feedback because you feel it's due to his perception that you're more junior than him (which you don't feel reflects the reality of your abilities). Am I on the right track?

This is exactly what we do. API returns a code and a string. The client dev can use the string or choose to roll their own (usually tied to a CMS) based off the code. We also have optional level: ERROR, WARN, INFO (red, yellow, green).

candybar,

That point about people not necessarily becoming faster after a certain level is something I'm coming having to experience again.

I've been so introspective for the last year, I haven't really noticed the skills of those around me for a while (or been capable of doing so).

I guess that the answer is probably a mix of this guy being kinda toxic and lazy and me coming into my own.

I have an absolute burning desire to be on a team of people similar to me though who want to move at an insane pace while collaborating and pushing each other.

How long have you been there now? The job market is still pretty hot - you don't have to stay if you feel you are neither appreciated, nor surrounded by talented people you can learn a lot from.

It's not as much I feel slighted as much as he either straight up lied to me as an excuse to get his ****ty code PR'd, or he is truly going around acting like an expert while not knowing how to do simple things (which will surely cause problems much larger than this).

If he thinks he doesn't need to listen to me because I'm more junior to him in his mind then he's even more misguided than I think.

But we actually write some important software so I think giving a **** about quality is the right thing for me to do.

all your options seem like overreactions. during your next one-on-one with your manager, bring it up. if he acknowledges it and then moves on, move on yourself. don't fix all the problems of the world; just the ones that are in your power and scope to fix.

your title is actually kinda important...

Yea thanks for the feedback.

I feel much better about just going with the flow.

I need to focus on whiteboard questions for the next couple months and then find a more challenging environment. Last interview I did they asked me tons of backend questions and I've been an exclusively front end dev so it kinda bummed me out and I haven't applied to anywhere in months and just ignore recruiters everyday.