Colleague fixes my bugs

Question

I value my free time and try not to work from home on weekends as one of my colleagues.

Recently I got into following situation:

Friday evening (after working hours) QA hit me up on Slack about a small bug in the feature that I've worked on. Before I had time to answer, my colleague replied that he 'will look into it' because it was the only thing that blocked us from shipping next release. Few minutes later I've promised to fix it, reminding everybody that we will not ship next release until Monday. He agreed that it would be better if I will look into it instead.

Saturday afternoon I've fixed the bug and was checking if everything worked as intended and soon after that I got message from the same colleague in the Slack leaving me completely speechless:

I've fixed it

I remember that this kind of thing already happened in the past: me (clueless about my colleague intentions) and this exact colleague are working on the same problem in parallel.

So, the question is:

Should I talk to my colleague and ask him not to do that? At least ask him to notify me about his intentions. Or should I swallow my pride and not to take this personal?

Answer 1

Unless his fix is flawed you should thank him and move on. Even if the bug is in code you wrote, it's not really your bug nor is it your code. It is the company's code and the company's mission is to deploy that code without bugs. Your colleague is doing the company a favor by fixing bugs.

It's great that you want to be responsible for all code you release including bugs, but it's also a bit of an ego issue if you have a problem with colleagues offering assistance. Again, it's not really important what you do (in the big picture); it's what the company as a whole does. If you are concerned more about the company's mission than your own, you would not have a problem with this.

The only potential issue I can see with this is if your colleague is falling behind on their own responsibilities by offering unsolicited assistance to others, in which case that is not your concern unless you are their manager.

Also, you mention that the bug was discovered on Friday and you were not able to look into it until Sunday. If your colleague was able to work on it Friday you should not have disagreed. Also you say that the code was scheduled to release Monday, and fixing it late on Sunday night doesn't seem good enough IMO. Your fix would need additional testing that should be started as soon as possible, not late the night before.

Answer 2

Your team needs to get organised better. Two people trying to fix the same problem is a waste of time. And the way you tell this story, it seems you don’t do code reviews - that’s something you ought to change.

Apart from that: The bug is fixed, so what is the problem?

Answer 3

I am going to tackle this from the organizational side.

The way this should be done, even for bugfixes, even for small ones, is via ticket/issue.

If this was the case, make sure a person is assigned to a ticket and it is clear whether or not the ticket is currently in progress. Make sure to put a policy in place, in case you want multiple people to work on an issue, which I personally advise against. If you have to assign multiple people, because the issue is large enough, subdivide into subissues.

In any case, this will at least prevent unnecessary work. It can easily happen, that two people waste time fixing the same problem in different ways, because of a lack of communication. Ensure this does not happen.

Other than that, I have been on both sides of this over my career and it is definitely considered rude, this is if there is a clear assignee. I understand one should not emotional about such things, but I have seen conflicts arise from this, so it simply does happen, therefore it is necessary to deal with this.

You could tell your coworker, friendly, that you felt this was rude. I am not sure if there is value in confrontation, however, depends very much on how such things are handled at your place. Be that as it may, I still advise to put procedures in place. If you were assigned that ticket, even though you were not in over the weekend, then your colleague has no business interfering without your consent, i.e. if the policy you put in place is such.

Answer 4

As I agree with @Mär I would to add few words,

Your colleague is being a bitch for a second time , that's might not be intentional to hurt your feelings and reputation in your work place, but that is a definite result for such action,

Here there is two evil actions happening,

taking over a ticket assigned to you "1st",

actually the reason for that ticket is code you introduce to the codebase "2nd",

The second point from a team perspective depend on your team, organization, team leader, to consider the second point an issue or not, with some product managers I know That's gonna leave a negative labels over your capabilities, With some others it's just the usual workflow, and you can't do much about it in either cases,

The first point, this is hugely unprofessional action from your colleague, I would talk to him, tell him my side of the story (don't mention the second point as it's something you both can't control and something he could use a a defense that's your team actually has an open culture), but highlight his action from your point of view, explain to him your feelings, and your assumption that a ticket assigned to you is your territory and there is only two ways to enter it, by order from the team, product manager, by you asking for help with agreement from manager/team leader.

Just a ps: If you decided to talk to your colleague about it don't mention intentions at all, and if he/she used it in the defense makes it clear it's couldn't be an exercise but focus on actions and the feelings as consequences.