I have transferred to another team, and my former-manager is raw about it. He asked me to help with a task before my transfer, and I agreed to help even though I wasn't obligated to help with it.
I worked on what I thought was going to be a simple task, but it turned into something more complex. Since I really wanted to step away from the responsibilities of my prior role, and focus more on working on things for my current role, I thought it was best to let a more senior co-worker take over that task. I didn't want to be unfair to my current manager, and keep working on a task that I thought was turning into possibly a longer one, time-wise.
The senior co-worker was able to finish the task in a couple of hours.
My former-manager then sends an email to us both, thanking the senior dev, but emphasized the fact that I wasn't able to finish this on my own. He also referenced language from my current team, I think in an effort to highlight that I don't belong there?
A couple of things about this:
1) I don't even have official access to the platform the task is reliant on, and I have not been using it directly during my work.
2) While I admire the senior dev, and want to be more like him, I think it's unfair to point out that I wasn't able to do this on my own- the senior dev has 20 yrs of industry experience, I have 5.
3)While I am more than willing to learn that platform, the company doesn't give access to everyone. I don't understand how I was expected to divine an answer to this without the right tools or experience.
Questions
1) Was it a good idea to involve the senior dev, or should I have kept working on it. The solution he came up with was something I found myself, but as mentioned I wanted to move on from this, and so I didn't focus enough time on that.
2) How do I keep former-manager from bad-mouthing me to current one?
3) How do I calm down former manger's raw feelings about me leaving?