741
You are already a real developer. I'm guessing that your boss is belittling you in order to keep your morale down, so that you're less likely to look for another job or ask for a better salary. Five years of experience is more than enough to consider yourself a qualified developer.
Given that your current role is not going well, and you have an emotionally ...
705
it's still wrong
Why? Because some handbook written by an HR busybody says so?
That's a deliberately inflammatory statement and I don't necessarily completely agree with it, but at its core is a very important point: why does it matter if the developer is in the office or not? You say yourself they're a very good worker and don't need to be in the office ...
398
The other answers are decent, but to me they seem like unnecessary escalation.
If you go along with this, then yes, you need to cover yourself legally.
However, have you tried the simple approach?
He says it will negatively affect how the app looks. Ask him to open up his iPhone, and navigate to "Settings" -> "General" -> "About" -> "Legal" and see how ...
395
I was hired for a 2.5 month contract. I was warned by friends and family not to throw myself into the work and not finish too quickly.
I ignored them, and did the job in 3 weeks. My employer had me budgeted for the full 2.5 months (I did not know this when I did the job). When I finished early, I was asked to assist with a process that was taking 10 ...
348
If you have a hard time holding on to people, the problem may not be the people.
Something to consider... Software engineers tend to dislike change to a very high degree. The fact that they are changing from your company should make you think about what is going wrong.
I can see software engineers asking the questions:
Why is the company too cheap to buy ...
346
If you have one developer and twenty(!) managers on this project, your developer is more than likely unable to get any actual work done while in-office. He's been putting in hours at work and then going home to code, got sick of it, and decided to just not donate his free time to the company.
I suspect that the real problem here is that other employees are ...
314
Be humble.
I'm a bit confused here. My understanding was that feature X has property Y. Is there something I'm missing here which means this doesn't work in this case?
Much better to start from the assumption that you are the one that is wrong, rather than the other way round. If you're wrong, you'll learn something; if you were in fact right, you've now ...
303
First, if you worked 53 hours, you need to bill for 53. The client is getting the value of 10 extra hours, and you're giving it away for nothing? Don't do that any more.
Second, "budget problems" is a negotiating tactic in this situation. The value of your work hasn't decreased a bit. You can't call your phone company, electric company, or landlord and ...
282
As a developer these are things I hate:
Requesting software/resources taking forever and needing loads of forms etc.
Stupid requirements that are contradictory to other features or tecnically not possible due to existing functionality.
Unreasonable and arbitrary/pulled out of thin air deadlines being set.
Not knowing the priority of my work.
So, if you ...
281
But something I need to do. But what?
Provide your feedback in a "constructive way", and be done about it. Not your place to make decisions.
Mention something along the lines of
"It was good to get a chance to evaluate the product X. As I see it:
- Pros: 1, 2, 3
- Cons: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, ......
As it is evident from the analysis ...
280
I was wondering if this is a safe topic of conversation in a one to
one meeting with my team lead.
This behavior is an acceptable topic, jumping to conclusion as to the cause isn't. I would come at it along the lines of:
Hey boss. I've noticed lately that when I present technical info about the project you always confirm it with Adam or Bob yet when ...
279
FYI, most universities don't teach about things like JSON. They teach things like depth-first tree traversal that you could theoretically apply in creating your own JSON library, but anything more practical than that almost everyone is self-taught or learned on the job.
Try not to get defensive. Explaining practical technologies like JSON is something we ...
265
This of course could place the company under serious fire for invading
users' privacy when we get found out. In fact, as far as my country's
laws go, it not only illegal, it is unconstitutional.
You're being asked to break the law and do things that might land you in prison or otherwise in serious trouble.
This argument fell on my CEO's deaf ears, ...
260
You should send an email to him saying something along the lines of:
I see that you pushed the code from my branch to the master branch. Please keep in mind that revision history is important in these sort of products, so having code cut and pasted into the main branch, as you did, should be avoided; rather, the code should be pushed from the branch it ...
259
You know what? I'll do the frame challenge answer and say, Don't Tuck Tail.
Oh, don't get me wrong. You're going to get blamed a bit, and possibly thrown under a bus. But trying to flee and find another job before the hammer falls without defending yourself is a terrible proposition.
Instead, stand tall, stand firm, and say:
"I was not given the go-...
257
I agree with the answers about taking initiative, but I have some real experience to share so am answering separately.
For one of my college internships in EE, I went to work for a large prominent computer manufacturer. I got assigned to a group writing firmware for modems (yes, I’m old) and they basically stuck me in a room by myself with a bunch of ...
253
I think you're asking the wrong question. I'm going to go ahead and say that challenge was probably designed for you to fail it:
You've been given a really impromptu test, which is kind of weird outside of an interview setting. I've never heard of it happening like that before. If my manager suddenly did that, I'd stare blankly at him and ask what the heck ...
247
Mistakes happen to all of us. The key thing is to understand them, learn from them, and avoid them the next time.
According to your question, you and the company did all the steps needed. On top of that, you also acknowledge your error
I've made sure to acknowledge I was the one who introduced the particular code which had the bug
I feel that an apology ...
241
Has doing it your way ever helped? Was there even once a time when you used indirection and injection and extra interfaces, and there was a last-minute swerve, and it was all handled smoothly and beautifully with no swearing? Even at a previous job, if you've never been able to get that code committed here?
I'm going to assume there was. Practice telling ...
221
You're going into too much detail with your client.
They presumably came to you (well, your team or your company) because you know more about software development than them. It sounds like you are now trying to educate them about software engineering to help them understand the benefits of unit testing. You should instead just include the time to create ...
218
You should be focused on a lifeboat for yourself
Someone promoted you to lead a project with just 5 days remaining which is an absolute disaster? With only 5 days, it seems that they should have chosen an interim leader from the team itself. Unless they informed you of all these problems ( mostly interns, Unity license issues, and the exceedingly high ...
204
This guy is a valuable asset as is. There is no need to change.
He does low level work within precise parameters without problems and he's not looking to move out of his comfort zone. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this. It's worked out ok for him for 15 years and now you're trying to ruin it for his own good?
You have done a good job recognising the ...
197
You launched a formal complaint complete with witnesses and documentation which was investigated for 10 weeks while you were paid for doing nothing, and then your complaints were found to be groundless, even your witnesses did not back you up.
Is this co-worker relationship salvageable?
No. You put multiple people into a difficult position. Things will ...
196
I don't think it is inappropriate, but I would take care how you word this question. Make sure the interviewee understands why you are asking it. I once had a job where basically everything I did outside work was 'forbidden', so this question would make me hesitant if I didn't know why you were asking. There are companies out there that consider every line ...
196
In my experience bugs are a consequence of (in no particular order):
Poorly defined or constantly changing requirements.
Too much work for the amount of time provided, which leads to rushing, which leads to mistakes, and insufficient time to test and fix defects before release.
Lack of peer code reviews (may be related to point 2).
Insufficient QA ...
195
I agree with Richard that you failed the first question, but I think you failed it in the opposite way. My experience comes from working on government contracts, so this answer is influenced heavily by how those clients and contracts work. This may not apply outside of that.
In my opinion, the first question is asking how you will deal with a potential ...
192
This is obviously against policy, and although what he is doing
doesn't require to do any interaction with anyone in the office it's
still wrong
Change the policy slightly
I think you should change the work from home policy for your team to be at your manager's discretion, meaning at your discretion. This way you can say they are following the rules, ...
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