[NOTE: This is the conclusion of a two-part story. If you haven't read part one (https://dev.to/bytebodger/Ron-the-untouchable-invincible-no-good-...
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I learned to code in university, I barely passed the first programming course because 80% of the grade was based on documenting the code. It wasn't until the second course that the concepts really 'clicked' for me. However, some people just keep failing these courses year after year. I admire the perseverance and I really believe in a 'growth mindset' instead of a 'fixed set of skills', but at some point you just have to be realistic with yourself that being a developer might not be the best fit for you. Raj is a perfect example of this.
I understand the pain of having such a person on your team, draining time and resources from your project. The worst thing is that you have to work around this person (like you said, 3 + 1 = 2) and only assign grunt work to them because you know you can't rely on them for finishing their tasks in time. I think you did the right thing, give them honest feedback and a chance to improve, nothing else you really can do in your position.
I'm glad it worked out. Probably for Ron too.
In my comment on your last post, I didn't get a full picture of Ron's lack of abilities. But now reading part 2, I can say that, yeah, Ron just didn't have the necessary skillset.
I think in these cases, it is often the best for both parties to part ways, which I think is ok. Social media, especially Twitter influencers trying to get follows sometimes touts the line of "if you get fired for lack of experience, something is wrong in the company, they should learn to teach you".
But if the expected skills are lacking by such a large margin, trying to force feed a developer just puts unmaintainable stress on both sides and just doesn't work.
Bingo! Saying that you're firing / releasing / terminating someone typically has a very negative connotation - for obvious reasons. And it's almost always a "negative" thing, in the short term, for all parties involved. But if everyone's being thoughtful and considerate about the situation, a termination can be a very positive thing - at least, in the long run.
Several years before this, I had an employee literally thank me as I was letting him go. I had tried to work with him. And I also made it exceedingly clear that, if he couldn't hit certain benchmarks, he'd be gone (cuz I wanted him to do everything possible to prepare for such a moment without it hitting him "out of the blue").
I've also had the experience of seeing someone that I had to terminate years earlier, and them telling me how great it was that I terminated them. Of course, they weren't saying that on the day that I let them go. But once they were out of the situation, it quickly became clear to them that they had been in the wrong company / environment / team / etc.
Teaching folks often makes good sense - when that teaching involves some additional skill - a skill that buttresses their existing expertise. But teaching makes no sense if you need to teach them everything - from scratch.
I always remember the CIO specifically using the word Dickensian. I really thought that "nailed it". It's like you're punishing someone just because they're a poor fit in their current role.
The part that followed this was underwhelming. Blame my fictional-literature-acclimatized brain, but I expected a more intriguing plot twist there, like Ron being her husband, or holding an indispensable position like being the Boss the CIO answers to
Sometimes a factual narrative doesn't carry the same punch as fiction.
OMG, reminds me of a gig I had a large telco. I was one of three contract technical writers and we needed another person to help. So they handed us Jim. Apparently Jim had worn out his welcome in a number of other business units, so we were the patsies.
I quickly learned Jim had no idea how the product worked, or how to explain anything about anything. So as the de facto lead I gave him simple tasks. Something I could have done in about an hour. A week later he was still not done, so I looked at what he had done so far. He had decided to work on something entirely tangential to the assignment.
So I went to Bill (the pill was our nickname as he could only trot out management-speak) and asked him to pull Jim from out team. I got the runaround and we had to put up with Jim for months before my constant negative feedback to Bill sunk in.
So they moved Jim to customer support. OMG. No wonder customers hated our help line.
Who develop here ? you or your IDE ?
You know I love you Adam, but please don't use real names in any of these stories going forward (unless the story is about how awesome someone is). Just use neutral, made up name that don't suggest ethnicity or an actual person that can be easily tracked down using linked-in.
I've also grappled with similar situations and I guess what's missing for me here is how you've grown and changed as a result of this whole ordeal or what you could have done better.
For example, I saw people successfully transition from devs to product/project managers or technical sales in similar scenarios (not to say that programming is superior to these professions, just that it requires a different skillset and might be better suited).
Cheers
I hear you. But I specifically decided that the Tales From The Dev Side series would be just that - tales. Not lessons. Or best practices. Just... tales. And I totally get that won't appeal to everyone.
All my other "normal" articles are basically extensions of my real-life experiences, with additional information about how I've changed, or what I've learned. As for this particular story, there are, quite literally, about a half dozen different takeaways (for me), and I didn't wanna make it even longer by adding a whole bunch of preachy "what have we learned today?" findings.
I just wanted to tell the story. I'll do others like that in the future. Just telling that story - and letting the readers draw what they will from it.
I didn't mean in a preachy way but in a "in good storytelling the main character (you) usually grows and changes" way.
It is your story though and you can tell it however you like. I fully respect that.
I was enjoying your stories until you had to insult the entire state of Montana. lol
😂😂😂
Adam Nathaniel Davis
I am asking these questions because I was once in Ron's shoe - well, I had to switch language and framework (from python Django to js node/express). I was not really interested in web development but it was paying the bill so I had to do it.
There were many ways for Ron to improve. There were many of way for me to help him improve. To be completely fair to Ron, he was trying to improve. And although I basically knew where this was going, I was trying to help him improve.
I'm not trying to dodge your question, but asking how Ron could improve is kinda missing the point. I've had numerous employees over the years who were not quite "up to snuff" in critical aspects of their tech skills. And, in some cases, we were even able to work out a happy ending that kept them in their job and allowed them to grow professionally.
The real issue with Ron was just that he was in wayyyyyy over his head in that particular job. If I had a large team with room for some very junior folks, I could've kept him on and allowed him to grow into the role. But I had a small team - there was only budget for 4 devs + me. So we really didn't have any room for a (very) junior dev - especially one who was supposed to be much better. His presence was literally handicapping everyone else.
This is also why I found the requirement for a Performance Improvement Plan to be so galling. If you're a solid dev who just doesn't have much experience with Angular, that should be no big deal. We can bring you up-to-speed (most likely, without any formal PIP). But if you simply can't code, there's really not much to be done. I can't sit down and take you from Intro to Coding up to the level that's needed to function on that team. It'd take years.
Hmm I have to say I'm totally missing the point of this two-part article and why it was written. It's been tagged as motivation but there's absolutely nothing motivating here and it seems that you just feel personally wronged by what happened and it has led to some grudge(?) on your part. I believe this, even more, considering you kept his name in the article which means I could in theory personally identify him and know who this incompetent developer was (which is unprofessional and unnecessary to me).
I understand this is your blog so you can post what you please and clearly, a lot of energy and time of yours was wasted but it seems like you should have directed your frustrations at the people you worked with who didn't listen to you and deemed you difficult (which also seems to have upset you). You come across as someone who feels personally wronged and character assassinated as a result of this experience and it hasn't left you all these years. There's even a comment from you on the first part of this article talking about how there's a rumour he is launching a start-up on a "laughably-bad premise". Plus the image of "idiot of the year" in that first article and yikes you just come across as rude... regardless of how you were the victim in this situation.
I'm writing this just to let you know how this comes across and how it reflects on your character. I think you should let the emotions you're carrying around this go.
Thanks for the awesome feedback!!!
Good read. What's fascinating to me was , it had only "Raj's" name explicitly mentioned. If not fictional, I am curious why just "HR Lady" and "CIO"? "Raj" could have been just "Developer". Those 2 characters also seemed crucial.
I changed Raj's name just now because some people seem to be freaking out about it - even though Raj is like Joe to Indians.
I have no idea what HR Lady's real name was. I forgot it about a month after I left the company.
The CIO's name was Jim. But I wouldn't put "Jim" in the article. Every time I mentioned him, it was more important for the reader to remember that he was the CIO - and not that his name is "Jim".
Well you're not gonna hear me complaining if you change it back haha
I will admit, that sometimes PiPs can turn things around. Say that a developer wasn’t pulling his weight, and was put on a PiP. This dev may actually realize ’cr@p, I honestly had no idea!’ and in fact turn things around. Its not a death sentence, you can get out of it.
In my strong opinion,
PIP === displinaryIssue. That's when PIPs have a chance to work properly - when there's a behavior (or the lack of a behavior) that must be corrected.If a dev is capable of doing the work, but he's just not "pulling his weight", that's not a tech issue, it's a discipline issue. And I absolutely agree that, sometimes, for whatever reason, devs can get it in their head that they don't really need to work that hard or deliver that much. And a PIP can be a formal way of telling them, "We notice that you haven't really been pulling your weight. And you need to start doing so - or you could be released."
But if the dev just doesn't have the skill set to do the work, a PIP is pointless. In fact, it can even be viewed as kinda cruel (hence, the CIO referring to it as Dickensian).
If I've somehow managed to get myself into a position as a surgeon, and it becomes apparent to my manager that I'm in no way qualified to be a surgeon, a PIP is just a waste of everyone's time. I'm not going to learn to be a surgeon in 90 days.
Omg Adam, absolutely loved this read!
What a blast, and damn it must have been nerve-wracking!
That HR-lady the guts, but it all sounds very familiar yes!
Thank you Adam, you legend!
Hahaha - thank you!
I had a somewhat similar experience. Except I wasn't a manager, I was a coworker of another "Raj". I was working on two separate code bases, an Angular app and a Flutter app, and Raj didn't want to learn Flutter to support the other half of our product.
After 10 - 11 months I left.
Why "Raj"?
Because... his name was "Raj"?
Ah. I actually thought this was a fiction of sorts
From the
[NOTE]at the top of the article:interesting read, but sounds like you disliked the guy just because we wasnt a good programmer
and i think that yeah, you should have told him, 'raj you don't know how to do this job, i'll show you some basic things, here are some resources you can use to learn how to do this job'
the chance of him reaching the required level to do his job was slim, because of the short timeline, but it would have kept him out of your way, and would have served him well for his future endeavors
That would be one interpretation. I don't feel any need to defend myself. But I will try to clarify just a little bit.
Raj was a very nice guy. Friendly. Intelligent. A lot of good qualities. He was also woefully inept as a developer.
I had no problem with Raj as a person. I'd be happy to hang out with him any time. I had massive problems with Raj as a member of my team.
I "dislike" anyone being on my team who is completely incompetent. If someone is incompetent, I want them off my team. As soon as possible. There's nothing personal about it. It has nothing to do with me liking/disliking the person.
And maybe it's a product of how I wrote this article, but I find it interesting that any "negative" feedback I'm getting is focused on Raj. And... I guess that makes sense. After all, his name's in the title.
But I'd contend that, if you're really paying attention, the story really has very little to do with Raj at all. Raj was stuck in a bad situation. Quite frankly, so was I. Neither of us had to be.
The whole scenario was needlessly dragged out by a mindless company policy, an HR person with no interest in thinking about the proper application of that policy, and a C-level executive who wouldn't trust the people he put in place to manage the team.
When I told HR about the problem - and gave them a year-long pile of documentation that already would have justified a termination at almost any other company I've ever worked for - they didn't care. They had a "PIP box" that had to be checked, and they weren't gonna hear any excuses about why that might not make sense in this case.
When I told the CIO about the problem, he just brushed off my concerns - until it started impacting his priorities. When his deadlines started getting threatened, suddenly he was all about releasing Raj as soon as possible. And once he threw his C-level weight behind it, HR just fell in line.
Wow, sounds terrible. Thank you for sharing. I think it would almost be harder to be in Rajs place... but since he had no awareness probably not? Still tough.):
Wowowowowowowowowowowowowow such a legend.
Estan muy buenos estos relatos, gracias por compartir.
These stories are very good, thanks for sharing.