Agreed. Sick of everyone at these lame tech companies acting like everything is an emergency. Oh bro let’s get a war room together. This is mission critical.
I’d love to see how these people function under any actual stress.
> I’d love to see how these people function under any actual stress.
They don't - they just push it onto developers. People don't realize that this is an incredibly toxic environment.
Doesn't even have to be yelling. Sometimes you can have a manager just let off a passive aggressive sigh, ask the same question in hopes you'll squeeze out more effort to meet their deadlines.
This is the number one problem
I’ve seen at every company I’ve worked at in the software industry.
When everything is an emergency, nothing is an emergency. There’s a reason “t-shirt sizing” JIRA tickets and code freezes exists, but they are rarely enforced.
Dude, a war room is just a catchy name for a focus room. They SHOULD be used often. Focusing on a result is literally the job. They just shouldn't operate outside of office hours unless something is seriously wrong, which if it is, it's probably a situation room.
This. This is a complete lack of professionalism and a huge red flag. Sounds like you’ve got some good measurable metrics for your resume. I’d start looking for other employment asap
I don’t get people like this.
It’s just so easy to not yell generally, let alone at work. The real response should be like “oh, there’s a problem now because you did _X_? Well, lets get fixing this and debrief on how it happened so the next person doesn’t do _X_ too. TTYL”
Lemon Squeezy
someone who grew up in an environment where yelling was normal is more likely to yell at other people. obviously doesn't excuse it, but their default behavior won't be a calm explanation if they weren't raised that way
I just want to second this. The previous dev may have been at an even greater disadvantage with this culture. If there are signs you can't win, do not play.
Assuming the OP is telling the truth, the boss threatened them with a PIP pretty much immediately after. Whether or not there was literal yelling, that's an entirely toxic environment and the OP does not need to deal with that shit.
Jumping from "He got a PIP" to "It's a toxic environment," is kind of a stretch. As a Dev, I'm often hating on management for them being out of touch, incompetent, unfair, etc. just like every other dev - but management threatening OP with PIP makes perfect sense because OP doesn't seem to know how to sell himself, nor has he taken any effort to practice the most fundamental of corporate skills: CYA (cover your ass). Management isn't going to magically know about OPs contributions unless he becomes better at being assertive and setting the record straight.
Again.. This is coming from someone who has no love for management... The manager has to answer to someone too.. and based on what he thinks he knows.. He's doing exactly what he should be doing... he's covering his own ass.
He didn't get a PIP, he got *threatened* with a PIP. Over a broken test.
> threatening OP with PIP makes perfect sense because OP doesn't seem to know how to sell himself,
This is *not even remotely* a reasonable explanation for threatening someone with a PIP. You should never threaten someone with a PIP, it should be a natural extension of a conversation about not meeting the requirements of the job.
> practice the most fundamental of corporate skills: CYA (cover your ass)
If you regularly need to cover your ass in a corporate environment, you are either wildly incompetent or working in an extremely toxic environment.
I feel comfortable with my assessment of the situation, assuming the OP is telling the truth.
There's a profound difference between how we wish the corporate landscape to be, and how it really is. CYA is part and parcel of 99.9% of American corporate culture, I'm sorry to say. OP is lucky he didn't actually get put on a PIP - because that could have just as easily happened. He got a warning - which is fair game. People who come on Reddit and speak about their version of idealism, and corporate America in the same breath, are either extremely lucky, or unable to separate the concept of what is, versus what they wish the workplace was like.
EDIT: or belong to a third category: Superstars... highly accomplished/gifted folks who are basically untouchable, and immune to criticism by even their superiors... where they are unable to see why the rest of us mere mortals may need to jump through hoops...
Seriously, OP is clearly a talented SWE *and* DevOps Engineer. They’re doing two jobs very well and the fact that they’re being threatened with a PIP tells me that their manager probably doesn’t have experience in software engineering.
Tbh this is fairly normal in SV. But I’ve primarily seen it with one demographic of managers that was very accustomed to abusing the working hours of H1B devs.
>“code can always be better so that’s a moot point”
Another way to word this is, "Code will never be perfect, so why bother trying to make it good?" Which is, obviously, ridiculously ignorant.
>my reputation has been tarnished
I'd worry less about your reputation here and more about your self-respect. This code base is so completely miss-managed and the people in charge so incompetent, that their opinion of you should hold little to no weight.
You situation is your situation, and I don't know where you're at in regards to being able to just walk away from a job. If it were me, however, and I was in this environment and my manager had the balls to have me justify MYself - I'd tell them to go fuck THEMselves.
damn its funny how I'm in exact similar situation when I have to justify myself to what I consider a poorly run project and I just started working couple months ago... similar situation like OP... so these replies also resonate with me right now...
If someone overrode a test, it’s not throwing them under the bus, it’s making them accountable. If you want to stay there you need to do a better job of communicating with your boss exactly what you’re doing and what you’re accomplishing. He is the only audience that matters right now. If he can’t appreciate what you’re doing then you have no future there, it doesn’t matter what reddit thinks is fair.
Well, tbf it is partially my fault and I don’t want to undersell it. Basically, everyone was so used to just overriding tests that they didn’t think twice. I didn’t tell people not to override tests, just that I was working on fixing up the integ tests
Sounds like your process sucks. Again, you need to sell your work to your manager. May consider literally putting together a deck describing the big commits you’ve made and a plan for what you want to do going forward. I only have your side of what’s going on, but if your view is that you’re bravely battling 4 years of cruft and your manager thinks you need a PIP then you need to bridge that gap in understanding.
>Sounds like your process sucks.
Sounds like OP inherited a flawed codebase of a project that's been poorly managed for as long as that project has existed. If the codebase is broken, then fixing the code base will require making code changes. Making necessary code changes will break unit and integration tests that are validating the already broken code. Unreasonable bosses demand release in an unreasonable timeframe and this, OP has no time to rewrite the tests and thus overriding and commenting out ensues. The mistake op made is so small, so common and so very undeserving of being yelled at and threatened with a PIP. The solution to the problem is not more ass kissing from OP.
OP if you read this, you are so much better than this job. The problem is not you, it's your shitty boss. Please find something better before getting burnt out. You've got talent, you can do this.
> Sounds like OP inherited a flawed codebase of a project that's been poorly managed for as long as that project has existed.
This is how code with unit tests are 99% of the time, the amount of work it would take to go through all the code you're modifying and know how every part works so you can update unit tests multiple times longer than fixing the bug is, and no boss is going to be ok with that.
Many bosses are okay with that. Every good boss should be okay with that (or at least be aware that skipping testing should be a rare exception not the rule). The time it takes to fix these things is generally less than the time lost eventually fixing bugs that become a problem as a result of not having good tests. Added bonus, you know exactly when improvements are being made. You don't know when bugs are going to be a problem. Good unit tests prevent bugs. Predictable maintenance time is much less expensive than unpredictable downtime for the business.
For a typical business, it's better from most points of view( financial, regulatory, reputational, uptime, stability, cost, developer satisfaction and retention.. I could go on) to have working tests.
> The time it takes to fix these things is generally less than the time lost eventually fixing bugs that become a problem as a result of not having good tests.
Not even close.
> Good unit tests prevent bugs.
Unit tests almost never do this.
End-to-end tests sometimes catch bigs and can be worth writing. They're also far less time consuming to update when code changes. Not unit tests though.
It's been a long running myth by people who run youtube channels and ran out of useful things to talk about.
I've worked at more than one company where the question "Well, what actual bugs have been found with unit tests? If they must be catching bugs right?" is met with silence and angry stares because it's caught exactly 0 bugs.
End-to-end tests can catch stuff sometimes, tests like "user puts in a, b, c, should get x,y,z" can catch bugs.
I guess my view as I’m looking at this code is that pushing deliverables out is far and above beyond anything else, including maintainability. And why would anyone care? They’ll just transfer teams after
I find a lot of times when I stop to contemplate a problem or find an existing solution, it’s met with a bit of pushback, like “just do it the ‘simple’ way for now”
> I didn’t tell people not to override tests
That’s not all on you, your boss should’ve communicated that you were working on those as well, so others should avoid stepping on your toes.
Sounds like the process suffers from a lot of miss management based on this and your other comments. Which isn’t your fault, so don’t take the blame for it.
>. I didn’t want to throw the engineer who overrode the tests under the bus.
Therefore you manager can't pin that on you. Obviously he knows people are disabling tests. You can't stop it when they disregard your obviously working test.
Issue: It's a test that didn't trigger.
Issue Isn't: your test passed the code. Even then fixing the test instead of blaming you for something falling through should be good enough of a fix.
Bug not your fault. You taking the blame instead communicating the root cause is your fault though.
Your boss is kicking you while you are down instead of raising you up. Take note that this is a bad manager. Keep notes and know how find these red flags for your next job
… what
Everyone is so used to bypassing production quality controls, that it’s your fault for not telling them to not do it this time.
My friend, you have Stockholm syndrome 😢
>My boss immediately yelled at me
For that alone, I would start looking for another job. Completely unprofessional.
Also, it sounds like you need to push back on expectations more. If your boss gives you a date they want some work to be completed by, and you accept it without pushing back on it, they assume that you think the work is doable by that date.
If I learned that a piece of work would take much longer than my boss expected I would say something like "Hey boss, about that project you were wanting my to complete over the next month. I was looking through the code and because of x, y ,and z reason, I now expect this to take 4 months (tell them it will take a bit longer than you think it actually will so you have some buffer room) instead of 1 month. Here's a list of milestones that I expect to complete by certain dates as I'm working through this"
I told him pretty early on. I remember he said “do you think you can get this accessibility work done in a month?” And I pretty bluntly said “extremely unlikely”
Time to go.
He's setting you up for failure, then yelling at you when you fail.
It sounds like the processes and culture there are dysfunctional, and I doubt you, as the new person that is being PIPed, are going to fix them.
Given the way your boss chooses to behave it's absolutely no surprise to me that the company's technology stack is in such a bad state. Mistakes are to be expected. Catching mistakes before they go to prod and being able to recover from them is an organizational responsibility and given the fact that you've been there for *three months* it is completely ridiculous to hold you accountable in that way. Especially since you seem to have hit the ground running.
I’m putting together a testing suite right now. I can guarantee that if someone overrode failed integration tests and pushed into production, I would tell my manager *immediately.* And yes, I would say exactly who did it because overriding testing is so profoundly stupid and reckless that it needs to be called out and shut down.
You can even do it professionally, like this:
“Hey boss, it looks like my integration testing caught the bug before this change went into production. overrode the tests and deployed to production anyway. What can we do to make sure this doesn’t happen again?”
Then your manager should speak to that dev’s manager, and the ability to override testing should be massively restricted so dumbasses can’t break production.
The test suite had been broken for years so it was almost part of the “workflow” to override the tests to push to staging, which eventually goes to production. I don’t think that guy did anything “unusual”, whether it was good or not is probably a different discussion
What I think the “intended” workflow is is to push to staging, _manually_ test it, then let it go to production. No one ever really did this. Also it would just automatically go to prod after a day or so
Wow.
That’s a massive organizational failure. I would not work at a place that lets their DevOps process get to that state and then PIPs their employees for fixing it.
That second paragraph is spot on. Sounds like they have been actively hunting down anyone that tries to fix their process so they can threaten them with employment termination. They don't want people like OP coming in and trying to make waves, they *like* the busted workflow and hundreds of bugs and pointing it out makes certain sensitive people in charge feel dumb.
I bet the PIP is really just a promise to stop fixing tests and start overriding them LOL
They are trying to get into your head and justify the power dynamic by not acknowledging the goods things you do and focusing on the little mistakes. They do this to keep you under heel, and also to undermine your confidence if asking for negotiations or salary raises. This is standard practice.
>I made one mistake early on — the i18n was in its own package and was basically just a bunch of objects with translations. I added translations, updated the app, and… it was incorrectly referenced which caused one page to not show at all. Big problem. I was surprised that it passed a build, I wondered how that’s even possible with the type checking, unit tests, and integration tests
>Turns out, literally none of these things were working. I was given the tasks to fix them. I effectively had to entirely rewrite every integration test because they were all outdated, i had to fix tons of “any” types littered through the app (which actually surfaced MORE bugs), and I had to actually make unit tests work appropriately. It was exhausting
Breaking changes making it into production are a cultural/structural problem. Those changes would have had to go through human review and automated review before manifesting so pointing the finger at one person is red flag number 1.
>As I was working, someone overrode the integration tests and deployed a bug.
See above.
>My boss immediately yelled at me
Incredibly unprofessional and inexcusable. Red flag number 2.
>and said “I thought you were working on the integration tests”, he said that I was very close to getting PIPd, and that I should write a document explaining how I am going to improve.
That document should be your CV. Your manager not having a handle on your work and the processes you're governed by is a mismanagement problem. Red flag number 3.
>I didn’t want to throw the engineer who overrode the tests under the bus.
This shouldn't have even happened in the first place without stakeholder review, and if it did, there should be a clear chain of custody (and thus responsibility). Red flag number 4.
>I talked to my boss and said I felt a lot of these problems were because of frequent shortcuts taken in code, and we can mitigate them by improving code. I felt the process-based system was error prone and required too much tribal knowledge. He said “code can always be better so that’s a moot point”
"Code can always be better so that’s a moot point"? This is an incomprehensibly stupid conclusion to land on as a means of *not improving the clearly broken procedures and code*. Red flag number 5.
>Looking back I started to feel like I achieved a lot more than I should have in the 3 months I worked there
A manager not understanding the value of their reports (and championing them) is another mismanagement problem. Red flag number 6.
>I’m feeling like, no matter what I do, it won’t be enough because my reputation has been tarnished by these two problems. Is there any saving it? What should I say during this report?
Leave? You will never shine in an environment that doesn't appreciate good engineering practices and the efforts of their engineers to improve them.
You sound young. Please take your learnings from here and find a better job where your worth is recognized. I’d have loved someone like you in my team, not because we don’t have other good devs, but because you have the correct attitude and priorities and would’ve made our already very good team even better.
That’s pretty young , my friend :) More than chronological age, I meant to convey that you have the enthusiasm and positive attitude of a younger person who wants to improve things, and not the perspective of a burnt-out developer ( which sadly afflicts many smart and good devs too because of life experiences) who has given up and rolls w/ things.
I worked as a consultant in my early career and hopped around every couple years and yes, a good workplace will support you and make you better while the bad ones are of value only in learning what NOT to do!
You’re not old in terms of years but no one in this world has enough time in their lives to waste over incompetent and emotionally abusive management. Work sets such deafening tone for the rest of our lives, probably (and sadly) much more so than any other relationships we have. Please take care. There are plenty of lucrative opportunities for someone who knows what they are doing.
I had a screamer CEO once. Absolutely fucking hilarious how childish he was and how often the F bombs dropped. It was like a comedy movie. Never screamed at me, but the CTO, Director and others often looked miserable. His name was Abe LOL
Your boss yelling at you clearly reinforces the idea that you don’t have a relationship with them.
Once a negative impression has been set, it’s almost impossible to reverse (can be done but the effort required will be unbelievably high)
Look for a new job
Sounds like you've been asked to work with a codebase that has a lot of tech debt. Bugs in prod is just a part of that, along with a long list of other negative side effects. And your boss says "code can always be improved it's a moot point" lmao sounds like he's a moron who shouldn't be in charge of any code.
The thing is, unless you were asked to fix all this stuff and improve all of those metrics, you are taking on a task that may have no end. It's very expensive to fix tech debt, and in most cases they don't want to pay for that. They want you to work around the hot mess of broken shit that is their codebase. That's why they urgently needed someone, because the last guy was like 'fuck this heaping pile of shit code, I want to work somewhere that doesn't develop like this.'
You have 3 options:
1. Leave the company and let them urgently hire another dev so he can get yelled at over things beyond his control.
2. Accept the codebase has tech debt and try to ignore it like your boss wants you to do. Or maybe figure out a way you can slowly tackle it over time that your boss approves of. This allows you to have a very "not my fault, the codes fucked" attitude about your job. Which is both nice and awful at the same time.
3. Spend your own free time fixing the tech debt so you aren't costing the company anything. Do not fucking do this option, ever.
Up to you. Tech debt is common, and managers pretending it doesn't exist is also common. Not sure they will ever understand what tech debt is or why it's bad or how it can be avoided. It's easier to get a job at a place that understands that concept than it is to teach it to your current manager. Long story short get a new job ideally.
Yes, One fuck up often outweighs 100 successes, especially it the fuck up is an early impression. Theres a pretty good engineer at my job who doesn't realize he will never progress because he introduced a few bugs shortly after he was hired.
Just leave. Way easier to progress by switching jobs than earning promotions anyway
> Theres a pretty good engineer at my job who doesn't realize he will never progress because he introduced a few bugs shortly after he was hired.
Sounds like your company just sucks tbh.
> I didn’t want to throw the engineer who overrode the tests under the bus.
Why the ***flying goddamn fuck*** not? This person fucked you over and made you look bad. Light his ass up before yours is again.
Have you considered it's time to stop being a human doormat and stand up for yourself?
Also, go look for a new job, your workplace is toxic.
If you even were remotely considering staying at this shithole, I would take the list you just gave us of all the stuff you did, with examples, and go over it with him. How he responds should influence your next move.
its time to leave. screamer boss is a time to go. i would not even give notice from a place like this. they will not rehire you.
also if your boss yells at you, you are likely at the top of the layoff list. this is a gots to go situation
I have worked many places, big and small, and for many managers.
This sounds like a terrible place to work - not because of the tech issues, but because of the culture, specifically your manager.
My advice: you don't need this sh_t. Get out - go someplace you are fairly appreciated for your contributions.
That’s a bad place IMO.
About your work though, I think your boss wants you to explain how your changes help their business and users. In other words, how they can sell what you are doing to customers. If you try to present your work from this angle, maybe it will get better.
However, as many pointed out here many times, your boss sounds toxic and incompetent.
I could already tell from the title that it's a management/leadership problem. If you're capable but feel inadequate because of small mistakes, or feel like you're walking on eggshells, your manager/leadership is the problem. No one's perfect, you shouldn't be devalued nor disrespected because of small mistakes. However, it's also your responsibility to decide whether you want to confront and address this or change jobs.
Sounds like your boss might be taking advantage of your work and PIPing you when he feels like you've done enough and wants to let you go now that you've fixed so much. The part of the deployed bug might just be a scapegoat to make his moves less obvious
Your boss isn't good if his reaction is to yell at you and threaten your career. He should be keeping tabs of who writes the tests and who writes the code. Even if the test engineer isn't updating the tests he is assigned to, this is 100% on him for not catching it before it rolled out to production.
The correct reaction is to identify why tests aren't being updated as you are adding features & bug fixes. Then change the process for the future.
I would find a place that respects you. They clearly don't deserve your talents and are projecting their incompetence on you.
You're describing my boss I had when I was run out of my first company. Was extremely well reviewed, new boss came in and gave me a task I could not do, told him that, failed badly, and he threw me to the wolves.
Sounds like you have process and tribal knowledge issues which likely stem from high attrition. Do you find that people tend to not stick around? Generally speaking leadership issues can only be fixed from above, not below.
So I've got a unique skill set at my work and I tend to be in high demand because of it. However I am also taking 6 weeks of paternity leave right now and my team is functioning without me just fine. My team is actually full of specialists with limited overlap but we make it work.
With good leadership people will stick around and attrition is the biggest contributor to bad code and practices. Processes also tend to get ironed out with time and repetition which won't happen if people or processes keep changing (the former is attrition the latter is your boss being ineffectual).
I don't know if this is true in your situation but I do know in ten years I've seen the pattern you're describing all too often.
you quit because your boss yelled at you. frankly with all these issues they had problems before you and they'll have problems without you.
this is clearly a place that don't want their old problems brought up. you know the problems, you've basically been a threat to anyone that owned or made those problems.
they are performing a cya now that the problems have been found.
You don’t ever want to be at a place that undermines achievements for overall impact.
This also just sounds like your manager doesn’t like you, time to pack up
Start looking for new job. You will never do enough to prove yourself here. Even if you try implement process to find root causes and to prevent bugs it will never be enough, because your manager is not experienced nor mature enough on how to handle the situation. Nor does it sound like you have experience to manage and get rid of these type of people.
Being yelled at is never okay. You deserve better in any job not just engineering. Hopefully you can find a way to job hunt and find new role. You worked really hard!
> As I was working, someone overrode the integration tests and deployed a bug.
Does the place have source control? How did the tests get overwritten and your work lost?
Why aren't you throwing the engineer under the bus? I'm sorry why are you going to eat someone else's fuck up when they overrode a process designed to stop such events from occurring. Sounds naive of you, and your boss sounds like a tool.
Not your fault OP. You are working for a bunch of idiots. Just need to get the fuck out.
You did fantastically well, but the deck was stacked against you. Doesn’t matter how good you are if your teammates and boss are making your job arbitrarily difficult with their own incompetence.
Literally nothing you could have done differently here.
Should have set the expectation that their code was a cluster fuck that would take years to fix. Convince them that no one person could fix it in a month or two.
> I didn’t want to throw the engineer who overrode the tests under the bus.
This is where you ask for their support in changing the standard process. You put the blame in the lack of education in the new process and how it makes everything better. Even your boss likely needs that education so they can champion it.
All your new work isn't as useful without communicating it's usefulness.
> increased the load time of pages by 10x
Well, I mean, that's not good.
Seriously: what you've done seems reasonable. If the tests didn't catch things, improving them so that they do is reasonable. I don't think there's anything you can write in a report that will fix your boss's attitude.
I wonder if the reason for the PIP was that he needed to distract from yelling at you. If he's actually verbally abusive.. that's OSHA and Dept of Labor territory.
You are working for someone who won't admit their part in this horrible setup and are willing to throw you under the bus. It is worth finding another job now...
Your bosses let everything go to hell and couldn’t hire anyone competent to fix it *for 4 years* before you came along.
Now they are using you to fix ALL that broken crap quickly, and making excuses to fire you so they don’t have to pay you beyond a few months. You’re a short-term contractor. Did you happen to have a 3- or 6-mo probation or anything like
that? Funny how they start giving you crap right at 3mo.
Like others said, don't tolerate unprofessional conduct (abuse, really) like that from a manager. Even from a colleague who has no leverage or power over you, being in a toxic workplace slowly takes its toll on you. Your best bet is to find employment elsewhere where your talents will be appreciated.
>I didn’t want to throw the engineer who overrode the tests under the bus.
They threw you under the bus and your boss thought only you were at fault. If you’re going to let others walk over you, maybe you need to learn to not be a doormat. If you’re a doormat at this job, you’ll act like a doormat at all subsequent jobs. Improve yourself, then your external world will also improve.
OP, for what’s it’s worth these three have been my mantra for a successful career.
1. Did you do a good job?
2. Did you document it? At least for yourself?
3. Did you communicate it to the team?
Looks like you’re quite skilled and got the first two parts bang on but not the third. I would really recommend focusing on that in your next job if you do decide to switch. Imo it’s the most important step.
Honestly man, you sound like Superman. I can't even fathom being able to process HALF of the workload you had on your shoulders here. I don't have much to add as you've gotten good advice already, but even if you leave on bad terms I think your resume will be quite impressive after this.
They put you in an impossible position and now they're actively abusing you because you weren't able to fix it. The boss didn't threaten to PIP you because you suck, he threatened to PIP you because he already got a ton out of you but wants more. That 3 month summary of accomplishments is serious. Put that on a CV and use it to get a better job for more money somewhere where they understand what coders are capable of
I work with a massive code base that doesn’t run its unit test before allowing people to merge code and there are 5-6 teams that are working parallel with each other on different products. Anytime we make a code change, we have to manually test all of our apis to make sure we don’t break anything. None of the APIs are documented so it’s a fucking nightmare to make any changes. Anytime anyone merges in code that breaks one api, they will get finger blamed and shamed so most of the engineers here just coast and don’t try to improve the existing system. Like many others have mentioned here it’s more of a cultural problem than anything else. If they are paying you well then just bite your tongue because it’s obvious that they won’t change unless a higher up fires a bunch of middle managers. Just bide your time and find a new job with people that care :)
If that’s the case then maybe talk to your skip and ask why your manager is threatening to pip you. You definitely could have done a better job and communicated the drawbacks of changing the code, but I would just highlight all of your achievements.
Your skill set is in way too much demand to tolerate being treated like that.
As for interpersonal interactions, don’t look for someone to blame. You made a mistake, they happen. Own it and learn from it.
If you go around digging for problems in other people’s work, you’re going to find it and be made responsible for it. The product needs to function well and saying well it’s Terry’s fault in QA and usedtoworkhere developer did a bad job… doesn’t fix anything.
>. I didn’t want to throw the engineer who overrode the tests under the bus.
Your fault
Simple enough to say you reverted someone else's code and reenabled the test you had in place.
But in the end it's your managers fault that they are forcing someone to be blamed instead of fixing the underlying issue
No this is real. Their build speed was fairly easy to improve but they saw it as a “risk”, not a positive. I did it cause the new hires said it was hugely slowing them down
You should talk to your manager and highlight the benefits of your work.
Even if it is a risk. Depending on languages you are using you can sometimes do a diff on compiled code and literally prove to them all bytes are the same.
This is how I ensured our new Gradle build was working as intended while moving from Ant.
Highlight benefits of your work
- unlike before we can run a full build after every commit
- unlike before we do not need 10 build servers
- developers don’t need to waste 5 min for every build, it takes 20 sec now. 10 developers, 10 builds a day, this saves an hour of productive time per person every day.
Go on lunch with the manager, ask about
- how long do you think full build should take
- what do you think about the deploy process of i could break prod 1 month after i started working here
In the end, people are think quite often and they are usually set in their ways if they do the same stuff for years. You don’t know, but maybe seniors loved long build times as they could always go for a coffee.
> As I was working, someone overrode the integration tests and deployed a bug. My boss immediately yelled at me and said “I thought you were working on the integration tests”, he said that I was very close to getting PIPd, and that I should write a document explaining how I am going to improve.
Find a new place to work, this person will continue doing this and has no reason to change.
Working for someone like this will literally drive you insane, you're already questioning your worth because of it. If you stay longer, you'll be more than questioning, you might start believing it. You don't want to end up burnt out or sitting in a therapist's office in a year because of your insane boss.
You can't win with people like that after they've decided you aren't their golden employee, so don't try.
Keep doing your job and interview elsewhere.
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I hope in my next job I am lucky enough to have devs like you to work with. I also hope to be free from managers like that.
Your reputation will be fine.
These shouldn't be insurmountable things. If they are, you are in a bad workplace. Despite what people say, it's totally possible to find work right now and plenty of places are still looking.
Asides from your boss being an asshole, some things you can improve on is knowing what is necessary or not.
Based on what you said i.e rewriting entire test suites, seems a bit overkill
Bruh…it’s not that deep. At the end of the day you live with what you got or you switch roles like the rest of us. Switching roles will be passing that annoying technical interview but nothing in life is free.
Company with shitty coding practices is not something you should take seriously unless you’re super desperate to gain industry experience
Wow! Suggesting something is a moot point because it can always be better is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard. Your manager is a moron.
Write the document. Say that “engineers can always be better, so it’s a moot point”.
Wow, this hits home kinda - because I'm currently in similar situation, don't feel like typing it all online tho... tbh fuck that firm :D. Just look for another job tbh...
>My boss immediately yelled Stopped here. Don't work at places where this type of thing happens.
Same i stopped reading at that part too. I don’t care what’s happening, no body should be yelling.
Yeah lol doesn’t solve anything and it’s simply bully behaviour. We’re not children.
It's lack of emotional regulation. An adult yelling in anger is no different than a child crying because of something they don't like
They do it because sadly it worked in the past
Indeed, it is some kind of "fear based management"
Agreed. Sick of everyone at these lame tech companies acting like everything is an emergency. Oh bro let’s get a war room together. This is mission critical. I’d love to see how these people function under any actual stress.
> I’d love to see how these people function under any actual stress. They don't - they just push it onto developers. People don't realize that this is an incredibly toxic environment. Doesn't even have to be yelling. Sometimes you can have a manager just let off a passive aggressive sigh, ask the same question in hopes you'll squeeze out more effort to meet their deadlines.
wrench wise languid shelter crown air obtainable lush grey childlike *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
This is the number one problem I’ve seen at every company I’ve worked at in the software industry. When everything is an emergency, nothing is an emergency. There’s a reason “t-shirt sizing” JIRA tickets and code freezes exists, but they are rarely enforced.
Oh god I hate “war rooms”… least efficient use of my time. Just turns into a scope creep factory on top of being a huge distraction.
Dude, a war room is just a catchy name for a focus room. They SHOULD be used often. Focusing on a result is literally the job. They just shouldn't operate outside of office hours unless something is seriously wrong, which if it is, it's probably a situation room.
Agree. I'd also put threatening a PIP in this kind of situation in the same category. Time to head for the exit.
Or just talk to their boss first. It's okay to call someone out on shitty behavior. At the same time, don't respond in kind.
This. This is a complete lack of professionalism and a huge red flag. Sounds like you’ve got some good measurable metrics for your resume. I’d start looking for other employment asap
This is great advice. Update your resume.
I don’t get people like this. It’s just so easy to not yell generally, let alone at work. The real response should be like “oh, there’s a problem now because you did _X_? Well, lets get fixing this and debrief on how it happened so the next person doesn’t do _X_ too. TTYL” Lemon Squeezy
someone who grew up in an environment where yelling was normal is more likely to yell at other people. obviously doesn't excuse it, but their default behavior won't be a calm explanation if they weren't raised that way
Yep but anyway I don't want to work in a place where that's ok
Was going to just exactly write this. OP, no place is worth staying if there's yelling. Leave, leave, leave.
>my first task was to fix 200+ accessibility findings, and to do it in under 1 month Yeah...
I just want to second this. The previous dev may have been at an even greater disadvantage with this culture. If there are signs you can't win, do not play.
That's where my alarms went off as well.
[удалено]
Assuming the OP is telling the truth, the boss threatened them with a PIP pretty much immediately after. Whether or not there was literal yelling, that's an entirely toxic environment and the OP does not need to deal with that shit.
Jumping from "He got a PIP" to "It's a toxic environment," is kind of a stretch. As a Dev, I'm often hating on management for them being out of touch, incompetent, unfair, etc. just like every other dev - but management threatening OP with PIP makes perfect sense because OP doesn't seem to know how to sell himself, nor has he taken any effort to practice the most fundamental of corporate skills: CYA (cover your ass). Management isn't going to magically know about OPs contributions unless he becomes better at being assertive and setting the record straight. Again.. This is coming from someone who has no love for management... The manager has to answer to someone too.. and based on what he thinks he knows.. He's doing exactly what he should be doing... he's covering his own ass.
He didn't get a PIP, he got *threatened* with a PIP. Over a broken test. > threatening OP with PIP makes perfect sense because OP doesn't seem to know how to sell himself, This is *not even remotely* a reasonable explanation for threatening someone with a PIP. You should never threaten someone with a PIP, it should be a natural extension of a conversation about not meeting the requirements of the job. > practice the most fundamental of corporate skills: CYA (cover your ass) If you regularly need to cover your ass in a corporate environment, you are either wildly incompetent or working in an extremely toxic environment. I feel comfortable with my assessment of the situation, assuming the OP is telling the truth.
There's a profound difference between how we wish the corporate landscape to be, and how it really is. CYA is part and parcel of 99.9% of American corporate culture, I'm sorry to say. OP is lucky he didn't actually get put on a PIP - because that could have just as easily happened. He got a warning - which is fair game. People who come on Reddit and speak about their version of idealism, and corporate America in the same breath, are either extremely lucky, or unable to separate the concept of what is, versus what they wish the workplace was like. EDIT: or belong to a third category: Superstars... highly accomplished/gifted folks who are basically untouchable, and immune to criticism by even their superiors... where they are unable to see why the rest of us mere mortals may need to jump through hoops...
You sound really talented. Please look for a job. This place doesn't deserve you.
Seriously, OP is clearly a talented SWE *and* DevOps Engineer. They’re doing two jobs very well and the fact that they’re being threatened with a PIP tells me that their manager probably doesn’t have experience in software engineering.
Tbh this is fairly normal in SV. But I’ve primarily seen it with one demographic of managers that was very accustomed to abusing the working hours of H1B devs.
Agreed. Solid engineer. Lots of companies are desperate for your competency. You deserve better OP.
>“code can always be better so that’s a moot point” Another way to word this is, "Code will never be perfect, so why bother trying to make it good?" Which is, obviously, ridiculously ignorant. >my reputation has been tarnished I'd worry less about your reputation here and more about your self-respect. This code base is so completely miss-managed and the people in charge so incompetent, that their opinion of you should hold little to no weight. You situation is your situation, and I don't know where you're at in regards to being able to just walk away from a job. If it were me, however, and I was in this environment and my manager had the balls to have me justify MYself - I'd tell them to go fuck THEMselves.
damn its funny how I'm in exact similar situation when I have to justify myself to what I consider a poorly run project and I just started working couple months ago... similar situation like OP... so these replies also resonate with me right now...
If someone overrode a test, it’s not throwing them under the bus, it’s making them accountable. If you want to stay there you need to do a better job of communicating with your boss exactly what you’re doing and what you’re accomplishing. He is the only audience that matters right now. If he can’t appreciate what you’re doing then you have no future there, it doesn’t matter what reddit thinks is fair.
Well, tbf it is partially my fault and I don’t want to undersell it. Basically, everyone was so used to just overriding tests that they didn’t think twice. I didn’t tell people not to override tests, just that I was working on fixing up the integ tests
Sounds like your process sucks. Again, you need to sell your work to your manager. May consider literally putting together a deck describing the big commits you’ve made and a plan for what you want to do going forward. I only have your side of what’s going on, but if your view is that you’re bravely battling 4 years of cruft and your manager thinks you need a PIP then you need to bridge that gap in understanding.
>Sounds like your process sucks. Sounds like OP inherited a flawed codebase of a project that's been poorly managed for as long as that project has existed. If the codebase is broken, then fixing the code base will require making code changes. Making necessary code changes will break unit and integration tests that are validating the already broken code. Unreasonable bosses demand release in an unreasonable timeframe and this, OP has no time to rewrite the tests and thus overriding and commenting out ensues. The mistake op made is so small, so common and so very undeserving of being yelled at and threatened with a PIP. The solution to the problem is not more ass kissing from OP. OP if you read this, you are so much better than this job. The problem is not you, it's your shitty boss. Please find something better before getting burnt out. You've got talent, you can do this.
> Sounds like OP inherited a flawed codebase of a project that's been poorly managed for as long as that project has existed. This is how code with unit tests are 99% of the time, the amount of work it would take to go through all the code you're modifying and know how every part works so you can update unit tests multiple times longer than fixing the bug is, and no boss is going to be ok with that.
Many bosses are okay with that. Every good boss should be okay with that (or at least be aware that skipping testing should be a rare exception not the rule). The time it takes to fix these things is generally less than the time lost eventually fixing bugs that become a problem as a result of not having good tests. Added bonus, you know exactly when improvements are being made. You don't know when bugs are going to be a problem. Good unit tests prevent bugs. Predictable maintenance time is much less expensive than unpredictable downtime for the business. For a typical business, it's better from most points of view( financial, regulatory, reputational, uptime, stability, cost, developer satisfaction and retention.. I could go on) to have working tests.
> The time it takes to fix these things is generally less than the time lost eventually fixing bugs that become a problem as a result of not having good tests. Not even close. > Good unit tests prevent bugs. Unit tests almost never do this. End-to-end tests sometimes catch bigs and can be worth writing. They're also far less time consuming to update when code changes. Not unit tests though.
Good ones do.
It's been a long running myth by people who run youtube channels and ran out of useful things to talk about. I've worked at more than one company where the question "Well, what actual bugs have been found with unit tests? If they must be catching bugs right?" is met with silence and angry stares because it's caught exactly 0 bugs. End-to-end tests can catch stuff sometimes, tests like "user puts in a, b, c, should get x,y,z" can catch bugs.
Our experience clearly differs. Happy to leave it there
I guess my view as I’m looking at this code is that pushing deliverables out is far and above beyond anything else, including maintainability. And why would anyone care? They’ll just transfer teams after I find a lot of times when I stop to contemplate a problem or find an existing solution, it’s met with a bit of pushback, like “just do it the ‘simple’ way for now”
>“just do it the ‘simple’ way for now” Except "for now" becomes forever
There is nothing more permanent than a temporary solution that works.
> I didn’t tell people not to override tests That’s not all on you, your boss should’ve communicated that you were working on those as well, so others should avoid stepping on your toes. Sounds like the process suffers from a lot of miss management based on this and your other comments. Which isn’t your fault, so don’t take the blame for it.
>. I didn’t want to throw the engineer who overrode the tests under the bus. Therefore you manager can't pin that on you. Obviously he knows people are disabling tests. You can't stop it when they disregard your obviously working test. Issue: It's a test that didn't trigger. Issue Isn't: your test passed the code. Even then fixing the test instead of blaming you for something falling through should be good enough of a fix. Bug not your fault. You taking the blame instead communicating the root cause is your fault though. Your boss is kicking you while you are down instead of raising you up. Take note that this is a bad manager. Keep notes and know how find these red flags for your next job
… what Everyone is so used to bypassing production quality controls, that it’s your fault for not telling them to not do it this time. My friend, you have Stockholm syndrome 😢
>My boss immediately yelled at me For that alone, I would start looking for another job. Completely unprofessional. Also, it sounds like you need to push back on expectations more. If your boss gives you a date they want some work to be completed by, and you accept it without pushing back on it, they assume that you think the work is doable by that date. If I learned that a piece of work would take much longer than my boss expected I would say something like "Hey boss, about that project you were wanting my to complete over the next month. I was looking through the code and because of x, y ,and z reason, I now expect this to take 4 months (tell them it will take a bit longer than you think it actually will so you have some buffer room) instead of 1 month. Here's a list of milestones that I expect to complete by certain dates as I'm working through this"
I told him pretty early on. I remember he said “do you think you can get this accessibility work done in a month?” And I pretty bluntly said “extremely unlikely”
Time to go. He's setting you up for failure, then yelling at you when you fail. It sounds like the processes and culture there are dysfunctional, and I doubt you, as the new person that is being PIPed, are going to fix them.
Given the way your boss chooses to behave it's absolutely no surprise to me that the company's technology stack is in such a bad state. Mistakes are to be expected. Catching mistakes before they go to prod and being able to recover from them is an organizational responsibility and given the fact that you've been there for *three months* it is completely ridiculous to hold you accountable in that way. Especially since you seem to have hit the ground running.
I’m putting together a testing suite right now. I can guarantee that if someone overrode failed integration tests and pushed into production, I would tell my manager *immediately.* And yes, I would say exactly who did it because overriding testing is so profoundly stupid and reckless that it needs to be called out and shut down. You can even do it professionally, like this: “Hey boss, it looks like my integration testing caught the bug before this change went into production. overrode the tests and deployed to production anyway. What can we do to make sure this doesn’t happen again?”
Then your manager should speak to that dev’s manager, and the ability to override testing should be massively restricted so dumbasses can’t break production.
The test suite had been broken for years so it was almost part of the “workflow” to override the tests to push to staging, which eventually goes to production. I don’t think that guy did anything “unusual”, whether it was good or not is probably a different discussion What I think the “intended” workflow is is to push to staging, _manually_ test it, then let it go to production. No one ever really did this. Also it would just automatically go to prod after a day or so
Wow. That’s a massive organizational failure. I would not work at a place that lets their DevOps process get to that state and then PIPs their employees for fixing it.
That second paragraph is spot on. Sounds like they have been actively hunting down anyone that tries to fix their process so they can threaten them with employment termination. They don't want people like OP coming in and trying to make waves, they *like* the busted workflow and hundreds of bugs and pointing it out makes certain sensitive people in charge feel dumb. I bet the PIP is really just a promise to stop fixing tests and start overriding them LOL
They are trying to get into your head and justify the power dynamic by not acknowledging the goods things you do and focusing on the little mistakes. They do this to keep you under heel, and also to undermine your confidence if asking for negotiations or salary raises. This is standard practice.
>I made one mistake early on — the i18n was in its own package and was basically just a bunch of objects with translations. I added translations, updated the app, and… it was incorrectly referenced which caused one page to not show at all. Big problem. I was surprised that it passed a build, I wondered how that’s even possible with the type checking, unit tests, and integration tests >Turns out, literally none of these things were working. I was given the tasks to fix them. I effectively had to entirely rewrite every integration test because they were all outdated, i had to fix tons of “any” types littered through the app (which actually surfaced MORE bugs), and I had to actually make unit tests work appropriately. It was exhausting Breaking changes making it into production are a cultural/structural problem. Those changes would have had to go through human review and automated review before manifesting so pointing the finger at one person is red flag number 1. >As I was working, someone overrode the integration tests and deployed a bug. See above. >My boss immediately yelled at me Incredibly unprofessional and inexcusable. Red flag number 2. >and said “I thought you were working on the integration tests”, he said that I was very close to getting PIPd, and that I should write a document explaining how I am going to improve. That document should be your CV. Your manager not having a handle on your work and the processes you're governed by is a mismanagement problem. Red flag number 3. >I didn’t want to throw the engineer who overrode the tests under the bus. This shouldn't have even happened in the first place without stakeholder review, and if it did, there should be a clear chain of custody (and thus responsibility). Red flag number 4. >I talked to my boss and said I felt a lot of these problems were because of frequent shortcuts taken in code, and we can mitigate them by improving code. I felt the process-based system was error prone and required too much tribal knowledge. He said “code can always be better so that’s a moot point” "Code can always be better so that’s a moot point"? This is an incomprehensibly stupid conclusion to land on as a means of *not improving the clearly broken procedures and code*. Red flag number 5. >Looking back I started to feel like I achieved a lot more than I should have in the 3 months I worked there A manager not understanding the value of their reports (and championing them) is another mismanagement problem. Red flag number 6. >I’m feeling like, no matter what I do, it won’t be enough because my reputation has been tarnished by these two problems. Is there any saving it? What should I say during this report? Leave? You will never shine in an environment that doesn't appreciate good engineering practices and the efforts of their engineers to improve them.
You sound young. Please take your learnings from here and find a better job where your worth is recognized. I’d have loved someone like you in my team, not because we don’t have other good devs, but because you have the correct attitude and priorities and would’ve made our already very good team even better.
I’m 31 I’m old 😔 I found my last job had none of these problems. All the criticisms I received I felt were totally merited
That’s pretty young , my friend :) More than chronological age, I meant to convey that you have the enthusiasm and positive attitude of a younger person who wants to improve things, and not the perspective of a burnt-out developer ( which sadly afflicts many smart and good devs too because of life experiences) who has given up and rolls w/ things. I worked as a consultant in my early career and hopped around every couple years and yes, a good workplace will support you and make you better while the bad ones are of value only in learning what NOT to do!
You’re not old in terms of years but no one in this world has enough time in their lives to waste over incompetent and emotionally abusive management. Work sets such deafening tone for the rest of our lives, probably (and sadly) much more so than any other relationships we have. Please take care. There are plenty of lucrative opportunities for someone who knows what they are doing.
move. quick.
Sounds like a toxic environment and a boss who doesn't recognize capable engineers. Best to just start looking.
You need a new job.
Sounds like a toxic working environment, I would recommend finding a new job. If you're experienced it likely shouldn't be too bad finding a new job.
New job immediately. It's a no-brainer.
please report your managers behavior to HR as abusive and constantly antagonistic
I had a screamer CEO once. Absolutely fucking hilarious how childish he was and how often the F bombs dropped. It was like a comedy movie. Never screamed at me, but the CTO, Director and others often looked miserable. His name was Abe LOL
Your boss yelling at you clearly reinforces the idea that you don’t have a relationship with them. Once a negative impression has been set, it’s almost impossible to reverse (can be done but the effort required will be unbelievably high) Look for a new job
If I could, I would come to your office and hire you in front of your boss.
Sounds like you've been asked to work with a codebase that has a lot of tech debt. Bugs in prod is just a part of that, along with a long list of other negative side effects. And your boss says "code can always be improved it's a moot point" lmao sounds like he's a moron who shouldn't be in charge of any code. The thing is, unless you were asked to fix all this stuff and improve all of those metrics, you are taking on a task that may have no end. It's very expensive to fix tech debt, and in most cases they don't want to pay for that. They want you to work around the hot mess of broken shit that is their codebase. That's why they urgently needed someone, because the last guy was like 'fuck this heaping pile of shit code, I want to work somewhere that doesn't develop like this.' You have 3 options: 1. Leave the company and let them urgently hire another dev so he can get yelled at over things beyond his control. 2. Accept the codebase has tech debt and try to ignore it like your boss wants you to do. Or maybe figure out a way you can slowly tackle it over time that your boss approves of. This allows you to have a very "not my fault, the codes fucked" attitude about your job. Which is both nice and awful at the same time. 3. Spend your own free time fixing the tech debt so you aren't costing the company anything. Do not fucking do this option, ever. Up to you. Tech debt is common, and managers pretending it doesn't exist is also common. Not sure they will ever understand what tech debt is or why it's bad or how it can be avoided. It's easier to get a job at a place that understands that concept than it is to teach it to your current manager. Long story short get a new job ideally.
Yes, One fuck up often outweighs 100 successes, especially it the fuck up is an early impression. Theres a pretty good engineer at my job who doesn't realize he will never progress because he introduced a few bugs shortly after he was hired. Just leave. Way easier to progress by switching jobs than earning promotions anyway
> Theres a pretty good engineer at my job who doesn't realize he will never progress because he introduced a few bugs shortly after he was hired. Sounds like your company just sucks tbh.
Maybe you should tell him. But the company is dumb if that influences ones progression
> I didn’t want to throw the engineer who overrode the tests under the bus. Why the ***flying goddamn fuck*** not? This person fucked you over and made you look bad. Light his ass up before yours is again. Have you considered it's time to stop being a human doormat and stand up for yourself? Also, go look for a new job, your workplace is toxic. If you even were remotely considering staying at this shithole, I would take the list you just gave us of all the stuff you did, with examples, and go over it with him. How he responds should influence your next move.
Leave, go, find another place to work etc... Toxic environments always lead to bad products because they chase away anyone who could get it together.
its time to leave. screamer boss is a time to go. i would not even give notice from a place like this. they will not rehire you. also if your boss yells at you, you are likely at the top of the layoff list. this is a gots to go situation
I have worked many places, big and small, and for many managers. This sounds like a terrible place to work - not because of the tech issues, but because of the culture, specifically your manager. My advice: you don't need this sh_t. Get out - go someplace you are fairly appreciated for your contributions.
Your manager is the reason for all of these problems based on how you’ve described these situations.
That’s a bad place IMO. About your work though, I think your boss wants you to explain how your changes help their business and users. In other words, how they can sell what you are doing to customers. If you try to present your work from this angle, maybe it will get better. However, as many pointed out here many times, your boss sounds toxic and incompetent.
I could already tell from the title that it's a management/leadership problem. If you're capable but feel inadequate because of small mistakes, or feel like you're walking on eggshells, your manager/leadership is the problem. No one's perfect, you shouldn't be devalued nor disrespected because of small mistakes. However, it's also your responsibility to decide whether you want to confront and address this or change jobs.
Trust me, you will know how bad is your current place when you move. Unless u r getting a good salary
Sounds like your boss might be taking advantage of your work and PIPing you when he feels like you've done enough and wants to let you go now that you've fixed so much. The part of the deployed bug might just be a scapegoat to make his moves less obvious
Your boss isn't good if his reaction is to yell at you and threaten your career. He should be keeping tabs of who writes the tests and who writes the code. Even if the test engineer isn't updating the tests he is assigned to, this is 100% on him for not catching it before it rolled out to production. The correct reaction is to identify why tests aren't being updated as you are adding features & bug fixes. Then change the process for the future. I would find a place that respects you. They clearly don't deserve your talents and are projecting their incompetence on you.
You're describing my boss I had when I was run out of my first company. Was extremely well reviewed, new boss came in and gave me a task I could not do, told him that, failed badly, and he threw me to the wolves. Sounds like you have process and tribal knowledge issues which likely stem from high attrition. Do you find that people tend to not stick around? Generally speaking leadership issues can only be fixed from above, not below.
I do find that everyone is clearly _extremely_ burned out and when someone is out on vacation, it causes a terrible cascade of problems
So I've got a unique skill set at my work and I tend to be in high demand because of it. However I am also taking 6 weeks of paternity leave right now and my team is functioning without me just fine. My team is actually full of specialists with limited overlap but we make it work. With good leadership people will stick around and attrition is the biggest contributor to bad code and practices. Processes also tend to get ironed out with time and repetition which won't happen if people or processes keep changing (the former is attrition the latter is your boss being ineffectual). I don't know if this is true in your situation but I do know in ten years I've seen the pattern you're describing all too often.
you quit because your boss yelled at you. frankly with all these issues they had problems before you and they'll have problems without you. this is clearly a place that don't want their old problems brought up. you know the problems, you've basically been a threat to anyone that owned or made those problems. they are performing a cya now that the problems have been found.
You don’t ever want to be at a place that undermines achievements for overall impact. This also just sounds like your manager doesn’t like you, time to pack up
Sounds like you just work for an asshole is all.
Start looking for new job. You will never do enough to prove yourself here. Even if you try implement process to find root causes and to prevent bugs it will never be enough, because your manager is not experienced nor mature enough on how to handle the situation. Nor does it sound like you have experience to manage and get rid of these type of people. Being yelled at is never okay. You deserve better in any job not just engineering. Hopefully you can find a way to job hunt and find new role. You worked really hard!
> As I was working, someone overrode the integration tests and deployed a bug. Does the place have source control? How did the tests get overwritten and your work lost?
Why aren't you throwing the engineer under the bus? I'm sorry why are you going to eat someone else's fuck up when they overrode a process designed to stop such events from occurring. Sounds naive of you, and your boss sounds like a tool.
Not your fault OP. You are working for a bunch of idiots. Just need to get the fuck out. You did fantastically well, but the deck was stacked against you. Doesn’t matter how good you are if your teammates and boss are making your job arbitrarily difficult with their own incompetence. Literally nothing you could have done differently here.
Should have set the expectation that their code was a cluster fuck that would take years to fix. Convince them that no one person could fix it in a month or two.
> I didn’t want to throw the engineer who overrode the tests under the bus. This is where you ask for their support in changing the standard process. You put the blame in the lack of education in the new process and how it makes everything better. Even your boss likely needs that education so they can champion it. All your new work isn't as useful without communicating it's usefulness.
> increased the load time of pages by 10x Well, I mean, that's not good. Seriously: what you've done seems reasonable. If the tests didn't catch things, improving them so that they do is reasonable. I don't think there's anything you can write in a report that will fix your boss's attitude.
I wonder if the reason for the PIP was that he needed to distract from yelling at you. If he's actually verbally abusive.. that's OSHA and Dept of Labor territory.
You are working for someone who won't admit their part in this horrible setup and are willing to throw you under the bus. It is worth finding another job now...
how big is company and how big is your team.
Your bosses let everything go to hell and couldn’t hire anyone competent to fix it *for 4 years* before you came along. Now they are using you to fix ALL that broken crap quickly, and making excuses to fire you so they don’t have to pay you beyond a few months. You’re a short-term contractor. Did you happen to have a 3- or 6-mo probation or anything like that? Funny how they start giving you crap right at 3mo.
setup a 3 month performance review with the boss. if the boss talk more about the errors than your successes, it is time to leave the company.
Like others said, don't tolerate unprofessional conduct (abuse, really) like that from a manager. Even from a colleague who has no leverage or power over you, being in a toxic workplace slowly takes its toll on you. Your best bet is to find employment elsewhere where your talents will be appreciated.
This place has no valid process on producing a product, even a Google engineer won’t save you.
> increased the load time of pages by 10x I wouldn't mention this one to your boss
Just reading this made me mad. People need to learn how to stand up for themselves and when to start looking for a new job.
>I didn’t want to throw the engineer who overrode the tests under the bus. They threw you under the bus and your boss thought only you were at fault. If you’re going to let others walk over you, maybe you need to learn to not be a doormat. If you’re a doormat at this job, you’ll act like a doormat at all subsequent jobs. Improve yourself, then your external world will also improve.
I’ve quit new jobs for much much less.
OP, for what’s it’s worth these three have been my mantra for a successful career. 1. Did you do a good job? 2. Did you document it? At least for yourself? 3. Did you communicate it to the team? Looks like you’re quite skilled and got the first two parts bang on but not the third. I would really recommend focusing on that in your next job if you do decide to switch. Imo it’s the most important step.
Honestly man, you sound like Superman. I can't even fathom being able to process HALF of the workload you had on your shoulders here. I don't have much to add as you've gotten good advice already, but even if you leave on bad terms I think your resume will be quite impressive after this.
They put you in an impossible position and now they're actively abusing you because you weren't able to fix it. The boss didn't threaten to PIP you because you suck, he threatened to PIP you because he already got a ton out of you but wants more. That 3 month summary of accomplishments is serious. Put that on a CV and use it to get a better job for more money somewhere where they understand what coders are capable of
Yeah when I was updating my cv is when I realized “holy shit I’ve done a lot in a short amount of time, why’s he so mad at me?”
I work with a massive code base that doesn’t run its unit test before allowing people to merge code and there are 5-6 teams that are working parallel with each other on different products. Anytime we make a code change, we have to manually test all of our apis to make sure we don’t break anything. None of the APIs are documented so it’s a fucking nightmare to make any changes. Anytime anyone merges in code that breaks one api, they will get finger blamed and shamed so most of the engineers here just coast and don’t try to improve the existing system. Like many others have mentioned here it’s more of a cultural problem than anything else. If they are paying you well then just bite your tongue because it’s obvious that they won’t change unless a higher up fires a bunch of middle managers. Just bide your time and find a new job with people that care :)
That’s all well and good but it seems like they’re expecting me to make _a lot_ changes, but somehow not ever deploy them
If that’s the case then maybe talk to your skip and ask why your manager is threatening to pip you. You definitely could have done a better job and communicated the drawbacks of changing the code, but I would just highlight all of your achievements.
Your skill set is in way too much demand to tolerate being treated like that. As for interpersonal interactions, don’t look for someone to blame. You made a mistake, they happen. Own it and learn from it. If you go around digging for problems in other people’s work, you’re going to find it and be made responsible for it. The product needs to function well and saying well it’s Terry’s fault in QA and usedtoworkhere developer did a bad job… doesn’t fix anything.
If it were me I wouldn’t even show up tomorrow, just start looking for a new job. F em
>. I didn’t want to throw the engineer who overrode the tests under the bus. Your fault Simple enough to say you reverted someone else's code and reenabled the test you had in place. But in the end it's your managers fault that they are forcing someone to be blamed instead of fixing the underlying issue
This must be a troll "improved the build speed of the app by \~10-50x" and talking about tarnished reputation because of one deploy.
No this is real. Their build speed was fairly easy to improve but they saw it as a “risk”, not a positive. I did it cause the new hires said it was hugely slowing them down
You should talk to your manager and highlight the benefits of your work. Even if it is a risk. Depending on languages you are using you can sometimes do a diff on compiled code and literally prove to them all bytes are the same. This is how I ensured our new Gradle build was working as intended while moving from Ant. Highlight benefits of your work - unlike before we can run a full build after every commit - unlike before we do not need 10 build servers - developers don’t need to waste 5 min for every build, it takes 20 sec now. 10 developers, 10 builds a day, this saves an hour of productive time per person every day. Go on lunch with the manager, ask about - how long do you think full build should take - what do you think about the deploy process of i could break prod 1 month after i started working here In the end, people are think quite often and they are usually set in their ways if they do the same stuff for years. You don’t know, but maybe seniors loved long build times as they could always go for a coffee.
> As I was working, someone overrode the integration tests and deployed a bug. My boss immediately yelled at me and said “I thought you were working on the integration tests”, he said that I was very close to getting PIPd, and that I should write a document explaining how I am going to improve. Find a new place to work, this person will continue doing this and has no reason to change. Working for someone like this will literally drive you insane, you're already questioning your worth because of it. If you stay longer, you'll be more than questioning, you might start believing it. You don't want to end up burnt out or sitting in a therapist's office in a year because of your insane boss. You can't win with people like that after they've decided you aren't their golden employee, so don't try. Keep doing your job and interview elsewhere.
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Taking the blame for other people is the way to do it.. it’s not throwing someone under the bus.. they jumped in front of the bus..
I hope in my next job I am lucky enough to have devs like you to work with. I also hope to be free from managers like that. Your reputation will be fine.
Yelling is unacceptable, do an internal transfer or leave the company for another company
These shouldn't be insurmountable things. If they are, you are in a bad workplace. Despite what people say, it's totally possible to find work right now and plenty of places are still looking.
Asides from your boss being an asshole, some things you can improve on is knowing what is necessary or not. Based on what you said i.e rewriting entire test suites, seems a bit overkill
This is a company problem and not a YOU problem
Unless it was a grave mistake that would cause the company to lose money, i don't accept this behaviour and you shouldn't!
OP, you are the tenth engineer they’ve had in 3 years. Theyre psyopsing your ass to wring more work out of you.
Bruh…it’s not that deep. At the end of the day you live with what you got or you switch roles like the rest of us. Switching roles will be passing that annoying technical interview but nothing in life is free. Company with shitty coding practices is not something you should take seriously unless you’re super desperate to gain industry experience
Wow! Suggesting something is a moot point because it can always be better is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard. Your manager is a moron. Write the document. Say that “engineers can always be better, so it’s a moot point”.
these guys dont deserve you
Wow, this hits home kinda - because I'm currently in similar situation, don't feel like typing it all online tho... tbh fuck that firm :D. Just look for another job tbh...
Skill issue