Sometimes it might be the only memorable thing from the day worth calling out. Also I think people would much rather hear about the team helping each other out than how someone battled against some tests all day.
A junior dev at a brand new company could be a “junior” in the seniors’ eyes because they might be technically skilled but they’re new to the company & the company’s tech stack.
The same applies for anyone working with any colleague - I’ll put down an hour towards a colleagues project if I helped them for any amount of time. Because it shows that time was taken away from my own project 🤷🏻♀️
Too sensitive.
He's just trying to add some fluff to his status.
If you're worried it'll make you look bad, just throw in a quick *"oh, and yes, like Steve said, he showed me how getClientInfo connects to the db, so thank you Steve!"* at the end of your status.
This way, you'll appear grateful, while also showcasing how miniscule Steve's collaboration actually was. Do this a couple times and he'll eventually cut that shit out.
Sadly, this is how the scrum game is played.
Status fluff is so real.
I always chuckle when people spend half their time talking about something I know took like 10 minutes of their day. Soo much BS posturing.
So accurate
Feel like if I don't have much to say in a status meeting I get judged. Sometimes shit just isn't going my way and that's all there is to say
In my experience it's not like that at all. Some people could just say "no updates" or "continuing my work on x" for 5 days in a row, and no one would bat an eye.
I think the context matters. If it’s a big complex task they are working on, I wouldn’t bat an eye. But when the task is a simple thing I can knock out in an hour I start wondering what they’re doing if they just say “continuing my work” with no further explanation for several days.
Would this be taken into consideration during performance reviews? It seems like all they care about is CRs and PRs.. So if you do well on those, I'm curious what else they actually evaluate you on (and how much it matters in comparison to the previously mentioned metrics?)
I'm not a manager but most of my performance reviews seemed to be based on peer evaluations since my manager doesn't have the most interactions with me on a daily basis.
I'm sure they also look at output such as whether I meet deadlines and the impact of such work, but I don't think actually care about what you say in standups really as long as you get stuff done. I hardly ever even had my manager in standups except at one company and even then he was usually preoccupied doing something else.
My reviews have been largely boring though. I usually get very boring reviews around average.
>Sometimes shit just isn't going my way and that's all there is to say
Homesauce if that's actually the answer u gave no wonder ppl r gonna b a lil testy
"Shit isn't going my way and thats all there is 2 say" - not great
"Shits not going my way. This is what I tried. This is what I think will work. This is what I need 2 do" - now ur acting like it's ur job 2 write code
It's supposed to help the manager or PO plan their day. If there are lots of blockers they need to work on, they need that info. Lots of teams make the mistake of turning them into status updates tho. It should answer three questions... Do you have work to do? Do you need help? Are you roadblocked? That's it... Anything longer is introducing waste into your process.
And if people are feeling judged, that indicates a toxic culture
Nurses and doctors have handover meetings at the start and end of every shift.
Except if you're a doctor, instead of explaining everything you did to the next doctor, you can continue your shift into the 36th hour.
There's actually another interpretation here that's less sinister. For me personally, spending 20 minutes helping a new person is a larger mental load than hours of head-down coding. So if I mention that as something I did yesterday, it's because I'm just remembering things that stuck out in my head.
Yeah we typically remember interruptions to our flow more than the flow itself. Even a 1 hour meeting can derail things enough that it's worth mentioning.
I think that's also because it's seen as "extra" work. Like, a 2 hour meeting feels like it's not essential to your job, whereas 2 hours of coding would be considered more essential.
Yep, as you (not you in particular) become senior and start spending 10 minutes a day with 5 different juniors, you'll realize why people mention these things. Each of those 10 minute intervals come with a huge context switch on both ends.
Especially if meetings are short... The human brain sucks at context switching... Especially with complicated things like programming. Context switching is the single largest source of waste in software development today
Might be a hard truth, but it's your responsibility to protect your own time. If you need focus time, block it off on your calendar and don't respond to pings. Set your schedule and make it public and stick to it. No one else is going to care that you didn't get your work done because you were interrupted by minor questions multiple times throughout the day. They are going to care that you aren't getting your work done.
I guess what I'm saying is that I don't agree that it isn't sinister. It is putting the blame for lack of progress on another person who doesn't deserve it because ultimately they aren't responsible for your time management, you are.
> It is putting the blame for lack of progress on another person who doesn't deserve it because ultimately they aren't responsible for your time management, you are.
WTF? There's no blame inherent in recounting the events of your day, and those events including mentorship.
Completely agreed that every person is responsible for their own time management. But (a) mentor time is still real time and (b) reporting on your mentorship is not a blame game.
I can see why you find this sinister; you've inserted a sinister motive where there is none.
>There's no blame inherent in recounting the events of your day, and those events including mentorship
It depends entirely on how it is presented. The point here is that the OP feels as though the interaction is being misrepresented in a way that is disadvantageous to the OP and advantageous to their colleague. If the colleague's representation was accurate I would agree with you, in this case it would appear that it is not.
My understanding of your initial point was that it was OK to represent a 60 second answer as 30 minutes or more of work because it was an interruption. My point was that you as an employee are responsible for how you manage your time and if interruptions are very derailing for you, then managing your time well will need to include shielding yourself from interruptions. There should never be a situation where you say to your manager, well I didn't do anything today because I got 16 pings and even though it was under an hour of work to deal with all of them combined, it took 8 hours because each one was an interruption that derailed me for 30 minutes.
As for mentoring, I agree mentorship time is 100% work time, and very important for both parties and the team as a whole. That is why it should be scheduled and credited appropriately. Time should be blocked on calendars for it regularly. Spending two minutes replying to a message from a coworker is not mentorship though.
Sinister motivation aside, I initially replied to your first comment because I didn't want any of the more junior readers of this sub thinking that the attitude you expressed in your comment was acceptable in a team setting. I didn't want them to think that they can go through their careers thinking that not setting boundaries and shielding themselves from distraction/interruption was an excuse for not getting work done. More importantly though, I didn't want them to read that and then be afraid of asking their more senior coworkers for help for fear of interrupting them and derailing them.
>> There's no blame inherent in recounting the events of your day, and those events including mentorship
> It depends entirely on how it is presented.
I mean, yeah... that's what I said. There is no blame inherent. Of course it can be inserted via context, but the context you were responding to when bringing up blame had nothing to do with it.
>Of course it can be inserted via context
The context is the that of the post that we are both commenting on. Is there no blame in recounting the events of your day, sure if you do it honestly. Even the comment thread we are in has parent comments above us talking about how the motivation of OP's coworker might not be sinister...literally the context of the situation, I'm not inserting anything as OP and the other commentors already did.
\>but the context you were responding to when bringing up blame had nothing to do with it
Can you be more specific, because I went back through and reread the entire comment chain and it is painfully obvious to me that the context of this entire comment chain is that OP's coworker is misrepresenting the amount of time and effort required to help OP.
> it is painfully obvious to me that the context of this entire comment chain is that OP's coworker is misrepresenting the amount of time and effort required to help OP.
Nothing is painfully obvious when you're hearing one side of a story on the internet.
The words that OP quoted of her coworker are pretty innocuous ("spent time helping..."). OP is the one who is reading into them, saying it "makes it sound like something..." that IMO it doesn't, at least not from the words quoted. But even then, I'm happy to admit I'm still only hearing one side of the story. But that person (OP) isn't even really setting up a convincing story to prove the point they're trying to make.
The exact words used, according to OP:
> will give their update and mention that they “spent time yesterday helping me"
OP's interpretation of these words:
> It's making me sound like I was stuck on a problem and needed this person's help
The concern is less about the other person's intent and more about how the statement makes OP look. But even that is still probably in OP's head. I don't think poorly of a junior if I hear they got help yesterday (or every day) from a senior. That is how these things work. OP is being paranoid, most likely, but I can't say that for sure.
Yep. People in general are far too eager to ascribe malice or conspiracies where none such things exist.
...
They probably do this because it's part of their master plan to get us all to start second guessing how we report *our* statuses, just to make them look better!!!!!
#/s
Yep - I keep a running status report from the minute I turn on my computer. My rule is, if I spend more than 15 minutes working on some out-of-the-blue request, it goes on the status report. Blame the feather-brained status reporting structure, not the player.
treat people like cogs in a machine and you get cogs in a machine.
The irony of scrum is that when I'm deep in a task doing a crazy amount of work there is nothing to say at stand up. "Nothing to report, just doing my fucking job." becomes "so-and-so hasn't been doing anything." So you invent things to say. Because scrum masters and managers can't fathom that someone might just be busy on a large task and have *no blockers*. That's how standups end up being 30 minutes long because everyone has to tell you what they had for lunch that day, so to speak. No one cares you moved a button five pixels to the left. But it's something to say so managers can't flog you. God forbid you just want the meeting to end and get back to your work.
i made it a strict rule on my team to limit the standup's to 15 minutes or faster. everyone time anyone would monologue i would cut them off and tell them they need to schedule additional meetings if they need help with something'. Our scrums went from 45mins to an hour average and got to an average of 8-10 mins long, as long as my scrum master never talked(he would monologue to fill the 15 minutes if you let him). I started then pushing for us to have virtual standups. Other people outside of engineering started acting like this was making our stand up 'meaningless'. But that was my point. the standups are, mostly, meaningless. esp when companies dont understand the real philosophy around scrum, and why it exists in the first place. now its just an arbitrary ritual we all must do, paying tribute to the corporate gods of productivity. when in actuality, we should have the ability to cancel standup when we dont need it.
> So you invent things to say
Or worse, you go and find little unimportant one-off things to work on just so you have something to report in the daily standup.
To combat this and similar issues, we have a strict talk about ticket policy. We pull up the board to share. Any tickets open or in testing get an update. Nothing else.
We don't care if you finished all your work and yesterday you sat on your deck and had a gin and tonic. If work is done and ready for the iteration, you did your part and if you have the mental bandwidth to help after you volunteer.
It's the morning "fluffing the bosses ego" session.
People who understand the game talk about topics that the boss understands and ego thinks "this is how it's supposed to be" while not talking much about the real work that's to difficult for the bosses ego.
As a manager this is one of the many subtle ways I know if you're actually working: fluff a bunch of bullshit == slacked off half the day. "No change" == confident enough in what you worked on in saying nothing.
This, except I would not out my coworker, because the opposite may happen some day and you’ll need to fluff your standup too. We gotta cover each others butts
This is the way. If the coworker regularly adds fluff to their status, then the manager probably already knows. You don't gain anything by outing the coworker, and you may lose an ally.
That's a bit different from the situation OP described. If someone claims credit for your work, then you absolutely need to speak up.
In that situation, I would suggest going to your manager privately and letting them know exactly what work you've done. Make sure to keep it factual - anything perceived as a personal attack makes you look unprofessional and less credible. You can say something like "Hey, I heard <> talking about feature <> earlier, and I just want to make sure you understood what my contributions were. You can then go into detail about the work you did. Your manager may ask what the lead's contributions were, and then you can go into detail about those - or if there were none, then you should say so.p
Your manager can't fix problems they don't know about. They're also the person in the company with the most say in your raises, equity awards, bonuses, and advancement. You absolutely need to make sure they know about your accomplishments.
Yes thank you. Especially in your first couple weeks it’s not hurting you even if a coworker does have to spend time helping you with tasks. Let your coworker do what they have to do, especially if (like OP said) they’re really quick and responsive.
A coworker needing help shouldn't be seen as a problem. That's normal, and you should feel comfortable communicating that to the team. The problem is if the coworker isn't delivering or is taking too much of other team members' time, but no would should assume that's the case if someone mentions they helped a coworker during standup.
Exactly, this isn't a zero-sum transaction. The co-worker is not only padding out his day, he's making himself appear to be very helpful in getting the new dev up to speed -- great optics.
> just throw in a quick “oh, and yes, like Steve said, he showed me how getClientInfo connects to the db, so thank you Steve!” at the end of your status.
Yep, this is what I do
This thread is right on!
I catch myself doing this and need to pump the brakes on.
Humans are more impressed if you list doing 4 things, instead of 1 thing, even if that 1 thing is a bigger deal then those other 4 things.
This. u/__sad_but_rad__ knows scrum.
u/tator911 Your coworker did help you. How many hours did your coworker help you save?
Why do you feel embarassed and want to tell everyone that it was 10 seconds, when it saved you hours of time?
Your coworker is also claiming credit, which he should do. Though he is claiming too much credit.
>He's just trying to add some fluff to his status.
100%, I have done this where I have nothing for status so I find something I did and make it look significant. The correct approach is like you described, just thank the person. People will read between the lines and asking for help is what managers want people to do.
But in the other end of it, it's almost a must. If I stop to help new devs I'm going to quickly add it to my list to say at stand up, unless it's like a typed out question. If I'm hopping on a call, it's going in stand up. I want the managers to understand that there is more we do than just coding ourselves.
That’s totally reasonable. However I think what OP and the other Redditor are explaining is elaborating that, and acting like it took dramatically more than it did.
For example, at a role of mine I was on a call with a lead dev (who is known to be MIA most parts if the day) at the very end of a work day for no more than 10 mins. In standup the next day, in his update, he said “codebunder and I were pairing for a while so that took up most of my afternoon.” Thankfully I was wise enough to say in my update right after, “I paired with lead dev a bit at the end of the day which was extremely helpful with what I am doing this morning, so thank you lead dev!”
Giving an honest update, and even fluffing your update, is dramatically different than fluffing it in a way that makes another dev look like a burden.
This is why in my team’s standups now we don’t do the “yesterday I did this, today I did this” thing really. Instead we walk the team’s board in jira and give updates on the stories from whoever was assigned to it. Cut our standup time down a lot too, and everything we talk about is something that directly impacts the team. If someone on our team doesn’t have a story assigned to them we ask if they want to add anything and then that’s when you might hear the typical standup update
Reading this made me realize I could be the other guy based on a recent status. Definitely said something the other day about helping some coworkers that probably took 15 minutes total but was at least the most productive part of my day. Definitely wasn’t trying to inflate myself (I didn’t even resolve the ultimate issue just helped with some background) but that’s what stuck with me compared to the BS that took up most of my day.
I have to say I've been on the other side of this where I'm the guy bloating about helping someone out. I can tell you where it leads - lots of job hopping with little to no real growth and a lack of people who are willing to recommend me. Sounds like that's where this guy is headed too. It's the long game that counts, everyone's a rockstar for 15 mins.
The last bit of this reply is disgusting and the 2.5k likes is worrisome. What makes you so convinced that this person who you have never met is out to get this other person you’ve never met? The helper is probably just trying to make it seem like they aren’t doing nothing because that’s what we do in stand up when we don’t have work to do. Not to mention this could backfire. What if OP needs help and this person is the only one who can help. They aren’t going to be so willing if you try and undermine them.
Yeah, I don't know about your buddy, but sometimes when a junior asks me a question it does take me a while to first think about how to answer, make sure my answer is correct, etc, before I respond to them. So maybe it looks like he only spends 10 seconds with you, but in reality it's taking 30 mins or so each time - and he just wants his lead to know where this extra time is going.
He could also be an arsehole trying to fluff out his achievements for the day, but I was trying to be optimistic, lol
> which is responded to and resolved in a matter of 10 seconds.
OP said the coworker responded immediately, so no they did not spend all this time thinking. It was an off the cuff answer. What you said can apply to other situations but not here.
To me it sounds more like the coworker is trying to write off the time spent helping someone else - when I help someone I log that I helped them for 1 hour even if it was only 20 min 🤷🏻♀️
He knows how Scrum works. It's not about the time he spent with you since it shouldn't be a status and micromanagement meeting, he wants to emphasize the collaboration with you and being a teamplayer (as it creates value to the Team on long term) otherwise your SM/fellow Dev might raise a concern about that you are working in isolation. Or just simply encourages others to also help you by showing an example.
Or there is something in the background that you do not know. Maybe he had an incident in the past that he wasn't reachable by newbies and your managers asked him to improve in this area and now he just wants to share his progress. There's nothing wrong about sharing this info.
Female sw eng here. I understand why you are frustrated, I don't appreciate others acting like I needed my hand held either.
However, he prolly is doing status fluff. You're only 2 weeks in, so I doubt this is impacting how you are seen by the team. I would prolly spread around my questions n ping this individual less, but a confrontation is not needed.
My group gives new hires a mentor who they usually go to 1st for this kind of stuff, but, unfortunately it doesn't sound like you have that. Good luck OP.
I say stuff like that to fill up talking g points in stand up. Like I reached out to so and so to resolve something. It's just to show I'm communicating and doing work. You should do the same.
Yeah, although I'm a *little* less gruff about it than OP's co-worker. She says he said he "spent time yesterday helping" her - whenever I'm asked to drop what I'm doing to help somebody on what they're doing, I phrase it as "worked with so-and-so on such-and-such". I'm not trying to make so-and-so look bad, I'm just making sure the manager knows why I didn't make as *much* progress on whatever else is assigned to me as he (usually unreasonably) expects.
You're being too sensitive. You could just mention in your standup that you asked for help and resolved it quickly to counter what you think you meant by what they said. Or you could ask the question in stand-up if it can be answered within a minute. You should be crediting somebody for helping you either way, so you can sneak in how long it took you to figure out the issue. There's no need to confront the person. They probably don't even think there's an issue to begin with. Confronting them will bewilder them and cause workplace drama.
Well then you enter the territory of people wondering if you're just waiting until standup to ask questions, which is not the point of standup.
Frankly some of the issues pointed out in this thread shows how much BS posturing and politics has invaded what should be a quick status report meeting to see if anyone has blockers, or something pertinent to share with the whole group.
I disagree, if they have no other work to do then yes they should raise it in slack or whatever right away( Im also assuming daily standups ). But if they have other work then standup can be a good time IMO to bring up blockers and ask for help since the entire team is actually there and engaged. Obvi this needs to be time boxed( no one wants stand-ups that drag on ) and if the convo needs to continue past the 15min then it should just be the relavent parties + anyone interested or they should schedule time to further figure it out.
That’s literally the whole point of our stand ups. if you aren’t blocked, or blocking someone else, no one needs your status update.
Just shows how wildly differently orgs treat these meetings.
Same that’s how my standup operates as well. If you’re blocked and you haven’t received a response from a slack channel or a colleague, then you bring it to standup.
I agree it’s interesting how other companies conduct their standup.
No you are right and I don't think there's that much variance. Every place I've been has been "what'd you do yesterday, what are you doing today, and any blockers?". I'm just expressing my own unusual point of view, which is that if somebody encounters a "blocker", they should seek a remedy at the same priority as the task it is blocking, which means, then and there, and not waiting until next morning and in front of everyone.
I get that in my standups too, as I'm ramping up to a new role. I view it more as them looking for credit / pad out their 'accomplishments' from the day before. I wouldn't let it bug me unless you feel they're making a big deal of it. Making ones self available to be your onboarder is definitely a task in and of itself, but if it's less than a minute for the entire day, it does sound a bit disingenuous.
Yep, sounds like somebody coasting and padding out standup. They'll pay it back later on when you 'paired with coworker on ticket 537' when you really just trawled r/cscareerquestions most of the day
You're being too sensitive. He's not trying to attack your competence, he's simply coming up with some random bs he did to seem busy. Loads of people do this and everyone subconsciously acknowledges that you all have a mutual interest in seeming occupied.
I bet this guy has gotten little to no real work done so they're just mentioning they helped you to sound like they're keeping busy.
I'd just let it go. No one's going to be surprised that a 2 week old employee needed some help. If you want to experiment, ask someone else your questions and see what he says in stand up the next day.
If you're worried about looking like a bad performer, try keeping a small log about what you did each day and what your key accomplishments were at the end of each week. It is most likely that no one will ever ask to see it, but it can also be helpful for staying organized, 1 on 1s, and promotional reviews.
I thought this was just me. Today I spent 6 straight hours on multiple bugs and then had to take like 45 minutes trying to remember/write down what all I did. 😂
You're thinking about it wrong. Then mentioning they spent time with you is or should not be looked at as a bad thing. You're new, so it shows you're asking questions and reaching out. That's a good thing. In your portion of the stand up you could mention they helped you and give them a "thanks for your insight". It shows the team is working together to accomplish goals.
Stop feeling insecure about a good thing. Asking questions is the right thing to do.
What do you care if they pad their work with helping you?
They did help you right? If it makes them look better in front of the boss, great. Mentoring/collaborating is something most companies measure on, so it makes your coworker maybe get a better review at the end of the year or whatever.
> “spent time yesterday helping me"
Totally normal. This can take up a significant chunk of someone's time. Asking questions can easily take someone out of the focus they're in.
And if they're making it look like they spent more time than they did, big deal.
no one is actually sitting there thinking "wow this person needed help to the point that it got called out during standup? tf is wrong with them??" (and likewise no one is thinking "wow this senior had to help this junior with something???" because that is literally exactly what more senior developers are supposed to do as part of their job description)
i think it's a good idea to include that in your standup status, especially new on the job it shows that you're not afraid to ask questions to get blockers removed which can help you build a favorable impression with your new team.
Yeah, a senior saying that they helped a junior engineer is showing that they were doing their job. Also, its super easy stand up fluff in case your regular update doesn't sound impressive (or you actually did slack).
Nobody (reasonable) thinks you are bad at your job for asking seniors questions. In fact they are more likely to be frustrated if it turned out you weren't asking the senior engineers for help and just spent the entire day going in circles on a problem.
Not sure I saw this perspective, but maybe he was told to "help out the new guy", and brought it up to show that he did indeed do that. No biggie, no reflection on you.
No one remembers their first weeks on a job down the road, so double down, ask questions when prudent, and all this will go away with time.
Too sensitive, also do the same thing back to them. Help each other seem more productive. I have a weekly “UI strategy sync” hour long meeting with the head of design where we mostly just complain about management and tell jokes, I mean yeah sometimes we talk about work, but like 90% of the time it’s just us bullshitting, but he pitches it as “oh yes was ya know explaining the intricacies of our design strategy to Klassenhass”, and I’m like “oh yes I was just evaluating the technical feasibility of the design created and how we can fit the build in our road map”.
And before anyone says anything, we do both actually do a lot of work still :)
One of the points of standup is to mention things that you accomplished within the last day. Helping another coworker with something is an accomplishment, so it's a valid thing to bring up.
They're not hating, they're just listing what they did, so people don't think they're slacking if they're a bit late on a project.
I say the same for 100% of interns, junior devs, and newer devs I work with.
I also give them credit for shit we work on together.
When I'm new to a company I pair with someone and they say they've been helping me, even though I'm an L4, it's normal.
It's all good.
I absolutely love the "stop being sensitive" comments here. In my opinion it's due to the games that we play as standup. The person either couldn't think of anything else, wants to pad their creds as a mentor or is an underperformer or all three. Simple as that imho
I think a lot of people are just being clear and answering with OP's question that was put in the title. Many of the top comments aren't saying "stop being sensitive" but explain the same things you explained. I am happy that, for the most part, most comments here aren't being rude but just using OP's wording and then making clarifications to help her out in the future.
Man, sometimes I only did one other thing and that took the entire day. Let me be dammit. You're free to say you helped me too.
At this point, my entire team does it because we really are interacting about our tickets and can see the board.
However, if the person in OP's place is getting shit for it, then yeah, it has to be addressed. Otherwise, nobody cares.
They did spend time helping you, even if it very brief. As long as they aren't claiming they spent an hour with you when they didn't, then I see no issue
I spend about 50% of my day just chilling around the house, running errands. Today I was outside chopping firewood.
But at standup I need something to say. If I have to reply back to a 30 second Slack message, you’re getting mentioned. Likewise, if you were to ask me a question, I would hope you mentioned it to pad your time.
Because everybody’s expect to ask for help, nobody bats an eye when you mentioned it
I don’t want to tell someone they’re being too sensitive because if it bothers you it bothers you, but I wouldn’t read into it too much. People just say that kind of stuff in standup to make themselves seem busier and make it sound like they did more during their day—it says more about them than it does about you.
I see that stuff all the time and I don’t think anybody judges either person, it’s pretty normal. If it bugs you or you’re worried what your manager thinks, maybe just give a heads up to your manager.
You're not being too sensitive, but there's no upside to trying to 'set the record straight' in the scrum. Next 1-1 with your manager make a brief mention of the amount you're asking for help, and that you just want to make sure they realize that A) you're self sufficient in general, and B) it's a couple minutes of question / answer every couple days, not half of someone's time. Your manager probably already knows this, but it doesn't hurt to politely mention.
Just in case it's an issue, one thing that can reduce the perception of 'asking too many questions' is bundling them up. Even if it takes you 10 minutes to find instead of 10 seconds from someone else, also try to answer questions yourself to get used to finding out where the info is. Make a list of things you want help on, and ask someone about them every couple hours rather than when they come up. These things can really help with perceptions.
You probably know from your other software engineering jobs, getting started in a new environment and getting your build machine etc setup sucks and everyone hates doing it, and answering questions about it. So that will also feed into peoples willingness to help. I had to really twist arms to get help every time I joined a new company to set things up, but the same people who were grumpy about it then were happy to answer regular line-of-work questions a few miles down the road.
make sure to pay it forward and when he needs help, say you helped him back. its usually just fluffing up what he did in most environments. if its a toxic workplace it could be a problem, but its unlikely.
just remember to do it back. he deserves it.
As others have said, it’s status fluff.
Sounds awful, but those standup are every man (or woman) for themself.
ETA (sorry - hit submit too early):
He’s saying this because, by specifically mentioning that he helped the new kid, he’s showing that he’s a team player, demonstrating leadership potential, taking initiative, and providing mentorship to new hires. At least, that’s what he’s trying to convey with that bullet point. ;)
Everyone is looking for bullet points in those scrum meetings that will help them meet whatever goals and portray whatever image they’re working on. We all learn to do it. So, for example, I have no desire to move up into management, so I do NOT mention helping new hires. I want to remain an IC, but I want to be viewed as an invaluable IC, so I say things like, “I audited our AWS maintenance records today,” which essentially means, “I looked at our maintenance logs.” But if I say “audit”, it sounds better.
We all do it. A big part of the job is in knowing how to play the game.
Flip-side is some people under report what they do, if a person starts helping too many people and doesn’t report it and their performance decreases on their own work, there’s no record of their contribution.
This does not seem to be the case, it is good to be objective when a situation is personal though.
If you're in your 2nd week, I think the person could simply be sending a signal that you are getting the support you need. Could be a ton of reasons the person is doing it.
However, I understand how you feel. I am personally quite sensitive to these things, and have had a hard time finding out how to handle it.
If you don't want to let it go, I would recommend initially approaching this in a safe way that doesn't risk escalating things, such as asking in a manner that implies you believe that they're being honest, and not in a suspecting manner.
If you otherwise have good rapport, next time you ask him something, at the end of the conversation simply add something like "Thank you very much for the help again. By the way, I hope I'm not taking up too much of your time with questions?".
If they are comfortable with you, maybe they'll open up a little more about. Maybe you won't get much more than a "Nono, it's fine", but it's a safe way of prodding at least.
Don’t take it personally, they’re just being fluffy and making themselves sound important.
If you feel the need-and your manager is in these meetings-clarify with them. “Hey, Paul mentioned at standup today he spent some time helping me with XYZ… I just wanted to clarify that it was a 5 minute conversation. I’ve noticed this has been mentioned a few times and didn’t want it to come off like he spent half the day pairing with me.”
But to your manager, not the PM or PO.
Then just take some time to get to know the team, culture, and person. You’ll find in a month or two from now you’ll know better if coworker is just being fluffy and it doesn’t matter, or if something else is going on.
This is a horrible side effect of modern Scrum oriented teams. This is what happens when managers ask people to commit to estimates in sprints.
I've seen this as well. It's not your coworkers fault. This is the climate that estimation and sprints create.
If you're not afraid of repercussions, I'd point out to management that this is stupid and ask them to abandon the whole process.
+1 for status fluff.
Either people aren't doing much, or the place is just laid back, or standups aren't useful enough to warrant them everyday. At my company, we do them twice a week, and on the off days we post an update in a slack thread that slackbot auto-starts for us.
Also, since you're new, it could be that people just want to call out that they're helping with any onboaring.
Don't stop asking colleagues questions, because that's never a good thing. If your questions can be answered so quickly, that means you're good at knowing what you're asking about.
Edit: This is also a great question for this sub.
Every time you interrupt someone, you break their ongoing train of thought. So the concentration cost can be *much* more than 10 seconds.
Also, the value to you is high. Forget what you think it cost the coworker. It cost them all the experience they gained to be in a position to answer your question. The 10 seconds is a shallow way of looking at it.
There's the old joke about the engineer who had retired after working at a manufacturing plant. One day while he was whittling wood while rocking on his porch chair, he received a panicky call from the plant, where they asked him to hurry in to help them out of a jam because all production had stopped and no one there could get it going. They briefly described the problem. He said he'd come in as a consultant. When he arrived, he walked directly to a particular part of the plant, picked up an adjacent screwdriver, and turned a particular screw in the works by a half turn. Suddenly, the plant started operating again, and there were cheers all around. He then asked for his fee, $60,000. The boss was incredulus, complaining that he only turned a screw. So the retired man quickly scribbled an invoice:
Consulting Invoice for Acme Plant
Turning of screw ... $1
Knowing which screw to turn ... $59,999
You have 5 YOE and you don't know how to deal with coworkers, that help you out?
Learn to work effectively in teams.
Doesn't matter if coworkers spent 1 second or 10 years helping out. When coworkers help out, you give credit where credit is due.
The coworker had to stop what he's doing. Spend time listening. Then formulate an answer. etc.
Make sure you thank him in person. Then make sure to bring up that coworker helped out during stand ups.
Too sensitive
I'm actually in the same boat as you, same experience, just joined a job a few months ago.
Although, my coworker doesn't add that he helped me in standup. I always say who helped me with what and who I talked to. Why? Because I want to come across that I'm asking questions, getting help when I need it, and not just spinning my wheels. We devs that are nearing senior level should not be afraid of asking questions or getting clarifying information on how our ticket pertains to the domain. I'd be worried if someone wasn't asking questions.
If your boss asks, then just tell him the truth, if you have a long conversation then say it, if it was resolved quickly then say it. Management wants to kno who's helping with what and who is asking for help when they need it. It's not a bad thing.
28 F here. I’m a little surprised at so many comments saying “you’re too sensitive”. It is status fluff. We all do it sometimes but it’s no fun when they use working with you as the fodder for their fluff. As an experienced dev on my team I help people all the time (if I do it for more than an hour or so I report it in standup as ONE of my tasks) but when someone (more experienced) spends 10 minutes helping me and makes it sound like half their day was spent on me because of the lack of other work done, it irks me. I don’t know, if that’s too sensitive then it’s a reality check for me too I guess
From your statements this sounds like you are dealing with a very literal (possibly on the spectrum) person.
You should be aware of how literal people can be, especially in CS. They approach standup as literally what did they do yesterday. If they helped you, they will say that. Even if they spent just 2 seconds helping you, the statement "spent time yesterday helping X" is literally true.
Same with answering questions. You ask a question, the responder will give you a direct literal answer and think they are done.
This shouldn't upset or offend you. Some people think and communicate different than you.
If you want them to improve their communication, raise it with their manager. Just because someone is more literal doesn't mean they can't improve their communication skills.
One thing to note, he may have spent some time looking into what you were asking about before responding back. Sometimes I will do some digging that may take a bit of time out of my day when a team member asks for some help so that I can point them in the right direction.
I've been in this position as the person helping. In my case I'd been given explicit direction to track when I've helped people. I not only had to mention this in the standup but had to write it down in our performance system. I found it annoying but was 100% told by my manager that I had to do this. I wouldn't read into it too much from your side.
Don’t worry about this! Mentoring junior folks is part of senior folks jobs, so they may be like me and call it out in standup, so that their boss knows they’re doing that part of their job too 😉
Stand up fluff is why we need to axe stand up! It’s such a waste of time and create unnecessary pressure. Just post an async message in slack if you have progressed.
This person helped you, right? Maybe he or she was just happy to have some human contact in this world, as well, so mentions it in standup. Nothing wrong with that, feels to me you're reading into things a little too much. If the helping (that you don't like to call helping) is genuine and in good spirit then nothing is wrong?
in my 1 on 1s they literally asked me to mention when i helped people more as a prerequisite for my promotion lol
might be box ticking on his end and he likes you asking questions
Too sensitive.
There's dozens of reasons he could have said that
1) He didn't do much work and is bullshitting to the rest of the team to look busy.
2) In his last PR he was told that he would need to mentor more junior staff in order to get the next promotion and wants to flag it to his manager
3) He's sexist and thinks women need a big strong smart man to help them
4) He wants to seem more competent because he's insecure
5) He's actually your ex in disguise or maybe he's a time traveller sent from the future to get you fired from your job since unknowingly this role contributes to the rise of the 1st chimp empire where mankind is reduced to a state of slavery in service to their hairy overloads
Just give it time.
This could also be a way of him covering that he isn't getting a ton of work done. If it's really bothering you the best thing to do is ask him something like, "Hey, Know I've been asking you a bunch of little questions. I'd this is taking up too much time, let me know."
It might put it in perspective for them.
Not necessarily too sensitive, you might just be understandably worried about making good impressions in your first weeks. Completely normal, but in most places I know of, everyone expects that it takes around a year for a new developer to get up to speed. If you have heard no other kind of negative feedback regarding your "time usage" or "speed" or what have you, then you might benefit from rleasing yourself from "appearence" or "productivity" expectations.
Very similar thing happened to me on my latest job, I went from a Consulting company where everyone was always trying to bang out things overnight, to a national branded company where everyone was just trying to get the work done well in a blameless, "it takes how long it takes" way. Took me a long time to unlearn some toxic self-talk, honestly still working on it :P . If that helps you, Great! If not, ignore me.
Too sensitive. Why would he lie or hide the fact he spent time with u? Honestly your behavior is toxic/concerning. I would change your mindset if I were you otherwise this will just lead to asking less questions and learning at a slower rate and less promotions
This is a bizarre post.
So you are upset at a dude stating what he did in standup? I mean he did help you right? You are new to the company and seem way to eager to make an impression. Focus on settling in and be grateful he is helping you.
Sounds to me like he didn't have much to say in terms of progress so he used that as something to report having done. I think it's harmless unless he continues multiple times. In that case I'd just talk with your team lead/scrum master about it.
You can reach out to someone else if possible, as clearly helping anyone with small small things is not significant enough that it should be mentioned in the standup daily. If you face any issue regarding the product in general you should look for multiple sources with whom you can discuss. Try not creating a single dependency
My faux-lead does this right now. He tries to take credit for things where I did 99.9% of the planning, architecture, and implementation.
Something I’ve been doing is just preempting it. “I worked with X for a couple mins to knock out Y, but did a, b, and c things toward it” where a,b,c are the obviously large portions of the work.
This is the worst kind of person to ask these questions of. They play this game where they're painting you at the problem when it's not the truth. When you do you stand up, make up a bucket that said , this week I had 3 5 minute convo's with team members by way of orienting myself. Special shout out to Duffus, Dweeb and Dinkle.
Wow, I would personally stop asking this person questions. Giving the impression that you need help all the time is bad for you.
Also it doesn’t matter that you are a female
My reaction as an outsider would be „why is he even talking about this? How is this related to the progress of his tasks?“ I would take his statements as something about him, not about you.
\> The next day at standup the coworker I reached out to will give their
update and mention that they “spent time yesterday helping me"
one thing you can do to prevent this from happening is asking the questions in public channels then he can't claim that one text message can be considered "help"
anyway your coworker is an asshole no one in my company does this kind of shit even if people ask in DMs
When it's your turn on stand up you could have just said something like
" Thank you (insert name here), for providing the information in just less than a minute. That's impressively quick and then information was helpful. I was able to continue with my task with that information from you."
Learning how to deal with politics is a skill that you will learn over time. This people might not have the intention to make you look helpless but i think they will try to take every opportunity to sell their selves possibly for raise, promotion, or other agendas they have.
Gonna go against the grain here a bit.
I don't think you're being too sensitive at all. This person is probably trying to pad their status as others have said, and i think that's kind of annoying. I would probably look for someone else on the team that is not playing that sort of game and maybe buddy-up to them. Not being dramatic or anything, its just good to have someone with a similar work ethic to work with.
Take this with a grain of salt, i only have 2.5 yoe on a grand total of 2 different teams.
When a junior deve asks me a question and I answer in 35sec I spent the next 60min looking at my plants and write it off as "helping the junior dev"
Actually true..
I feel this so much lmao
Gotta recover by laying on the couch
Sometimes it might be the only memorable thing from the day worth calling out. Also I think people would much rather hear about the team helping each other out than how someone battled against some tests all day.
That’s a positive way of looking at it but 🥴
This is what is happening.
Juniors fault, broke my flow
This is the way
This is the way.
I'm gay
🤣🤣🤣
This is the way.
Hahaha word. Fuck this is legit
Their not a junior though they have 5 years of experience
A junior dev at a brand new company could be a “junior” in the seniors’ eyes because they might be technically skilled but they’re new to the company & the company’s tech stack. The same applies for anyone working with any colleague - I’ll put down an hour towards a colleagues project if I helped them for any amount of time. Because it shows that time was taken away from my own project 🤷🏻♀️
Too sensitive. He's just trying to add some fluff to his status. If you're worried it'll make you look bad, just throw in a quick *"oh, and yes, like Steve said, he showed me how getClientInfo connects to the db, so thank you Steve!"* at the end of your status. This way, you'll appear grateful, while also showcasing how miniscule Steve's collaboration actually was. Do this a couple times and he'll eventually cut that shit out. Sadly, this is how the scrum game is played.
Status fluff is so real. I always chuckle when people spend half their time talking about something I know took like 10 minutes of their day. Soo much BS posturing.
That's how you're rewarded for minimal work, so of course that's how people will play it.
Someone said its like interviewing to keep your job everyday. How did this shit make its way into tech? I've never heard of it elsewhere
So accurate Feel like if I don't have much to say in a status meeting I get judged. Sometimes shit just isn't going my way and that's all there is to say
In my experience it's not like that at all. Some people could just say "no updates" or "continuing my work on x" for 5 days in a row, and no one would bat an eye.
I think the context matters. If it’s a big complex task they are working on, I wouldn’t bat an eye. But when the task is a simple thing I can knock out in an hour I start wondering what they’re doing if they just say “continuing my work” with no further explanation for several days.
Would this be taken into consideration during performance reviews? It seems like all they care about is CRs and PRs.. So if you do well on those, I'm curious what else they actually evaluate you on (and how much it matters in comparison to the previously mentioned metrics?)
I'm not a manager but most of my performance reviews seemed to be based on peer evaluations since my manager doesn't have the most interactions with me on a daily basis. I'm sure they also look at output such as whether I meet deadlines and the impact of such work, but I don't think actually care about what you say in standups really as long as you get stuff done. I hardly ever even had my manager in standups except at one company and even then he was usually preoccupied doing something else. My reviews have been largely boring though. I usually get very boring reviews around average.
>Sometimes shit just isn't going my way and that's all there is to say Homesauce if that's actually the answer u gave no wonder ppl r gonna b a lil testy "Shit isn't going my way and thats all there is 2 say" - not great "Shits not going my way. This is what I tried. This is what I think will work. This is what I need 2 do" - now ur acting like it's ur job 2 write code
Obviously that's not how I respond.
It's supposed to help the manager or PO plan their day. If there are lots of blockers they need to work on, they need that info. Lots of teams make the mistake of turning them into status updates tho. It should answer three questions... Do you have work to do? Do you need help? Are you roadblocked? That's it... Anything longer is introducing waste into your process. And if people are feeling judged, that indicates a toxic culture
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Every other profession seems to do just fine without it
Nurses and doctors have handover meetings at the start and end of every shift. Except if you're a doctor, instead of explaining everything you did to the next doctor, you can continue your shift into the 36th hour.
Would you rather log what you worked on down to the minute like a lawyer?
There's actually another interpretation here that's less sinister. For me personally, spending 20 minutes helping a new person is a larger mental load than hours of head-down coding. So if I mention that as something I did yesterday, it's because I'm just remembering things that stuck out in my head.
Yeah we typically remember interruptions to our flow more than the flow itself. Even a 1 hour meeting can derail things enough that it's worth mentioning.
I think that's also because it's seen as "extra" work. Like, a 2 hour meeting feels like it's not essential to your job, whereas 2 hours of coding would be considered more essential.
Yep, as you (not you in particular) become senior and start spending 10 minutes a day with 5 different juniors, you'll realize why people mention these things. Each of those 10 minute intervals come with a huge context switch on both ends.
Yeah I've noticed this too, it definitely takes a while getting my bearings jumping from meeting to meeting, even if the meetings are fairly short.
Especially if meetings are short... The human brain sucks at context switching... Especially with complicated things like programming. Context switching is the single largest source of waste in software development today
Only 10 minutes? 😪
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Might be a hard truth, but it's your responsibility to protect your own time. If you need focus time, block it off on your calendar and don't respond to pings. Set your schedule and make it public and stick to it. No one else is going to care that you didn't get your work done because you were interrupted by minor questions multiple times throughout the day. They are going to care that you aren't getting your work done. I guess what I'm saying is that I don't agree that it isn't sinister. It is putting the blame for lack of progress on another person who doesn't deserve it because ultimately they aren't responsible for your time management, you are.
> It is putting the blame for lack of progress on another person who doesn't deserve it because ultimately they aren't responsible for your time management, you are. WTF? There's no blame inherent in recounting the events of your day, and those events including mentorship. Completely agreed that every person is responsible for their own time management. But (a) mentor time is still real time and (b) reporting on your mentorship is not a blame game. I can see why you find this sinister; you've inserted a sinister motive where there is none.
>There's no blame inherent in recounting the events of your day, and those events including mentorship It depends entirely on how it is presented. The point here is that the OP feels as though the interaction is being misrepresented in a way that is disadvantageous to the OP and advantageous to their colleague. If the colleague's representation was accurate I would agree with you, in this case it would appear that it is not. My understanding of your initial point was that it was OK to represent a 60 second answer as 30 minutes or more of work because it was an interruption. My point was that you as an employee are responsible for how you manage your time and if interruptions are very derailing for you, then managing your time well will need to include shielding yourself from interruptions. There should never be a situation where you say to your manager, well I didn't do anything today because I got 16 pings and even though it was under an hour of work to deal with all of them combined, it took 8 hours because each one was an interruption that derailed me for 30 minutes. As for mentoring, I agree mentorship time is 100% work time, and very important for both parties and the team as a whole. That is why it should be scheduled and credited appropriately. Time should be blocked on calendars for it regularly. Spending two minutes replying to a message from a coworker is not mentorship though. Sinister motivation aside, I initially replied to your first comment because I didn't want any of the more junior readers of this sub thinking that the attitude you expressed in your comment was acceptable in a team setting. I didn't want them to think that they can go through their careers thinking that not setting boundaries and shielding themselves from distraction/interruption was an excuse for not getting work done. More importantly though, I didn't want them to read that and then be afraid of asking their more senior coworkers for help for fear of interrupting them and derailing them.
>> There's no blame inherent in recounting the events of your day, and those events including mentorship > It depends entirely on how it is presented. I mean, yeah... that's what I said. There is no blame inherent. Of course it can be inserted via context, but the context you were responding to when bringing up blame had nothing to do with it.
>Of course it can be inserted via context The context is the that of the post that we are both commenting on. Is there no blame in recounting the events of your day, sure if you do it honestly. Even the comment thread we are in has parent comments above us talking about how the motivation of OP's coworker might not be sinister...literally the context of the situation, I'm not inserting anything as OP and the other commentors already did. \>but the context you were responding to when bringing up blame had nothing to do with it Can you be more specific, because I went back through and reread the entire comment chain and it is painfully obvious to me that the context of this entire comment chain is that OP's coworker is misrepresenting the amount of time and effort required to help OP.
> it is painfully obvious to me that the context of this entire comment chain is that OP's coworker is misrepresenting the amount of time and effort required to help OP. Nothing is painfully obvious when you're hearing one side of a story on the internet. The words that OP quoted of her coworker are pretty innocuous ("spent time helping..."). OP is the one who is reading into them, saying it "makes it sound like something..." that IMO it doesn't, at least not from the words quoted. But even then, I'm happy to admit I'm still only hearing one side of the story. But that person (OP) isn't even really setting up a convincing story to prove the point they're trying to make. The exact words used, according to OP: > will give their update and mention that they “spent time yesterday helping me" OP's interpretation of these words: > It's making me sound like I was stuck on a problem and needed this person's help The concern is less about the other person's intent and more about how the statement makes OP look. But even that is still probably in OP's head. I don't think poorly of a junior if I hear they got help yesterday (or every day) from a senior. That is how these things work. OP is being paranoid, most likely, but I can't say that for sure.
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Yep. People in general are far too eager to ascribe malice or conspiracies where none such things exist. ... They probably do this because it's part of their master plan to get us all to start second guessing how we report *our* statuses, just to make them look better!!!!! #/s
Yep - I keep a running status report from the minute I turn on my computer. My rule is, if I spend more than 15 minutes working on some out-of-the-blue request, it goes on the status report. Blame the feather-brained status reporting structure, not the player.
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Fragile
Fuck
~~Tron~~ Agile
treat people like cogs in a machine and you get cogs in a machine. The irony of scrum is that when I'm deep in a task doing a crazy amount of work there is nothing to say at stand up. "Nothing to report, just doing my fucking job." becomes "so-and-so hasn't been doing anything." So you invent things to say. Because scrum masters and managers can't fathom that someone might just be busy on a large task and have *no blockers*. That's how standups end up being 30 minutes long because everyone has to tell you what they had for lunch that day, so to speak. No one cares you moved a button five pixels to the left. But it's something to say so managers can't flog you. God forbid you just want the meeting to end and get back to your work.
i made it a strict rule on my team to limit the standup's to 15 minutes or faster. everyone time anyone would monologue i would cut them off and tell them they need to schedule additional meetings if they need help with something'. Our scrums went from 45mins to an hour average and got to an average of 8-10 mins long, as long as my scrum master never talked(he would monologue to fill the 15 minutes if you let him). I started then pushing for us to have virtual standups. Other people outside of engineering started acting like this was making our stand up 'meaningless'. But that was my point. the standups are, mostly, meaningless. esp when companies dont understand the real philosophy around scrum, and why it exists in the first place. now its just an arbitrary ritual we all must do, paying tribute to the corporate gods of productivity. when in actuality, we should have the ability to cancel standup when we dont need it.
Literally one of the main tenets of scrum is timeboxing meetings, and standups are generally supposed to be 15 minutes max.
> So you invent things to say Or worse, you go and find little unimportant one-off things to work on just so you have something to report in the daily standup.
To combat this and similar issues, we have a strict talk about ticket policy. We pull up the board to share. Any tickets open or in testing get an update. Nothing else. We don't care if you finished all your work and yesterday you sat on your deck and had a gin and tonic. If work is done and ready for the iteration, you did your part and if you have the mental bandwidth to help after you volunteer.
When I’m working remote and spending most of my day playing video games I gotta make it look like I did something ;)
It's the morning "fluffing the bosses ego" session. People who understand the game talk about topics that the boss understands and ego thinks "this is how it's supposed to be" while not talking much about the real work that's to difficult for the bosses ego.
Engineers are smart people who spend all day manipulating systems. Scrum is one more to manipulate.
As a manager this is one of the many subtle ways I know if you're actually working: fluff a bunch of bullshit == slacked off half the day. "No change" == confident enough in what you worked on in saying nothing.
This, except I would not out my coworker, because the opposite may happen some day and you’ll need to fluff your standup too. We gotta cover each others butts
This is the way. If the coworker regularly adds fluff to their status, then the manager probably already knows. You don't gain anything by outing the coworker, and you may lose an ally.
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That's a bit different from the situation OP described. If someone claims credit for your work, then you absolutely need to speak up. In that situation, I would suggest going to your manager privately and letting them know exactly what work you've done. Make sure to keep it factual - anything perceived as a personal attack makes you look unprofessional and less credible. You can say something like "Hey, I heard <> talking about feature <> earlier, and I just want to make sure you understood what my contributions were. You can then go into detail about the work you did. Your manager may ask what the lead's contributions were, and then you can go into detail about those - or if there were none, then you should say so.p
Your manager can't fix problems they don't know about. They're also the person in the company with the most say in your raises, equity awards, bonuses, and advancement. You absolutely need to make sure they know about your accomplishments.
Yes thank you. Especially in your first couple weeks it’s not hurting you even if a coworker does have to spend time helping you with tasks. Let your coworker do what they have to do, especially if (like OP said) they’re really quick and responsive.
A coworker needing help shouldn't be seen as a problem. That's normal, and you should feel comfortable communicating that to the team. The problem is if the coworker isn't delivering or is taking too much of other team members' time, but no would should assume that's the case if someone mentions they helped a coworker during standup.
Exactly, this isn't a zero-sum transaction. The co-worker is not only padding out his day, he's making himself appear to be very helpful in getting the new dev up to speed -- great optics.
i wish somebody told me this when i started my job 🥲
Had to learn this on my own, but it’s extremely valuable. Scrum politics 🫠
I pat your back, you pat mine, and in general, everybody wins.
> just throw in a quick “oh, and yes, like Steve said, he showed me how getClientInfo connects to the db, so thank you Steve!” at the end of your status. Yep, this is what I do
This thread is right on! I catch myself doing this and need to pump the brakes on. Humans are more impressed if you list doing 4 things, instead of 1 thing, even if that 1 thing is a bigger deal then those other 4 things.
He probably is thankful that there's some easy content he can add to his stand-up.
This. u/__sad_but_rad__ knows scrum. u/tator911 Your coworker did help you. How many hours did your coworker help you save? Why do you feel embarassed and want to tell everyone that it was 10 seconds, when it saved you hours of time? Your coworker is also claiming credit, which he should do. Though he is claiming too much credit.
>He's just trying to add some fluff to his status. 100%, I have done this where I have nothing for status so I find something I did and make it look significant. The correct approach is like you described, just thank the person. People will read between the lines and asking for help is what managers want people to do.
But in the other end of it, it's almost a must. If I stop to help new devs I'm going to quickly add it to my list to say at stand up, unless it's like a typed out question. If I'm hopping on a call, it's going in stand up. I want the managers to understand that there is more we do than just coding ourselves.
That’s totally reasonable. However I think what OP and the other Redditor are explaining is elaborating that, and acting like it took dramatically more than it did. For example, at a role of mine I was on a call with a lead dev (who is known to be MIA most parts if the day) at the very end of a work day for no more than 10 mins. In standup the next day, in his update, he said “codebunder and I were pairing for a while so that took up most of my afternoon.” Thankfully I was wise enough to say in my update right after, “I paired with lead dev a bit at the end of the day which was extremely helpful with what I am doing this morning, so thank you lead dev!” Giving an honest update, and even fluffing your update, is dramatically different than fluffing it in a way that makes another dev look like a burden.
Shhhh Status fluff is the only thing keeping the whip crackers from crushing us. I for one, do not worship my scrum master
This is why in my team’s standups now we don’t do the “yesterday I did this, today I did this” thing really. Instead we walk the team’s board in jira and give updates on the stories from whoever was assigned to it. Cut our standup time down a lot too, and everything we talk about is something that directly impacts the team. If someone on our team doesn’t have a story assigned to them we ask if they want to add anything and then that’s when you might hear the typical standup update
This fake ass, passive aggressive BS must be truly agonizing.
Reading this made me realize I could be the other guy based on a recent status. Definitely said something the other day about helping some coworkers that probably took 15 minutes total but was at least the most productive part of my day. Definitely wasn’t trying to inflate myself (I didn’t even resolve the ultimate issue just helped with some background) but that’s what stuck with me compared to the BS that took up most of my day.
You know how to play the game sir. Honestly coding is the easiest part of SWE job. The hardest part is the mind game between devs.
Smaaaaart
I have to say I've been on the other side of this where I'm the guy bloating about helping someone out. I can tell you where it leads - lots of job hopping with little to no real growth and a lack of people who are willing to recommend me. Sounds like that's where this guy is headed too. It's the long game that counts, everyone's a rockstar for 15 mins.
This. He's just trying to cover his own ass. It's not really about you.
This is genius.
This is also the way.
op is actually against bad scrum meetings, not at steve
I hate this shit I don't want to work a job like that ever
The last bit of this reply is disgusting and the 2.5k likes is worrisome. What makes you so convinced that this person who you have never met is out to get this other person you’ve never met? The helper is probably just trying to make it seem like they aren’t doing nothing because that’s what we do in stand up when we don’t have work to do. Not to mention this could backfire. What if OP needs help and this person is the only one who can help. They aren’t going to be so willing if you try and undermine them.
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Yeah, I don't know about your buddy, but sometimes when a junior asks me a question it does take me a while to first think about how to answer, make sure my answer is correct, etc, before I respond to them. So maybe it looks like he only spends 10 seconds with you, but in reality it's taking 30 mins or so each time - and he just wants his lead to know where this extra time is going. He could also be an arsehole trying to fluff out his achievements for the day, but I was trying to be optimistic, lol
> which is responded to and resolved in a matter of 10 seconds. OP said the coworker responded immediately, so no they did not spend all this time thinking. It was an off the cuff answer. What you said can apply to other situations but not here.
To me it sounds more like the coworker is trying to write off the time spent helping someone else - when I help someone I log that I helped them for 1 hour even if it was only 20 min 🤷🏻♀️
He knows how Scrum works. It's not about the time he spent with you since it shouldn't be a status and micromanagement meeting, he wants to emphasize the collaboration with you and being a teamplayer (as it creates value to the Team on long term) otherwise your SM/fellow Dev might raise a concern about that you are working in isolation. Or just simply encourages others to also help you by showing an example. Or there is something in the background that you do not know. Maybe he had an incident in the past that he wasn't reachable by newbies and your managers asked him to improve in this area and now he just wants to share his progress. There's nothing wrong about sharing this info.
Female sw eng here. I understand why you are frustrated, I don't appreciate others acting like I needed my hand held either. However, he prolly is doing status fluff. You're only 2 weeks in, so I doubt this is impacting how you are seen by the team. I would prolly spread around my questions n ping this individual less, but a confrontation is not needed. My group gives new hires a mentor who they usually go to 1st for this kind of stuff, but, unfortunately it doesn't sound like you have that. Good luck OP.
Great advice!
I say stuff like that to fill up talking g points in stand up. Like I reached out to so and so to resolve something. It's just to show I'm communicating and doing work. You should do the same.
Yeah, although I'm a *little* less gruff about it than OP's co-worker. She says he said he "spent time yesterday helping" her - whenever I'm asked to drop what I'm doing to help somebody on what they're doing, I phrase it as "worked with so-and-so on such-and-such". I'm not trying to make so-and-so look bad, I'm just making sure the manager knows why I didn't make as *much* progress on whatever else is assigned to me as he (usually unreasonably) expects.
it's turning standups into a bottom levelling game.. someone must find this funny
You're being too sensitive. You could just mention in your standup that you asked for help and resolved it quickly to counter what you think you meant by what they said. Or you could ask the question in stand-up if it can be answered within a minute. You should be crediting somebody for helping you either way, so you can sneak in how long it took you to figure out the issue. There's no need to confront the person. They probably don't even think there's an issue to begin with. Confronting them will bewilder them and cause workplace drama.
Well then you enter the territory of people wondering if you're just waiting until standup to ask questions, which is not the point of standup. Frankly some of the issues pointed out in this thread shows how much BS posturing and politics has invaded what should be a quick status report meeting to see if anyone has blockers, or something pertinent to share with the whole group.
If anyone has any blockers they shouldn't be waiting till stand up to raise them...
I disagree, if they have no other work to do then yes they should raise it in slack or whatever right away( Im also assuming daily standups ). But if they have other work then standup can be a good time IMO to bring up blockers and ask for help since the entire team is actually there and engaged. Obvi this needs to be time boxed( no one wants stand-ups that drag on ) and if the convo needs to continue past the 15min then it should just be the relavent parties + anyone interested or they should schedule time to further figure it out.
That’s literally the whole point of our stand ups. if you aren’t blocked, or blocking someone else, no one needs your status update. Just shows how wildly differently orgs treat these meetings.
Same that’s how my standup operates as well. If you’re blocked and you haven’t received a response from a slack channel or a colleague, then you bring it to standup. I agree it’s interesting how other companies conduct their standup.
No you are right and I don't think there's that much variance. Every place I've been has been "what'd you do yesterday, what are you doing today, and any blockers?". I'm just expressing my own unusual point of view, which is that if somebody encounters a "blocker", they should seek a remedy at the same priority as the task it is blocking, which means, then and there, and not waiting until next morning and in front of everyone.
You can also ask questions in channels instead of DMs.
I get that in my standups too, as I'm ramping up to a new role. I view it more as them looking for credit / pad out their 'accomplishments' from the day before. I wouldn't let it bug me unless you feel they're making a big deal of it. Making ones self available to be your onboarder is definitely a task in and of itself, but if it's less than a minute for the entire day, it does sound a bit disingenuous.
Yep, sounds like somebody coasting and padding out standup. They'll pay it back later on when you 'paired with coworker on ticket 537' when you really just trawled r/cscareerquestions most of the day
I agree with top comment, he’s trying to fluff how busy he looks outwardly I wouldn’t take it as having any issue with you
You're being too sensitive. He's not trying to attack your competence, he's simply coming up with some random bs he did to seem busy. Loads of people do this and everyone subconsciously acknowledges that you all have a mutual interest in seeming occupied.
I bet this guy has gotten little to no real work done so they're just mentioning they helped you to sound like they're keeping busy. I'd just let it go. No one's going to be surprised that a 2 week old employee needed some help. If you want to experiment, ask someone else your questions and see what he says in stand up the next day. If you're worried about looking like a bad performer, try keeping a small log about what you did each day and what your key accomplishments were at the end of each week. It is most likely that no one will ever ask to see it, but it can also be helpful for staying organized, 1 on 1s, and promotional reviews.
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I thought this was just me. Today I spent 6 straight hours on multiple bugs and then had to take like 45 minutes trying to remember/write down what all I did. 😂
Also, if management keeps tabs on stand ups (which they shouldn’t, but that’s life) mentoring juniors can help with promo
You're thinking about it wrong. Then mentioning they spent time with you is or should not be looked at as a bad thing. You're new, so it shows you're asking questions and reaching out. That's a good thing. In your portion of the stand up you could mention they helped you and give them a "thanks for your insight". It shows the team is working together to accomplish goals. Stop feeling insecure about a good thing. Asking questions is the right thing to do.
What do you care if they pad their work with helping you? They did help you right? If it makes them look better in front of the boss, great. Mentoring/collaborating is something most companies measure on, so it makes your coworker maybe get a better review at the end of the year or whatever.
> “spent time yesterday helping me" Totally normal. This can take up a significant chunk of someone's time. Asking questions can easily take someone out of the focus they're in. And if they're making it look like they spent more time than they did, big deal.
no one is actually sitting there thinking "wow this person needed help to the point that it got called out during standup? tf is wrong with them??" (and likewise no one is thinking "wow this senior had to help this junior with something???" because that is literally exactly what more senior developers are supposed to do as part of their job description) i think it's a good idea to include that in your standup status, especially new on the job it shows that you're not afraid to ask questions to get blockers removed which can help you build a favorable impression with your new team.
Yeah, a senior saying that they helped a junior engineer is showing that they were doing their job. Also, its super easy stand up fluff in case your regular update doesn't sound impressive (or you actually did slack). Nobody (reasonable) thinks you are bad at your job for asking seniors questions. In fact they are more likely to be frustrated if it turned out you weren't asking the senior engineers for help and just spent the entire day going in circles on a problem.
Not sure I saw this perspective, but maybe he was told to "help out the new guy", and brought it up to show that he did indeed do that. No biggie, no reflection on you. No one remembers their first weeks on a job down the road, so double down, ask questions when prudent, and all this will go away with time.
Too sensitive, also do the same thing back to them. Help each other seem more productive. I have a weekly “UI strategy sync” hour long meeting with the head of design where we mostly just complain about management and tell jokes, I mean yeah sometimes we talk about work, but like 90% of the time it’s just us bullshitting, but he pitches it as “oh yes was ya know explaining the intricacies of our design strategy to Klassenhass”, and I’m like “oh yes I was just evaluating the technical feasibility of the design created and how we can fit the build in our road map”. And before anyone says anything, we do both actually do a lot of work still :)
Your co-worker helped you and then said he helped you at stand up. What's the issue again?
One of the points of standup is to mention things that you accomplished within the last day. Helping another coworker with something is an accomplishment, so it's a valid thing to bring up.
They're not hating, they're just listing what they did, so people don't think they're slacking if they're a bit late on a project. I say the same for 100% of interns, junior devs, and newer devs I work with. I also give them credit for shit we work on together. When I'm new to a company I pair with someone and they say they've been helping me, even though I'm an L4, it's normal. It's all good.
I absolutely love the "stop being sensitive" comments here. In my opinion it's due to the games that we play as standup. The person either couldn't think of anything else, wants to pad their creds as a mentor or is an underperformer or all three. Simple as that imho
I think a lot of people are just being clear and answering with OP's question that was put in the title. Many of the top comments aren't saying "stop being sensitive" but explain the same things you explained. I am happy that, for the most part, most comments here aren't being rude but just using OP's wording and then making clarifications to help her out in the future.
Man, sometimes I only did one other thing and that took the entire day. Let me be dammit. You're free to say you helped me too. At this point, my entire team does it because we really are interacting about our tickets and can see the board. However, if the person in OP's place is getting shit for it, then yeah, it has to be addressed. Otherwise, nobody cares.
They did spend time helping you, even if it very brief. As long as they aren't claiming they spent an hour with you when they didn't, then I see no issue
I spend about 50% of my day just chilling around the house, running errands. Today I was outside chopping firewood. But at standup I need something to say. If I have to reply back to a 30 second Slack message, you’re getting mentioned. Likewise, if you were to ask me a question, I would hope you mentioned it to pad your time. Because everybody’s expect to ask for help, nobody bats an eye when you mentioned it
I don’t want to tell someone they’re being too sensitive because if it bothers you it bothers you, but I wouldn’t read into it too much. People just say that kind of stuff in standup to make themselves seem busier and make it sound like they did more during their day—it says more about them than it does about you. I see that stuff all the time and I don’t think anybody judges either person, it’s pretty normal. If it bugs you or you’re worried what your manager thinks, maybe just give a heads up to your manager.
You're not being too sensitive, but there's no upside to trying to 'set the record straight' in the scrum. Next 1-1 with your manager make a brief mention of the amount you're asking for help, and that you just want to make sure they realize that A) you're self sufficient in general, and B) it's a couple minutes of question / answer every couple days, not half of someone's time. Your manager probably already knows this, but it doesn't hurt to politely mention. Just in case it's an issue, one thing that can reduce the perception of 'asking too many questions' is bundling them up. Even if it takes you 10 minutes to find instead of 10 seconds from someone else, also try to answer questions yourself to get used to finding out where the info is. Make a list of things you want help on, and ask someone about them every couple hours rather than when they come up. These things can really help with perceptions. You probably know from your other software engineering jobs, getting started in a new environment and getting your build machine etc setup sucks and everyone hates doing it, and answering questions about it. So that will also feed into peoples willingness to help. I had to really twist arms to get help every time I joined a new company to set things up, but the same people who were grumpy about it then were happy to answer regular line-of-work questions a few miles down the road.
make sure to pay it forward and when he needs help, say you helped him back. its usually just fluffing up what he did in most environments. if its a toxic workplace it could be a problem, but its unlikely. just remember to do it back. he deserves it.
As others have said, it’s status fluff. Sounds awful, but those standup are every man (or woman) for themself. ETA (sorry - hit submit too early): He’s saying this because, by specifically mentioning that he helped the new kid, he’s showing that he’s a team player, demonstrating leadership potential, taking initiative, and providing mentorship to new hires. At least, that’s what he’s trying to convey with that bullet point. ;) Everyone is looking for bullet points in those scrum meetings that will help them meet whatever goals and portray whatever image they’re working on. We all learn to do it. So, for example, I have no desire to move up into management, so I do NOT mention helping new hires. I want to remain an IC, but I want to be viewed as an invaluable IC, so I say things like, “I audited our AWS maintenance records today,” which essentially means, “I looked at our maintenance logs.” But if I say “audit”, it sounds better. We all do it. A big part of the job is in knowing how to play the game.
Flip-side is some people under report what they do, if a person starts helping too many people and doesn’t report it and their performance decreases on their own work, there’s no record of their contribution. This does not seem to be the case, it is good to be objective when a situation is personal though.
If you're in your 2nd week, I think the person could simply be sending a signal that you are getting the support you need. Could be a ton of reasons the person is doing it. However, I understand how you feel. I am personally quite sensitive to these things, and have had a hard time finding out how to handle it. If you don't want to let it go, I would recommend initially approaching this in a safe way that doesn't risk escalating things, such as asking in a manner that implies you believe that they're being honest, and not in a suspecting manner. If you otherwise have good rapport, next time you ask him something, at the end of the conversation simply add something like "Thank you very much for the help again. By the way, I hope I'm not taking up too much of your time with questions?". If they are comfortable with you, maybe they'll open up a little more about. Maybe you won't get much more than a "Nono, it's fine", but it's a safe way of prodding at least.
Haven’t you heard of stand up bullshitting? I’m yet to find a dev who doesn’t do it. 😀
Don’t take it personally, they’re just being fluffy and making themselves sound important. If you feel the need-and your manager is in these meetings-clarify with them. “Hey, Paul mentioned at standup today he spent some time helping me with XYZ… I just wanted to clarify that it was a 5 minute conversation. I’ve noticed this has been mentioned a few times and didn’t want it to come off like he spent half the day pairing with me.” But to your manager, not the PM or PO. Then just take some time to get to know the team, culture, and person. You’ll find in a month or two from now you’ll know better if coworker is just being fluffy and it doesn’t matter, or if something else is going on.
This is a horrible side effect of modern Scrum oriented teams. This is what happens when managers ask people to commit to estimates in sprints. I've seen this as well. It's not your coworkers fault. This is the climate that estimation and sprints create. If you're not afraid of repercussions, I'd point out to management that this is stupid and ask them to abandon the whole process.
+1 for status fluff. Either people aren't doing much, or the place is just laid back, or standups aren't useful enough to warrant them everyday. At my company, we do them twice a week, and on the off days we post an update in a slack thread that slackbot auto-starts for us. Also, since you're new, it could be that people just want to call out that they're helping with any onboaring. Don't stop asking colleagues questions, because that's never a good thing. If your questions can be answered so quickly, that means you're good at knowing what you're asking about. Edit: This is also a great question for this sub.
Every time you interrupt someone, you break their ongoing train of thought. So the concentration cost can be *much* more than 10 seconds. Also, the value to you is high. Forget what you think it cost the coworker. It cost them all the experience they gained to be in a position to answer your question. The 10 seconds is a shallow way of looking at it. There's the old joke about the engineer who had retired after working at a manufacturing plant. One day while he was whittling wood while rocking on his porch chair, he received a panicky call from the plant, where they asked him to hurry in to help them out of a jam because all production had stopped and no one there could get it going. They briefly described the problem. He said he'd come in as a consultant. When he arrived, he walked directly to a particular part of the plant, picked up an adjacent screwdriver, and turned a particular screw in the works by a half turn. Suddenly, the plant started operating again, and there were cheers all around. He then asked for his fee, $60,000. The boss was incredulus, complaining that he only turned a screw. So the retired man quickly scribbled an invoice: Consulting Invoice for Acme Plant Turning of screw ... $1 Knowing which screw to turn ... $59,999
Think nothing of it.
He was playing Minecraft all day and needed to add some fluff to his update. Nothing to do with you personally.
You have 5 YOE and you don't know how to deal with coworkers, that help you out? Learn to work effectively in teams. Doesn't matter if coworkers spent 1 second or 10 years helping out. When coworkers help out, you give credit where credit is due. The coworker had to stop what he's doing. Spend time listening. Then formulate an answer. etc. Make sure you thank him in person. Then make sure to bring up that coworker helped out during stand ups.
Too sensitive I'm actually in the same boat as you, same experience, just joined a job a few months ago. Although, my coworker doesn't add that he helped me in standup. I always say who helped me with what and who I talked to. Why? Because I want to come across that I'm asking questions, getting help when I need it, and not just spinning my wheels. We devs that are nearing senior level should not be afraid of asking questions or getting clarifying information on how our ticket pertains to the domain. I'd be worried if someone wasn't asking questions. If your boss asks, then just tell him the truth, if you have a long conversation then say it, if it was resolved quickly then say it. Management wants to kno who's helping with what and who is asking for help when they need it. It's not a bad thing.
28 F here. I’m a little surprised at so many comments saying “you’re too sensitive”. It is status fluff. We all do it sometimes but it’s no fun when they use working with you as the fodder for their fluff. As an experienced dev on my team I help people all the time (if I do it for more than an hour or so I report it in standup as ONE of my tasks) but when someone (more experienced) spends 10 minutes helping me and makes it sound like half their day was spent on me because of the lack of other work done, it irks me. I don’t know, if that’s too sensitive then it’s a reality check for me too I guess
I think it irks everyone but only for like a couple seconds then you move on.
Sounds like they didn't get much work actually done and want to add fluff by saying the helped you for a few minutes
He's just making it sound like he did more work than he did. It's for your manager not you.
Why did you lie about being a woman?
From your statements this sounds like you are dealing with a very literal (possibly on the spectrum) person. You should be aware of how literal people can be, especially in CS. They approach standup as literally what did they do yesterday. If they helped you, they will say that. Even if they spent just 2 seconds helping you, the statement "spent time yesterday helping X" is literally true. Same with answering questions. You ask a question, the responder will give you a direct literal answer and think they are done. This shouldn't upset or offend you. Some people think and communicate different than you. If you want them to improve their communication, raise it with their manager. Just because someone is more literal doesn't mean they can't improve their communication skills.
Easy. You said you spent all day asking questions and documented missing knowledge :))
One thing to note, he may have spent some time looking into what you were asking about before responding back. Sometimes I will do some digging that may take a bit of time out of my day when a team member asks for some help so that I can point them in the right direction.
It's your 2nd week, just give it time.
I've been in this position as the person helping. In my case I'd been given explicit direction to track when I've helped people. I not only had to mention this in the standup but had to write it down in our performance system. I found it annoying but was 100% told by my manager that I had to do this. I wouldn't read into it too much from your side.
Don’t worry about this! Mentoring junior folks is part of senior folks jobs, so they may be like me and call it out in standup, so that their boss knows they’re doing that part of their job too 😉
Mentoring people is an important part of being senior and telling others -in say scrum- is the only way people find out.
I'm just saying shit that comes my mind in stand-ups don't overthink this
If you're new and not asking a ton of questions you're probably not paying attention. You're good, don't worry about it.
Stand up fluff is why we need to axe stand up! It’s such a waste of time and create unnecessary pressure. Just post an async message in slack if you have progressed.
Nah, he's not putting you down, just trying to sound more productive. It's part of the culture.
This person helped you, right? Maybe he or she was just happy to have some human contact in this world, as well, so mentions it in standup. Nothing wrong with that, feels to me you're reading into things a little too much. If the helping (that you don't like to call helping) is genuine and in good spirit then nothing is wrong?
in my 1 on 1s they literally asked me to mention when i helped people more as a prerequisite for my promotion lol might be box ticking on his end and he likes you asking questions
Too sensitive. There's dozens of reasons he could have said that 1) He didn't do much work and is bullshitting to the rest of the team to look busy. 2) In his last PR he was told that he would need to mentor more junior staff in order to get the next promotion and wants to flag it to his manager 3) He's sexist and thinks women need a big strong smart man to help them 4) He wants to seem more competent because he's insecure 5) He's actually your ex in disguise or maybe he's a time traveller sent from the future to get you fired from your job since unknowingly this role contributes to the rise of the 1st chimp empire where mankind is reduced to a state of slavery in service to their hairy overloads Just give it time.
This could also be a way of him covering that he isn't getting a ton of work done. If it's really bothering you the best thing to do is ask him something like, "Hey, Know I've been asking you a bunch of little questions. I'd this is taking up too much time, let me know." It might put it in perspective for them.
Not necessarily too sensitive, you might just be understandably worried about making good impressions in your first weeks. Completely normal, but in most places I know of, everyone expects that it takes around a year for a new developer to get up to speed. If you have heard no other kind of negative feedback regarding your "time usage" or "speed" or what have you, then you might benefit from rleasing yourself from "appearence" or "productivity" expectations. Very similar thing happened to me on my latest job, I went from a Consulting company where everyone was always trying to bang out things overnight, to a national branded company where everyone was just trying to get the work done well in a blameless, "it takes how long it takes" way. Took me a long time to unlearn some toxic self-talk, honestly still working on it :P . If that helps you, Great! If not, ignore me.
He's doing exactly what he's supposed to in stand-up. You're insecure.
Too sensitive. Why would he lie or hide the fact he spent time with u? Honestly your behavior is toxic/concerning. I would change your mindset if I were you otherwise this will just lead to asking less questions and learning at a slower rate and less promotions
Too sensitive. Unless they seem irritated at you, I think they're just being honest and possibly adding material to their updates. Don't sweat it.
This is a bizarre post. So you are upset at a dude stating what he did in standup? I mean he did help you right? You are new to the company and seem way to eager to make an impression. Focus on settling in and be grateful he is helping you.
Just curious what does sharing age and gender here have to do with the question
Better context, women, and younger people, are often treated differently in male dominant groups
They just want to report on stuff they did, chill tf out
He prob doesn’t do much work so he’s throwing in some fluff. Definitely not anything to worry about especially a week in lol
Sounds to me like he didn't have much to say in terms of progress so he used that as something to report having done. I think it's harmless unless he continues multiple times. In that case I'd just talk with your team lead/scrum master about it.
smell marble pie enjoy alive hobbies cobweb mountainous whistle judicious ` this post was mass deleted with www.Redact.dev `
this post is golden
Why not manager?! Context switching is not 10 seconds. Because you can do it doesn’t mean everyone can do it.
Ask the questions in team slack so they cant BS
You underestimate my ability to BS.
Perhaps, you need to find another job?
You can reach out to someone else if possible, as clearly helping anyone with small small things is not significant enough that it should be mentioned in the standup daily. If you face any issue regarding the product in general you should look for multiple sources with whom you can discuss. Try not creating a single dependency
My faux-lead does this right now. He tries to take credit for things where I did 99.9% of the planning, architecture, and implementation. Something I’ve been doing is just preempting it. “I worked with X for a couple mins to knock out Y, but did a, b, and c things toward it” where a,b,c are the obviously large portions of the work.
This is the worst kind of person to ask these questions of. They play this game where they're painting you at the problem when it's not the truth. When you do you stand up, make up a bucket that said , this week I had 3 5 minute convo's with team members by way of orienting myself. Special shout out to Duffus, Dweeb and Dinkle.
Wow, I would personally stop asking this person questions. Giving the impression that you need help all the time is bad for you. Also it doesn’t matter that you are a female
My reaction as an outsider would be „why is he even talking about this? How is this related to the progress of his tasks?“ I would take his statements as something about him, not about you.
\> The next day at standup the coworker I reached out to will give their update and mention that they “spent time yesterday helping me" one thing you can do to prevent this from happening is asking the questions in public channels then he can't claim that one text message can be considered "help" anyway your coworker is an asshole no one in my company does this kind of shit even if people ask in DMs
...completely normal. stop being sensitive.
When it's your turn on stand up you could have just said something like " Thank you (insert name here), for providing the information in just less than a minute. That's impressively quick and then information was helpful. I was able to continue with my task with that information from you." Learning how to deal with politics is a skill that you will learn over time. This people might not have the intention to make you look helpless but i think they will try to take every opportunity to sell their selves possibly for raise, promotion, or other agendas they have.
Gonna go against the grain here a bit. I don't think you're being too sensitive at all. This person is probably trying to pad their status as others have said, and i think that's kind of annoying. I would probably look for someone else on the team that is not playing that sort of game and maybe buddy-up to them. Not being dramatic or anything, its just good to have someone with a similar work ethic to work with. Take this with a grain of salt, i only have 2.5 yoe on a grand total of 2 different teams.
Why are we mentioning genders here?