I Wonder If I Should Wear a Bell?
When I thought my cow-like appearance to my manager couldn't possibly get any worse, today happened, and I just feel like starting to wear a bell. No joke, I had no idea how bad it could get in the span of a day. It's stunning.
Recap: When Two Days is Too Long
Previously on The Farm... yesterday my manager stopped by and asked me to implement this new feature into my web app. It was a reasonable request, and I didn't think it'd take too long, but it wasn't just a configuration change, either. Basically, I'm using the H2 database as an in-memory database for a Tomcat web app and it's working pretty well for me. When I was asked a while back to add in alerts for conditions in the data stream, it seemed logical to use the database triggers capability of H2 to do the job. That way, I just deal with the stream of data regardless of it's source. Seemed pretty slick, and it is.
The problem was, this new request was to add the same kind of alerting to a different data stream - also in the H2 in-memory database, but a different table structure. Now as any database guy will tell you, converting a trigger from one table to another one with different columns, etc. is possible, and not too complex, but it's not something you can do in five minutes. Especially when you've got something as complex as the configurable and flexible alerting system I created.
So I said "Yeah, I can do that... sometime between two days and two weeks."
"Really! Come on... you can do it in a day, Right?" he said squinting and showing his displeasure with the answer I had just given him.
"Nope, that's a pretty decent time because you'll want me to have all the capabilities of the other, which means I need to generalize some things, and that's at least a few days."
He left, disappointed that I hadn't said "2 hours", and leaving me with the distinct impression that he thought I was sandbagging, or lying, or at least an ungrateful piece of meat (a.k.a. a Cow).
The Ole End-Around
This morning I was talking to a teammate and he said that our manager told him to ask me about adding this feature to the system. Immediately I was very defensive - did he seriously not believe me when I said it's take two days? Did he think so little of me to ask a guy that doesn't know this codebase one tenth as well as I did? What was going on here? But this wasn't my teammate's fault, so I tried to remain calm.
"Yeah, Steve, I know... He talked to be about it and told him two days. I guess he didn't like that number so he's asking you."
At this point, Steve clearly looks caught in the middle of things. I can relate. He had no idea what was going on as he wasn't involved in the previous conversation, but was hip-deep in it now. So we talk for just a minute or two, and then I decide to pull in our manager again.
"Ralph, I hear you're asking Steve about the feature we talked about yesterday."
"Yeah, we really need it - maybe he can throw it into Hemlock. Maybe he can put it into another page..."
I can clearly see what's happening, this feature isn't important to our group. It's important to another group, but by giving them something they don't have, Ralph looks like a RockStar. Good for Ralph. But he's doing it on the backs of us - he's not capable of doing this, and it's making me madder by the second to think that all he cares about is how "cool" he cal look to the other people here without giving any consideration to his people.
"Fine, Ralph, I'll put it in the other page, and it'll be a highlighted row." And off I went to start coding this up.
So Once Again, You Really Want This?
I code at a fever pitch to get this done because I'm also seeing emails start to fly around about another change coming, and while I didn't have a lot of time to respond to the emails, I did have a few responses to try and limit the work, but at each turn Ralph was saying we needed to do more, not less.
But I got the changes in and started testing them. Amazingly, I didn't have any real issues and it worked just exactly ass I planned. Guess there's something to this "experience" thing. So I then asked Ralph "Ralph, can you get the values from the business for the filter?" as I had in dummy values, but needed the real ones before I pushed the code to Testing.
"OK, I'll go get them." and off he went.
When he came back, he had a little sheepish look on his face and started to explain: "When I first asked Goose he liked the idea, but then Ice Man said it's not going to work because it's not on all the trader's desktops. Sorry..."
Basically, I had wasted half the day. Totally wasted for a feature Ralph was sure we needed to deliver to "look good", and it turns out, it's just a waste of my time.
Man, I was not happy.
But the day wasn't over, while I was doing this work, I saw in the email chain that Ralph had promised that I could get this other work done TOO!
Ralph's Looking Good: Part Deux
I couldn't spend any time worrying about the lost time, I had to get these other changes into two systems and get several things updated and then deploy a few things. It wasn't hard, but it took me several hours to make sure I got it right and that things would work.
When I was about half way done, and saw that I'd have to stay late, I asked "Hey, what's the rush on this? Why does this have to go in tonight?" And no one seemed to have an answer... but Ralph was conspicuously absent. So I had to trudge on...
As I was entering my 12th hour of work, I finally got things done and checked out. I had wasted half a day on a useless feature, and then hurried through the addition ov several data sources to the systems just to make Ralph happy - more like make him look good to others.
As I was getting ready to leave, I asked Ralph if he had a few minutes... he tried to say he was sorry, but I said "Let's go have a talk", and I walked into an empty office.
What followed was my feelings about his actions of the last few days.
- the feeling of being massively manipulated about the feature addition with Steve
- the feeling that I was lying or sandbagging about the two day time required - and what's wrong with two days? Is it really that much to ask?
- the agreement "for me" as to what I could get done in a day - again manipulated
- the feeling of disrespect, trivialization of my work, and general "Cow-ness" by him
In the end, I didn't ask for his explanations, but he was trying to get them in anyway. I didn't want to hear it. I wanted to state my case and then leave. So I did.
I wonder if I should wear a bell tomorrow?