Starting the Day Off with Conflict – Not So Great
It's always nice to start off the day nicely. A nice run, something fun on the computer, maybe a nice breakfast, but today I got all this and a little more - a manager who thinks he can code. But he can't. I've been placed in the position of Technical Lead pf this project, and I have to work within the management style of the team's existing manager. He's a decent guy, I suppose. He's not the kind of guy I'd have over for dinner, but I'm sure he means well, in his own way. But he fancies himself the coder. Maybe he was, in a different environment, but here and now, he's just so-so, and he doesn't approve of my technical management style. So he goes around it - he does whatever he wants, and thinks I'll have to accept it.
He doesn't know me as well as he should.
Well... he thinks he knows me pretty well, but this morning, he's learned that he really doesn't. I told him the work he's done was already done in another class, and over email he tried to convince me it hadn't. I told him it had, and asked him not to write any more code until I told him to. Because I'm putting this together on the fly, and on a very short timeline, there are things I haven't designed, and won't for a few days, but I'll get there, and when I do we'll write the headers and then flesh out the code.
If he's capable, then he might get a header to flesh out, but I've had too much trouble on this project, letting people write headers as they take far too long, and don't get the important ideas captured in the class. So I'm writing the headers, and they are fleshing them out.
This isn't ideal, but it's the best we can do on short-notice. If I had three months to finish this, I'd let them have more involvement in the writing of the headers - which is the fundamental design. But I don't. I'm supposed to be done today. But we won't be done today. We'll be on a rush until this is done. There's just no time to wait for the learning experience. I didn't make the deadline, I'm just trying to get the work done on time.
So I get to start off the day with conflict. It's a drag, really. I try to be nice. I try to be supportive, but if, as happened this morning, the person isn't really interested in listening or being reasonable, well... then there isn't a lot I can do other than be blunt and tell them to just stop coding. They don't like it because they believe themselves to be beyond the need for supervision, which is, of course, part of the problem. So it gets ugly, and I'm the "bad guy", and so it goes.
I'm asked to do an unreasonable job, and take it very seriously. I have to be a bit unreasonable to get the job done, and people get upset. Of course, they get upset at me because they don't see the cause-and-effect of the unreasonable request and my actions. But it's there. They just refuse to see it. They'd rather blame me.
And so it goes...
What a way to start a day.