A Bit of Personal Growth – Keeping My Mouth Shut
Today I was in a meeting about a service/project and realized that the best thing I could do was to keep my big mouth shut. This is a big step in personal growth for me, folks. There are a lot of ways to write systems - lots. You can do the huge design docs and then go off in a room and code, you can sit with the users and have them involved from the jump, lots of ways. But today I ran into yet another person that wanted to do what they thought was best - regardless of what the users were asking for.
This isn't new. Letting technology drive the project is common, and often a horrible mistake. Today I saw a user of this project ask (twice) for a C++ wrapper for the low-level RPC calls that the group felt was their interface. I would have written the wrapper before it was asked for, but that's OK, being asked isn't so bad.
But this manager said they were going to write it. Several people very gently objected, and it was still maintained that this was what was going to be delivered.
The funny thing is, they have to write some kind of wrapper in order to test their code, so why not take a few more days, make it nice, and let everyone have it? Don't know the answer to that one, but I was glad that I saw what I saw as it led me to believe that my opinion wasn't being requested (on this topic), and I should therefore just let them do what they want.
In the end, I can write a wrapper for the service, and probably will. If someone wants to use it, great, if not, then that's OK too. I'm not trying to make my stuff used in every project in the Shop. I'm just interested in doing a good job.
After the meeting I talked with my Manager - a nice guy that's trying to understand my point of view. After about 30 mins of talking to him I think I made it clear as to why I was feeling the way I was, and why it was futile for me to try and express those opinions and feelings to the group responsible for the project - it'd be completely unwanted and make me look like a judgmental individual.
While the latter may be true, it's not exactly the point. They asked for feedback on the project, someone asked for something that was very reasonable for them to provide, and it was rejected. Period. End of story. Done.
I really don't like working with people like this, but there are people like this in all walks of life. You just have to do your best to identify them and hope you don't have to deal with this too awfully much.