Helping Folks Can Really Slow You Down
I've been given the opportunity to see if a developer in the Shop would be a better fit for the project I'm working on than the one he's currently on. Well... sure. I think to myself - why not? Well... the answer to that question is, of course, that adding this person to the group would slow me down to the point that I miss every deadline I've promised, and drive me to the brink of sanity.
I'm not sure what I'd call this personality, but it's an interesting mix. There's skill there to be sure. But getting that skill out is a very time-consuming operation. I'm not sure it's really worth it, as the work seems to be something I end up re-writing anyway, but it's based on a decent set of skills. Just bad ideas, I guess.
So I'm working with him to try and see if I can correct the problems - thinking they aren't that severe. After all, if they got here, the theory is they are valuable, right? So they are worth saving, right? At least those are the assumptions I'm working under.
So I'm asking him to have a look at some unit tests, and write a few more. This is how I like to introduce new developers to the codebase. It gives them an idea of how the code looks, how the tests are built, and how to compile and run the code on a very baby steps approach. It's been a pretty good approach for me so far.
For this guy it didn't seem to help a lot. I still had to do a lot of re-writing. More importantly, the designs, which should have been simple and small extensions to the existing objects, were instead complex, tangled messes of code. I don't think I've ever seen as bad an extension to a class as I've seen here. He just didn't even seem to try to look at the existing code and make his like it in any way.
But while this is all understandable, and I can re-write anything, the big surprise to me is the time it takes to talk to this person. It's measured in hours. Really. It's not like this is someone that can take an idea or two and run with it. Nope. It's got to be argued over and over again - and then, he'll do something about it. The code is bad, yes, but the time sink is really what pains me.
I'm throwing away large chunks of my day to this person, and I'm not sure any of it is doing any good. It's as if there's nothing being really transferred from me to him. He's not learning from the corrections I'm making to his code, and he's not learning from the talks we're having. I've had talks with people in his previous group here at The Shop, and they are tickled pink that he's with me now. They are guessing it saves them three hours a day to have this person off their team.
I'm being a good corporate citizen and doing what I'm asked, but I've already alerted my manager and the project lead that this person is going to double all my time estimates. I don't know what they are going to do, but until they tell me something, he's my problem and I need to come up with some way to at least keep the conversations to a minimum.
Yikes. I had no idea what I was getting into.