Having a Rough Couple of Weeks
I spent some time this morning going over my Git commit logs trying to find out what I've been doing in the last two weeks - and then converting those into decent posts - at least as decent as I could make them in hind-sight. The reason for all this is the re-org, and the resulting group that's I've been thrust into. It's not a pretty sight - and I've seen this far too many times in my professional life to think it's going to end well.
I had a conversation with the larger group about why I see so many git force push messages in HipChat. I'm sure there's a reason, and it's part of some work-flow - I just haven't used that, and it seems pretty harsh to be used so often. Fact is, their reason was that it just made the commits "prettier". That they wanted to edit their commits like they edit their code.
I was silent because that was almost certainly one of the most insane things I've heard in a long time. Yes, by all means, let's risk the corruption of the git repo on the server because you didn't take time to think about what you were doing before you decided to commit it. Yeah, that's a good plan.
Better yet - let's make it part of the standard work-flow that you teach new developers. Yeah, that's a great idea. I just can't wait to start messing things up because I refuse to put forth the effort to think about what I'm doing prior to doing it.
In another meeting, one of the other developers felt that a Core Value of the new group should be that... and I quote: We all should have fun. Yeah... I don't even have to respond to this because unlink this developer, I understand the point of a public company, and that they really aren't in existence to make their employees happy - or make sure they have fun - they are in the business of making money.
I tried to say that fun is a great thing to have, but holding it up as the reason we're doing - and not doing - things is kinda crazy. That we don't have to have fun to get work done. It would be nice - but it's not necessary. Flew right over his head.
And the odd thing is that this is not a bad guy - well... I've heard he's a good guy, so I want to believe that my assessment of him to date is way off, but when he goes on about how I couldn't be more wrong... well... it's hard to give him the benefit of the doubt - or write it off to a miscommunication or something.
Nope, I'm in a group that doesn't seem to share a single value I have. They think it's acceptable risk to have git force push in their workflows, and they think that they have to have fun or they don't have to work. Wacky.
It's been hard to get things done, and if I took their lead, I wouldn't have done a thing - but thankfully, I didn't, and did a good chunk of work each day. In the end, I need off this group. I like the work, I just can't stand the management and co-workers any longer.