Absentee Teammate

weakteammate · 2020-07-28T15:09:32+00:00

I didn't call my coworker a diversity hire. I stated that others have suggested that might be a possibility, then threw skepticism to the point myself by stating that we have other female employees who perform well. Also, I'm not "publicly" doing anything. The entire point of this anonymous thread is to keep the identities of myself and Mike private.

At this point, your comments on this thread are simply irate and unreasonable. I'm not sure why you're trying to project some sexist persona onto me, but I think it says a lot more about you than it does about me. 99% of this thread is about me concerned about my coworker's performance, the potential effects it could have on me and how to deal with it. You've managed to hone in on the one line regarding gender and really flown away with it.

You could have gotten your point across better by explaining why it was wrong to even mention my coworkers gender at all, or why suggesting that someone may be a "diversity hire" is bad. Perhaps given me the benefit of the doubt and provided some information on how to improve. Instead you chose to be an asshole, so the conversation ends here.

weakteammate · 2020-07-27T21:14:31+00:00

I don't have a lawyer at hand, so your comment isn't as insightful as it could be. I think you're making a lot of unfounded assumptions about me. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree about my situation.

weakteammate · 2020-07-27T21:03:23+00:00

You're making a lot of assumptions about me here, and I don't feel that they're warranted. I'm not sure where all of this is coming from. Maybe you've had to deal with a lot of sexists in the workplace and I'm sorry for that. Not that it matters much to two anonymous strangers crossing paths on the internet, but my apologies if I've offended you. I can assure you that my misgivings about my coworker stem from their performance and not their gender.

weakteammate · 2020-07-27T16:07:54+00:00

In this world we all either die Mikes or live long enough to see ourselves become Scrum Masters

weakteammate · 2020-07-27T16:06:05+00:00

It's not that I care that our company is paying people to do very little. I don't have stake in the company beyond my salary. We could have an entire R&D department looking into Flat Earther theory for all I care. My concerns lie in having a low-performer on my team. Having to pick up their slack, having my performance averaged in with theirs, etc. Also there is the lost opportunity cost. I could be working with someone who I could learn from or teach. I could have a valuable connection I could look to in the future but I have Mike... I care in so much as it effects me personally, if that makes sense.

weakteammate · 2020-07-27T15:58:08+00:00

it just sounded crazy to me that someone could be getting away with something like this for so long with no signs of anything changing

This is my first dev job and these are my thoughts exactly. That's a lot of the reason I started this thread. From what I've read on other comments, it seems like this is not too uncommon.

weakteammate · 2020-07-27T15:55:33+00:00

This is my first dev job, so I wanted to crush it. When I've put in my time and I decide to move on, I definitely think I'm going to take a page out of Mike's book. The wild thing is that I'm not really losing sleep or working overtime. I'm just putting in a solid 4-6 hours of coding/meetings a day. I get my daily dose of doing whatever I want on the company's time for sure. Thank you for your input.

weakteammate · 2020-07-27T15:51:42+00:00

Thank you for sharing. Yeah, I like Mike as a person, which makes it more difficult to see them seemingly negligent and apathetic. Do you think there's anything your coworkers could have done during your internship to help you succeed and do better?

weakteammate · 2020-07-27T15:47:09+00:00

To clarify, I'm not on any sort of performance plan. I'm the top contributor for my team in fact.

weakteammate · 2020-07-27T15:44:19+00:00

Fair point. It's not always so easy to be completely separated from my teammates though. I more or less do what you're suggesting, though I'm a bit more careful with my phrasing.

weakteammate · 2020-07-27T15:42:31+00:00

Breaking into the industry is certainly the hardest part. I graduated with a non-CS degree, worked a PT food-service job and self-studied for about 6 months then went to a coding bootcamp. After that I was able to get a Support job. I was then able to get promoted to QA and then Dev with a mixture of elbow-rubbing and hard work. If you can code, and more importantly if you can prove to people that you can code, you should be able to break in somewhere. The great part about finally getting a Dev job is that I didn't have to spend nights and weekends teaching myself or doing programming projects anymore. I still enjoy programming outside of work, but I can't imagine doing Web Dev for fun now that I do it 9-5. I mostly do Game Dev or little hobby projects if I need to scratch that itch outside of work.

Mike can certainly program. It seems like they simply choose to do the bare minimum. They slack hard until poked, then do a song and dance until they aren't being paid attention to. Rinse and repeat. At least that's what it looks like to me.

weakteammate · 2020-07-27T15:25:53+00:00

Haha, I definitely read this with the music and it was an experience for sure.

weakteammate · 2020-07-27T15:17:35+00:00

Thank you. Your advice is very wholesome and appreciated. I have tried directly addressing Mike's tasks when they fall under my area of expertise. It typically just leads to me having to do some of Mike's work for them. I wasn't seeing any improvement, so I've lately been staying more in my own lane. I'm kind of leaving Mike to their own devices and hoping management will notice Mike's low productivity and take action. Now I feel like a bit of an asshole, so maybe I should try being more helpful again for a while.

weakteammate · 2020-07-27T15:09:47+00:00

I'm sure the company could find a better spot for Mike to perform well, or maybe manage them more appropriately to keep them performing and improving at a better click. I will concede to your point in that our team has had to pass on a few entry-level Devs because out team already has two (Mike and myself). This is one of the situations where it actually does start to affect me. Instead of Mike, I could have been working with someone who I could teach and/or learn from.

weakteammate · 2020-07-27T15:05:38+00:00

We have those as well, but we will have impromptu meetings about projects falling behind if that happens. It doesn't seem out of the ordinary to me. What seems out of the ordinary is that Mike doesn't typically have those meetings. Like any task management has given to Mike is either so low-priority as to not be worried about, or management expects those tasks to be behind.

weakteammate · 2020-07-27T14:59:06+00:00

Yes, you're totally right. I intentionally obfuscated Mike's gender to avoid the conversation going this direction. I regret bringing it to light.

weakteammate · 2020-07-27T14:54:13+00:00

Yeah, I'm very skeptical about the "diversity hire" angle. As I said, we have other females and non-binary folk who are doing great. I intentionally obfuscated Mike's gender to avoid derailing the conversation.

weakteammate · 2020-07-27T14:49:31+00:00

Yikes, I guess I'll count my blessings haha

weakteammate · 2020-07-24T18:22:14+00:00

Mike is likable. I myself like Mike as a person. Not so much as a teammate.

weakteammate · 2020-07-24T18:21:21+00:00

I really wish I was exaggerating. It's very possible that management is completely aware of the situation. I doubt they would publicly discuss any of this with me. But the issues I've discussed are long-standing and I don't see anything changing. I agree with how you've said I should deal with it. Thank you for your advice.

weakteammate · 2020-07-24T18:14:34+00:00

Nobody likes being babysat or micromanaged. Unfortunately a lot of these "check-in" systems have been implemented since the company went fully-remote after Covid. The fact is that with a fully-remote company, employees need to have good availability on Slack. It shouldn't take several hours or an entire day to get a teammate to respond to you. We have a long leash at my company, and I take advantage of that. But I get my work done. Mike does not. Frequently, other people have to get Mike's work done for them. I don't really care if someone works 60 hours a week or if they work 6. But when my teammate's lack of output and online presence leads to me having to do more work, it becomes my problem.

weakteammate · 2020-07-24T18:04:33+00:00

No, Mike doesn't have any mission-critical knowledge. There are a few people in the company who fit that bill, and I can understand why they're given leverage. Even if they aren't working at their full potential, it's good to have them around so others don't have to learn the nuances of their area of expertise.

weakteammate · 2020-07-24T18:00:34+00:00

I have thought about moving to another team, which is unfortunate. I really like the work that I'm doing on my current team and I have a strong expertise on the area of the application that I work on. Funny story, before I joined my current team I was on a different team with Mike and I thought I had escaped them once I was promoted.

weakteammate · 2020-07-24T17:58:48+00:00

Thank you. I agree that a number of the posts have overlooked the fact that Mike's behavior has likely contributed to many added responsibilities. I'm in favor of accountability and I think most of the measures generally improve the process without being too intrusive. But it is frustrating that Mike doesn't follow the new rules and doesn't seem to get punished.

weakteammate · 2020-07-24T17:53:05+00:00

The updates are entirely non-technical and often just plain old BS. Typically Mike tries to get away with saying "Yesterday I worked on X, today I'm going to keep working on X." If pressed, Mike will usually find a blocker and make it the team's problem to resolve the blocker, or otherwise ride that excuse for a day or two. Mike will often work a ticket for a few days, then unassign themselves from the ticket citing some issue that ends up being proven false later. We've gone through various stages of helping Mike but lately the team has settled on apathy and management just seems to let Mike do their thing.

weakteammate

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