New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Direct report is a senior beginner
Ask HN: Direct report is a senior beginner
6 by throwawayMnbv2 | 5 comments on Hacker News.
I was hired to manage a software development team that was said to be in deep trouble (lots of rework, bugs, production outages due to new releases, complete unknown backlog, etc). This team is small and one member has been working at this company for 7 years. He was transferred from a few areas and ended up in this team, where management mostly left him alone. On one hand, he requires a lot of handholding if you want to ensure good deliveries. You have to communicate extremely well or the tiniest uncertainty will push him into creating a really complex solution (this happened a few times in a couple of months). In this regard, he displays the knowledge of a junior engineer. On the other hand, he has many years of experience and the "senior" title. The problem is he doesn't know what he doesn't know and just assumed things. Often, he will figuratively go into his cave and come out with something that lacks tests, documentation, doesn't meet performance, will require a lot of babysitting when it's deployed to production, etc... and he gets angry when people start asking questions (that's my job so he's angry at me often). So he's an advanced beginner, for a lack of better term. Any advice? How much time should I give for him to adapt?
6 by throwawayMnbv2 | 5 comments on Hacker News.
I was hired to manage a software development team that was said to be in deep trouble (lots of rework, bugs, production outages due to new releases, complete unknown backlog, etc). This team is small and one member has been working at this company for 7 years. He was transferred from a few areas and ended up in this team, where management mostly left him alone. On one hand, he requires a lot of handholding if you want to ensure good deliveries. You have to communicate extremely well or the tiniest uncertainty will push him into creating a really complex solution (this happened a few times in a couple of months). In this regard, he displays the knowledge of a junior engineer. On the other hand, he has many years of experience and the "senior" title. The problem is he doesn't know what he doesn't know and just assumed things. Often, he will figuratively go into his cave and come out with something that lacks tests, documentation, doesn't meet performance, will require a lot of babysitting when it's deployed to production, etc... and he gets angry when people start asking questions (that's my job so he's angry at me often). So he's an advanced beginner, for a lack of better term. Any advice? How much time should I give for him to adapt?
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