Soft Skills Engineering - Episode 284: Slow mentee ramp-up and quit before new job?

Episode Date: December 27, 2021

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: I started working at a new company last month. I’m just under senior level (I-II-III-Sr) and I am working on a project with someone slightly more junior, who started there a few months earlier, to help them complete a project on time. Despite my best efforts, I can’t get on the same page with them. They ignore half of my suggestions, don’t give me straight answers to my questions, take forever to review pull requests, and are making very little progress each day without reaching out for help. I am not certain what to do, but I’m worried I’ll leave a bad impression with my new manager (who is actually pretty reasonable, I’m just paranoid) by missing the deadline, which is in checks watch 1 week. Any suggestions? Should I quit my job? (leave that option off the table for now) I hate my current job and cannot see myself working here for more than a few months. Is it better to find a new job before quitting? If I quit tomorrow with no offers from other companies, how does this affect salary negotiation for a new job while I’m currently unemployed? Finance-wise, I’m stable enough to not be working for months to a year but I am worried about not having current employment putting me at a disadvantage in my job search. Not working would definitely free up my time and energy (which is being steadily drained each day) to prepare for interviews. I recently got a raise and promotion to a senior role too. Does quitting shortly after look bad on a resume? I could coast for the next few months in my current job while I search for a new one but I feel like this would be in bad faith. It takes a long time to actually fire someone at my company for performance, even if I barely do any work. Thanks for reading my question. Love the show.

it takes more than giving a thumbs down on a user story to be a great engineer this is episode 284 of the soft skills engineering podcast i'm your host jameson dance i'm your host dave smith soft skills engineering is a weekly advice show where we answer your non-technical questions about the technical field of software development and also this intro was generated by machine learning which is why it is vaguely nonsensical but also sort of sensical it's it's pretty sensical i'd say i think it's pretty good it kind of it made me think about so you can kind of snidely deny someone's pull request by giving them a thumbs down but just move that ahead earlier in the development cycle to now doing that to a to a story someone writes well i think this is just

the machine knowing that human beings are always trying to push all development activity to the left ah what would the name for this be for the for what for the action of pushing something to the left project management ops or something like that how do we add the word ops to this because i feel like that's usually what pushing stuff to the left turns into when you name it right oh yeah compliance ops right that's when you add an automated scanner that's always wrong to some build pipeline right i think it would be called checkbox ops checkbox ops that's compliance check ops which also kind of sounds like checks the cereal which brings me happy memories so i like it i was thinking of checkoff from the original star trek oh is that that's not the

checkoff from checkoff's gun right oh i don't think so i think that's a playwright and i'm pretty sure that that's not a star trek human no it's not and once again we have uh now revealed the glaring amount of daylight between my cultural levels and jameson's cultural levels so bright that gap is just like streaming in sunlight i can barely see i'm squinting yes but i feel more cultured because because my checkoff is from performing arts that that don't have latex costumes on yeah now just just to be clear this was nothing more than me saying how much more cultured you are than i am oh okay got it i agree okay let's let's keep going do you want to thank our patrons dave i do we've got weekly shout outs for andrew pollack the yeet your job podcast

avery sterzi ian walter aaron arun duna kashokton ohio cameron hall ira chan the monkey face emoji jonathan king testing is documenting.org fizzbuzz influencer oladapofadiyi karen svainson will angel ragnar harteson nick hathaway travis anders dennis bogdan of braden canes john grant i bought winrar nick kantar and philip john basile if you'd like to join this illustrious crew or just join our slack community where you can talk and see machine learning generated podcast intros go to soft skills.audio and click the support us on patreon button and you can support the or not support well you can support the podcast but you can also join the hundreds and hundreds of people who have joined this really awesome community there's a holiday party next week happening in the soft

skillets community you can join them by contributing any dollar amount greater than zero but strictly greater than not equal to zero and we'll send you a slack invite the first week of every month the holiday party will have already happened by the time you get your slack invite though that is true you will miss the holiday clear right so the fomo the whole purpose of this little monologue was to build fomo so that you'll quickly rush and click that button it's a 2022 holiday party that's right you'll be there this time all right should i read our first question go for it this is from an anonymous listener who says i started working at a new company last month i'm just under senior level and then they write out the levels one two three

senior and i am working on a project with someone slightly more junior who started there a few months earlier to help them complete the project on time despite my best efforts i can't get on the same page with them they ignore half my suggestions don't give me straight answers to my questions take forever to review pull requests and are making very little progress each day without reaching out for help i'm not certain what to do but i'm worried i'll leave a bad impression with my new manager who's actually pretty reasonable i'm just paranoid i'm missing the deadline, which is in checks my watch one week. So it's too late now. That's what I'm gathering. Right. Pretty sure this is more than one week old. Any suggestions? Should I quit my

job? Leave that option off the table for now. Okay. So you started just a month ago and your manager immediately paired you up to help another developer who started a few months ago to get a project done did i read that right i think so yeah so you're both pretty new someone slightly more junior started there a few months earlier i'm gonna assume you were just paired up on a project and it's not it's not that you were brought in to help this struggling developer finish the project on time but rather it's just a sign to both of you to get done does that seem right i'll allow it okay motion passed okay when i was reading out these levels do you ever remember something embarrassing that you have done in the past wait have you ever done anything embarrassing

let me start there uh i'm talking to dave smith so okay more yes okay so i i am winning in culture you are winning in life well if if you can imagine yourself as the kind of person who ever does anything embarrassing that sounds theoretically possible yeah talking to someone the other day at work and we were talking about senior developers and i said a senior developer like spanish and not on purpose like some kind of clever cool joke just you know how i say the wrong words all the time on this podcast that happens in not podcast life too yeah so i have nothing to go on from there just like i didn't when i said senior and instead of senior in this very serious work conversation with someone okay and this just the one two three senior made you

think of that yeah just one two three senor senor yeah senor it was italian right uh that's true i guess it could be a bunch of stuff yeah one of those romance languages wait yes those are romance languages right they are nailed it okay yes one of the romance languages okay yeah see you're just as cultured as i am okay because i knew the word romance languages are anyways advice dispensed i i can see the dilemma here because one solution could be like go tattletale go complain to your manager yeah oh this other person is bad they're doing bad work and they're ruining everything and that is one potential option but it also feels kind of bad especially if you're the more senior person in the partnership yes you might feel like you have some kind of responsibility to

help mentor this person and probably i'm trying to think of a phrase to describe this all i can think of is this holes in my brain that's the summary of most of the stuff i say all i can think of is there's this phrase in portuguese that's it says basically to burn someone's film that's when you like i don't know tell on someone or spread bad news about someone else you're trying to figure out how to do this without burning their film okay this is amazing just first of all i want to say this is the second time i think on this podcast you've mentioned this reference to a portuguese figure of speech and secondly are you just like humble bragging about how your culture actually expands to multiple languages and nationalities like it's

not just i mean we've already referenced russian literature brazilian figures of speech if all of those together covered one normal person's understanding of their own culture i feel like i could brag about it but it's more like i just have gaping just voids in my in my head and then some tiny part of them are filled with random facts from the world from from the world that's outside of most people's sphere so you're like but i don't know who chekhov is from star trek or i call my daughter my mother-in-law's name sometime or pretty regularly several times a day i'll be trying to tell my daughter hey come eat this food and i'll say come eat this and then a word that isn't anything edible this happens all the time like i'm thinking about maybe she needs

to get her jacket on next and so i tell her come eat this jacket and she thinks it's hilarious and she's like my dad is so dumb and you're like oh yeah well i know what chekhov's knife who's dumb now yeah yeah she's like you're still dumb yeah i am i accept it okay okay anyway so you don't want to burn their film yes exactly got it perfect okay and burning their film means basically embarrassing them yeah you're gonna you're gonna kind of ruin their reputations sort of like tattle on them kind of yeah like you don't want to throw them i think maybe throwing them under the bus yeah kind of the american version it's sort of like that but it's more like yeah it's it's sort of like tattle slash throw under the bus okay hence why i need to use this

this portuguese phrase right because obviously i can't say tattle slash throw under the bus because that that's yeah english american english is like a 20 minute long explanation of how my brain doesn't work right exactly oh my goodness oh okay so so i'm thinking about what's the ideal outcome here the ideal outcome is you and this other developer just started within the last few months of this company your manager gives you a project you both work together so in just such perfect harmony you finish each other's sandwiches and then the end of the project you deliver on time under budget you wow the customer and then you both just kind of hold hands stand in front of the audience and then you take this parallel bow where you know you both bow but you're still holding hands you

know what i'm saying yeah yeah like end of a play yes yeah the the two leads of this amazing production and that's just not going to happen here you know unless they listen very carefully to what dave is about to say next well i was just about to go i was just about to describe how you can make sure that this project's failure is not your fault oh okay you'll take the solitary bow Yeah. Or it's more like your coworker will get booed very loudly and then you'll just kind of wave and no reaction. Right. By comparison, it'll look great. Exactly. It sounds to me like we have an engagement problem with this other person. I mean, it's one thing to ignore your suggestions and then deliver anyway, but it's another thing to ignore my suggestions, avoid my questions,

not review my pull requests make no progress you know that's a totally different story i've worked with people who ignore my suggestions but who get a lot of stuff done anyway they're great you know i don't actually care if you follow my suggestions if you're super productive but if you also don't get anything done we have a problem and and boy i think that's what's happening here is we have somebody who is either incapable or unwilling to do this job for any number of reasons you think this is a work from home not actually do the work type of thing i was just thinking yes for any number of reasons including they have another job yeah yeah that that's that's an astute observation that they seem pretty disengaged one thing you could do is talk

about your manager would rather know earlier that there are potential risks to the project than later that's a pretty general principle that talking about it earlier is usually better agree so if you feel like there is a a risk to the project delivering on time you can just bring it up to your manager to give them a heads up and and say hey we're having some problems with the project it's not gonna we're i'm worried we're not gonna hit our deadline and if you keep it focused on the project i feel like it's pretty reasonable to be able to say i don't know we're not collaborating well. We have these long cycle times to review pull requests and get them merged in and talk about the behaviors that your coworker is engaging in without saying,

hey, manager, my coworker's being bad. You're trying to let them know, hey, there's this risk to the project. Here's why. And maybe they can do something to resolve it. I totally agree. Failing projects are bad, but there's something that's much worse, which is a surprised failing project the project you thought was fine until the due date right and it's like oh suddenly this green status indicator turned red on the very last day huh you know i i would in this case i would approach my manager and talk about my co-worker but the way that i frame this conversation would be very different from hey my co-worker is not pulling my pulling their weight my co-worker is not pulling my weight as well that would be a bad conversation

that'd be hilarious i just i want to be disengaged and not do this work but my co-worker is just not stepping up and doing all my work for me maybe that's what they're saying about you right yeah little did you know there's been a bunch of conversations happening about how bad you are yeah oh boy i think most engineers wouldn't do that but that sure would suck anyway no here's how i would approach that conversation with my manager i would say hey i want to help this project be successful so state that just lay that out as number one i want this project to be successful there are some headwinds right now that i am trying to overcome but i need your help in coaching me on how i can best overcome them and then the manager will be like oh i am really

good at coaching i love coaching tell me what these headwinds are and then you list out some very specific examples. Maybe just pick the three most poignant examples of what this person has done to put this project at risk and say whatever they are. Example one, this developer took seven days to review my pull request for this one example. Or example two, they have the simple task that I would expect to take a day, but they're four days into it. And then say, if this trend continues, I fear we're going to ship late. Help give me some ideas. Maybe you know some things I don't know. Help give me some ideas to make this project successful. And you will accomplish maybe two or three things with this conversation. The first one is you will make your

manager aware that this project is at risk without telling them this project is at risk, which is great. Number two, you will also make your manager aware that your peer is not pulling their weight without telling them my peer is not pulling their weight. And number three, your manager will now actually be a partner with you in helping solve this problem instead of being your adversary who you're going to have to report to when this thing fails. I like it. Would you talk to your co worker about it first? I probably would. Yeah. I mean, I think in this case, you could sit down with them and have a heart to heart and share those exact same examples and say, I have an expectation for these things to go faster, and for us to work better. But that expectation isn't really being

met right now. Why do you think that is? See what they say? Yeah. In fact, that's a that's a really good idea, Jameson, because I think it could very well be that there's something serious in this person's life that you need to be aware of that's going to make them unproductive like maybe they just got a really serious illness death in the family or any number of things that they aren't they haven't told you about yeah it's also possible that they have other at their same job work commitments like yeah i don't know i don't know how much you collaborate together with this person but there could be this could be one of five projects they're working on all at the same time or something maybe they're in a bad spot because they've been asked to do too many things

or maybe they don't know the technology i don't know maybe there's there might be ways to solve this between the two of you which would go over better with the co-worker than them finding out that you told their your manager that they're not carrying their weight without saying the magic words using using fancy business words that mean my co-worker is not carrying their weight right i agree with that it turns out they will not they will not care that you said they're a headwind instead of they're not working very hard that won't make them feel better i called you a head wind come on why are you so mad powers the the turbines it generates electricity this is a renewable energy source yeah if there's a headwind it makes you stronger because you have to push

yourself against it that's right i just want to say thank you for making me stronger yeah any suggestions should i quit my job yeah i think all that makes sense we gave good suggestions good luck i declare yeah good luck with the time machine you will need to take them in the past but please tell us how it worked out yeah i would love to hear about it okay so uh next question oh yeah yeah i accept your command to read the next question okay this comes from an anonymous listener who says i hate my current job and cannot see myself working here for more than a few months is it better to find a new job before quitting if i quit tomorrow with no offers from other companies, how does this affect salary negotiation for a new job while I'm currently

unemployed? Finance-wise, I'm stable enough to not be working for months to a year, but I am worried about not having current employment putting me at a disadvantage in my job search. Not working would definitely free up my time and energy, which is being steadily drained each day, to prepare for interviews. I recently got a raise in promotion to a senior role too. Does quitting shortly after look bad on a resume? I could coast for the next few months in my current job while I search for a new one but i feel like this would be in bad faith it takes a long time to actually fire someone at my company for performance even if i barely do any work thanks for reading my question love the show huh so many things here i have a hard time coasting along for months while

i actively search for a job i can coast for months if i just really don't like my job but it feels somehow unethical as soon as I say, I'm not working very hard because I'm sad. I'm not working very hard because I need this time to go look for a different job. There's this divide in my brain where that's wrong, but the other one is okay. So you're saying not giving your employer their money's worth is okay as long as you're just sad? Yeah, as long as I'm doing nothing with it. If I'm not giving them their money's worth in order to then get a different job, that's wrong. If I'm not giving them their money's worth in order to get really good at Escape from Tarkov, then that's fine. And basically, I'm a professional video gamer at that point.

I'm glad you have a moral compass. It's good. Yes. Do what you love, and you'll never work a day in your life. Like, if you just don't do your job and play video games instead. You'll never work a day in your life while drawing a paycheck. Well, that's an interesting take on that phrase. I like it.

Yeah. I recently got a raise in a promotion to a senior role too. So here is a thing I've seen people do that I don't think is right, but also I have no way of proving that they do it. Okay. Some people will update their LinkedIn when they get a promotion to look like their entire time at that company was at that level. So maybe they moved through like several, I don't know, from mid-level to staff engineer

at one company. They'll just say staff engineer at this company for five years. Right. even though it was only six months at that it was with that title yeah so i think that's bad i think it also is probably better to show progression growth at a at a role yeah but if you want to be slimy you could do that i don't think it would look bad to say i became a senior developer and then i don't think it would be a be a negative sign to show that you got promoted and then got a different job later on i don't know nothing matters right now right you can do whatever

you want you could you could write like yeah brought the company down from within by my bad attitude and then like get 10 job offers if you do well because of the frothy developer market it is such a weird time it's such a weird time yeah so i think it'd be fine to say no it would not look bad everyone's quitting it's fine if i quit tomorrow with no other offers how does this affect salary negotiation so if you update your resume to include an end date then the company could potentially know that you do not have an income right now. I feel like that is just as compelling a negotiating position as being employed somewhere. Because to me, when I see that, it makes me think, oh, they don't really need this job. They don't have a job right now.

Depending on the terms that they left with. If they were laid off, it's a very different story than I just left because I don't need this job right now. Yeah. And then the alternative you are competing with if you're trying to hire this person is like yeah be a non-professional be an amateur video game player sit on your couch and don't get paid to play that's right i'm just an amateur because i'm not employed right now yes exactly yeah like they have a pretty strong alternative to to offers you're giving them if they have financial stability right in order to not work so i think it won't affect your salary negotiation except the negotiation isn't exactly apples to apples in that situation because what you're

negotiating against as the employer here is the opportunity cost of spending all day playing video games it's like man is it worth it working at this company for that salary to not play video games all day long exactly it's a strong it's a strong negotiating position it is not needing to say yes is always the strongest negotiating position if you don't really need the thing that someone is offering you then yeah absolutely may i add though that i think there is a much stronger negotiating position than any of these things, which is a competing offer. I think in today's market, your current pay at your current employer is likely quite a bit lower than the market is willing to offer you just because there has been such an increase over the last 12 to 18 months

in general salary that people are willing to pay. And what I have found being on the other side of this table is that your current salary is almost irrelevant. But as soon as you show up with a competing offer that's higher than the one I made, it's like, oh, that's a very compelling data point. Because it's like, look, I am going to take this other offer unless you beat it. And it's like, oh, well, how much do I want you? So I mean, to me, whether you're currently employed or not is much less relevant than whether you have another offer in hand. That's a good point that talking about your current employment Only matters in salary negotiation if you tell them how much you make right?

If you avoid saying here's how much I make right now and just say here's the range i'm looking for then That's a stronger position because you're not anchoring yourself assuming that what you're looking for is higher than what you make right now But yeah, I agree that even stronger than that is and here's how much someone else will give me if you do not Make me a good enough offer not just like here's what i want here's here's what i will get from someone else yeah like and it's in writing they've already offered it to me so and you're tapping into their fomo exactly and you totally are because it's a very different position to be on the other side of that table

as a as a manager making an offer to say okay you have no offers and you're just considering mine as opposed to you have two other offers for x amount and you're considering mine yeah and and it's possible that the company you are you're applying to will not be able to match or beat other offers but almost certainly they have some room to go up job offers are kind of like a it's it's like a multi-dimensional space of you're trying to optimize for pay and opportunity and and work hours and technology and culture and all these different things and each job falls in a different point in that space but if you have other jobs that pay that fall higher in the money space you can pull up some other jobs i'm gesturing wildly with my hands and it's not making any sense

yeah so so say you're interviewing at a tiny startup and google right and then google gives you some offer it's for many dollars lots of rsus the startup will not give you the same amount of money yeah or even the same amount of dollar value in stock options at whatever their current valuation is but that's true they still can go up from whatever they offered you probably usually yeah usually yeah so do that thing so so i think in years past if this question had come to us we would have said no you should go line up a new job before you quit your old one but i think today given what the market is looking like and how much you hate this job i think you'd probably be fine and your financial situation being what it is,

that you've got enough money to take care of yourself for a while, I think it'd be fine to quit. And I don't think it's going to hurt your next salary at all. One other thing you can do, I don't know how you pitch this to the company as worth it for you, but one way you can make up for the lost income of not working is to try and go after a signing bonus. That's true.

I don't know how you, again, usually that's something the company gives you to motivate you to take the offer well that's that's a that's another good reason to show up with multiple competing offers so you go through the process with one company get an offer go through it with another company get an offer now you've got two you can play off each other and that's normal and then if you want a tiebreaker you can just say look i would i'm looking for a 10k signing bonus to put one over the other and and by the way signing bonuses are usually an easier pill for companies to swallow than a base salary increase because it's a one-time cost and not an annual

recurring cost okay i think we gave advice there was some given i can confirm good news it's the best time to be looking for a job yeah it really is it's wild out there well have we answered this question yes we have good luck let us know how it goes what can people do if they want their own questions answered go over to softskills.audio and click the ask a question button where we've got a convenient little form that you can fill out with as much or as little information as you like and as always we have to say thank you to everyone who has submitted questions there are more questions than two mortal human beings could answer in one lifetime but we will attempt to do so anyway good thing one of us is dave smith

good thing one of us has culture from every nation okay we will catch you next week see ya