Soft Skills Engineering - Episode 375: visa woes and Bob does everything wrong

Episode Date: September 25, 2023

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: I work as a Software Engineering Manager at the European office of a US company. Recently, many of my colleagues successfully obtained US visas for an upcoming business trip. When it was my turn, everyone said it would be a piece of cake because our company is well-known. However, to my surprise, I was rejected during the visa interview. Now I won’t be able to join my colleagues (including my direct reports). I’m concerned they might perceive me as less capable because of this. What would you think if your manager couldn’t travel with you? To make matters worse, I might soon be managing a few US-based employees remotely. Hi guys, love the podcast. I never miss an episode! I have a co-worker, let’s call him “Bob”. Bob’s a lovely guy and very eager to learn. Here’s the thing. Bob never learns from his mistakes and needs to be continually asked to correct the same types of errors over and over again. The problem is that Bob doesn’t seem to have a developers mindset. I’d go so far as to say that if there’s a decision to be made then Bob is 95% guaranteed to do the opposite of what everybody else on the team would do. The end result of this is that whenever a pull request is opened up with Bobs name attached to it I can be sure that I will be spending more time reviewing it and inevitably the PR will need to go back and forth multiple times as Bob is asked to correct the same types of things that he was just asked to correct in the last review. The frustrating is that my manager is also nice and wants to encourage Bob to grow and improve and so regularly gives Bob some pretty complex tasks in order to encourage this growth. While I admire the managers attitude (and surely have benefitted from it on occasions :) ) my heart sinks just a bit more than normal when this happens as I know that the previously mentioned merry go round of reviews will inevitably be larger than usual. Sometimes it can get to the point where much (or all) of Bobs work ends up being discarded. I do precious little development work myself as my senior position in the team means that I’m the one ends up doing most of the peer reviewing. So each time I see Bob being given a piece of work that I would have enjoyed doing (and sometimes have even specced out) I get disheartened. Bob has been a developer in our field for about 6 years and still needs to be told on a regular basis about things that you would usually need to tell a fresh graduate. How do I broach the issue of Bob with the powers that be? Show Notes https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/2018904948/from-space-junk-to-international-treaties-nz-s-only-specialised-space-lawyer

it takes more than wondering why you can't dm someone in slack only to realize you are in the soft skills illustrious crew slack and not your own company slack to be a great engineer this is soft skills engineering episode 375 i'm your host dave smith i'm your host jamison dance soft skills engineering is a weekly advice podcast for software developers of all slack communities including when you're in the wrong one and trying to dm your co-workers they're in the midst of a rollout of a new design too and it seems like it's it's it's per org not per like slack that's right user however they define that so i mean spaces and get a completely different look and feel yeah i don't envy them having to navigate that it is both i think it's per user and

workspace so like i'll be in one workspace and i've got too many slack workspaces but yeah i hop around and i'm like whoa it has pulled all the rugs out from under me all my buttons moved yeah how am i supposed to click the buttons if they move have you tried to dm someone in the wrong slack and ended up sending the wrong dm to the wrong person no but i have just stared at it and then given up and gone to do something else which is frankly probably a productivity gain yeah dave you know what i would like to do uh what i would like to thank our patrons do it thank you too never is not just a crater on mars flamingo emoji Trash Panda, TheComputerScienceBook.com, Kyle Boss, Valentin at Datafold, Santa Hope,

R. Kent C. Dodds, Jenny Kim, Owen Chardow, Craig Motlin, I Love Mavis, The Stochastic Parrot, Alice Jost, Muskingum, Ohio, Patreon.com, We're Hiring, Ira Chan, Monkey, Face Emoji, Jonathan King, Webtau, AwesomeN10, Testing, Oladapo Fadje, Will Angel, Ragnar, Nick Hathaway, Travis, Brayden Keynes, John Grant, Cody Sale, Nick Kantar. Thank you so much. We appreciate your support. it keeps the podcast going and surely you're the happiest humans on earth because of the shout outs you get yeah unquestionably it's worth it right the total level of happiness has increased

because we're happier and you're happier all in exchange for a little bit of earth dollars yeah yeah if you want to join this group you can go to softskills.audio and click support us on patreon where any amount will get you added to our slack team what do they call it is it a community group i think they now call it a workspace okay but i assure you there is no work happening in the soft skills engineering community workspace it's great smart people good good wisdom uh the the secret power behind the throne of the soft skills engineering podcast exactly it's our and if you contribute enough you'll get a shout out and and then be happy and then yes your happiness levels will increase yeah we also have breaking news from a listener who wrote in saying

hi dave and jameson not really a question just letting you know about this interview with another space lawyer it's probably important to provide context to our listeners if they haven't been with us since the beginning yeah um we we often uh disclaim legal expertise for mere earth law so we'll talk about stuff and say but we're not earth lawyers however we are space lawyers right so if you are orbiting above the earth or or outside of that then we can give actual legal advice but binding legal enforceable advice most of your one-on-ones and project planning meetings usually happen on the surface co-worker interactions yeah those are bound by mere earth law i was surprised that this lawyer did not suggest quit your job or any other well-known

soft skills engineering advice and i was worried that this may indicate that they are not a legitimate space lawyer oh i thought it was important that you were aware of this you can take any necessary space lawyer steps to rectify the situation thank you for the show it always helps me think about issues from different points of view and i will add including from space i i was aware of this and i've already sent a space mail to the space bar we've sent a strongly worded space cease and desist letter exactly the problem is you again you have to be outside of the atmosphere in order to receive it and for it to be valid it's just in orbit right exactly so the next time my uh space ship exits the planet the message will send yeah yeah it's waiting all right

dave do you want to read our first question i do this question comes from an anonymous listener who says i work as a software engineering manager at the european office of a u.s company recently many of my colleagues successfully obtained U.S. visas for an upcoming business trip. When it was my turn, everyone said it would be a piece of cake because our company is well known. However, to my surprise, I was rejected during the visa interview. Now, I won't be able to join my colleagues, including my direct reports, and I'm concerned they might perceive me as less capable because of this. What would you think if your manager couldn't travel with you? To make matters worse, I might soon be managing a few U.S.-based employees remotely. Hmm. So I guess

we'll come down from our space law and start talking about earth law again yeah yeah out of our wheelhouse but if the visa is for mars then our regular hourly rates apply yeah mars mars visa right down the middle of the fairway for us our hourly rates apply mars hours or earth hours it's always confusing oh that is a good point yeah i have been playing starfield and they have a they have a the typical like rest and number of hours thing in an rpg but it shows you rest in local hours and then shows you how many standard hours that actually is wow they've thought of it this is one of those situations that i i did not growing up in the united states i remember i was probably pretty adult before i realized that you couldn't just go to any country

you know it's like oh i'm just gonna go get a flight to whatever country i want and and the list of countries that you can go to without pre-arranging with those countries is different depending on what country you're in yeah and the united states is not on all the lists oh man it is so messed up i'll just say that yeah it's it's often more to do i mean really it's more like the country you're coming from is not on the united states list yes that's that's it It can be capricious and fraught to try to enter any country, but certainly the US, depending on where you're from. I had a coworker in Europe whose country was not on the United States list of please come in anytime. And we spent, I think, four years trying to get him

approved to be able to come and visit us in person. Just to visit, not to work. Yeah, no, we're talking, I mean, it was technically, I don't think it was a tourist visa because, you know, of course, the government has different rules for different kinds of visits. Am I coming here to do work for a few weeks or am I coming here to vacation? And I think we said to work. And so that might have complicated it. But then you go into the four years long bucket. It took, yeah, exactly. It took four years. And I remember the first time we applied for this person, uh, he did the interview and then got married and that triggered it, like invalidated everything. It was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

You can't just do stuff and expect to still visit. Seriously. So he was like planning to come visit. He had the authorization and then he got married and they, they contacted him and said, you can't go anymore. he was like what so hold up there buddy yeah that's so funny oh i mean it we were talking about type one and type two fun before the podcast what is this type of fun oh wait if this is the fun where it's funny to someone else later when they're laughing at your misery

but but it's never funny to you is that yeah is that type five that's like type five yeah only funny to others who are kind of sadistic yeah i would be i would be bummed to not be going with my colleagues on a business trip especially if you're working remotely or if you're i don't know it can be a fun time to to get together and meet people in person that you don't see i understand being bummed and the added nuance of rejected during the visa interview makes it makes it hurt i can see how you're feeling pain yeah and they so you know i don't know if they have random selection or if they actually you know or if i because i can read maybe it depends on the interviewer you got or like uh yeah there probably have been studies where they

say if we feed the interviewer a sandwich their acceptance rate goes up by five percent on average yeah oh anyway i don't i don't know the details of here but i i can i'm reading into this question thinking this person feels like they might be perceived as less than because they failed you know their co-workers will perceive them as failing an interview like oh we can't trust you to come to the united states you are not worthy that and that's the that's the sentiment i'm hearing here i know that i would not feel that way because i would just roll my eyes at bureaucracy you know i would just say well i don't know you didn't you didn't do the specific exact unknowable dance for that particular interviewer that you needed to do maybe you said it was a

business trip and and that triggered something or i i don't know but i i don't think i would assume like i don't your your competence and capability at work should not be judged by whether you can pass a visa interview they should know way more about how good you are at your job from working with you than from the interview for sure and and realistically your capabilities at work probably honestly probably have nothing to do with your pass fail status of a visa interview yeah i mean there's probably an amount of capability which makes you an amount of money which makes those interviews go a little different oh really you think they care how much money you get paid i don't know i mean surely if you i'm not saying that you bribe people but surely if

you are like a hundred a hundred millionaire then they're like oh right this way you think there's like a special lane i don't know i probably so there probably is i'll be honest oh mr bezos i did not realize yeah it was you yeah he doesn't fail visa interviews well if he does it's because the country wants to make a political statement to the other country not because of something he did uh that's true maybe they're trying to negotiate concessions out of amazon or something that the problems of a hundred billionaire we will never understand yes unless enough people join our patreon the first the first patreon billionaires

imagine how many people it would take to actually have a billion dollars got a few orders of magnitude to go just a just a couple though yeah um i'm imagining a scenario where your co-workers all got the memo and bribed the interviewer and you just didn't and so your co-workers are looking at you going oh i guess he's the only honest one yeah maybe they'll think higher of you now yeah yeah i think the i think you're so i think if you if you x well i don't know maybe you don't know why you failed maybe they just say no but yeah probably i mean they they know you're not there so it's not some shameful secret maybe it's a shameful truth to you i guess but you can talk about it and maybe you have some hypothesis about why that might make

it less uh less awkward or something maybe maybe you intimidated the interviewer you loomed over them your powerful presence like whoa this guy's too powerful for the u.s yeah yeah we couldn't handle them we would all be intimidated i do feel like you're concerned about managing a few u.s based employees remotely that makes sense because maybe you would have met them here and it's it's just always easier to manage people uh if you have some in-person relationship or interaction to fall to to base things on absolutely but you can do it without it i've worked with people and you may have a chance to do it again you might actually you know just because you failed a visa once doesn't mean that you'll fail a second time there can often be temporary things in your life

that they didn't like or a recent change that was too recent and too big for them to feel comfortable with you know yeah i'm not really an expert on visa interview policy but i'm pretty sure they're looking for people who are not likely to overstay their time authorized and not uh and who have lived a pretty stable unchanging life in the from what they can perceive yeah i mean that's a that's another way to pitch it they want boring rule followers exactly and you're a renegade you're an innovator you're a rebel yeah you're a visionary thinker that doesn't follow these rules like live in the same house for a number of years or exactly i don't know yeah so i mean it i'll say that the the concern i would not be concerned at all that there people will

perceive you as less capable because of this but i would be concerned about missing out on a bunch of opportunities to build relationships with these team members on the other side of the ocean and there are probably some mitigation strategies you should apply while this trip is taking place to make sure that you remain connected. Maybe have like a daily standup where, and maybe you already do this, but have a standup where everybody kind of talks about what they did the previous day

and what kind of activities they did outside of work. Because presumably there's going to be some team building and fun that happens here as well, which would be a good thing. And just make sure that you're aware of all that so that when people start tossing around inside jokes later, you can be aware of what's going on and not be further excluded from this circle.

I love the image of you saying, tell me about all the fun stuff you got to do that i didn't get to do and you're just sadly listening and filing it away yeah i also think you could probably pitch it to your company as valuable for the business for you to go over there at some point to meet the folks you manage if you're managing them in the u.s again depending on what is going on with the visa and when you can try again but this would have been a nice opportunity because there's presumably some reason why a bunch of people are going over but you managing them is also another reason why it'd be useful to go visit and and especially if it's a i'm gathering this is a large they don't say

what the company is but they say it's well known they've got u.s and european offices so they're probably okay with the idea of some kind of travel expenses so yep maybe pitch that all right well all right have we answered the question i think so good luck sorry if you got randomly selected to not participate in this fun event it's a bummer you'll have the last laugh though how's that when you get your mars visa oh from working with us yeah all right should i read the next question yeah go for it this is from an anonymous listener who says hey guys love the podcast i never miss an episode i have a co-worker let's call him bob bob's a lovely guy and very eager to learn here's the thing bob never learns from his mistakes and needs to be continually asked

to correct the same types of errors over and over again. The problem is that Bob doesn't seem to have a developer's mindset. I'd go so far to say that if there's a decision to be made, then Bob is 95% guaranteed to do the opposite of what everybody else on the team would do. The end result is that whenever a pull request is open with Bob's name attached to it,

I can be sure that I'll be spending more time reviewing it and inevitably the PR will need to go back and forth multiple times as Bob is asked to correct the same types of things that he was just asked to correct in the last review. the frustrating thing is that my manager is also nice and wants to encourage Bob to grow and improve and so regularly gives Bob some pretty complex tasks in order to encourage this growth while I admire my manager's attitude and surely have benefited from it on occasions my heart

sinks just a bit more than normal when it happens as I know that the previously mentioned merry-go-round of interviews will inevitably inevitably be larger than usual sometimes it can get to the point where much or all of bob's work ends up having to be discarded i do precious little development myself as my senior position in the team means i'm the one who ends up doing most of the peer reviewing so each time i see bob being given a piece of work that i would have enjoyed doing and sometimes have even spec'd out i get disheartened bob has been a developer in our field for about six years and still needs to be told on a regular basis about things that you would usually tell a fresh graduate how do i broach the issue of bob with the powers that be

ah poor bob poor you yeah nobody wins everybody oh i'm just assuming that the kinds of things that show up here are not easily machine identifiable and fixable because there is a wide swath of things we've talked about this before like if you if you're nitpicking about style things or anything that a machine can tell you not to do then that's low value make the machine tell you turn on some rules stuff like curly brace placement and where you put semicolons things like that yeah but there's there is a ton of stuff that is also like i don't know the the universe of things that cannot be identified by by machines parsing your your syntax uh is pretty large still so setting all that aside assuming this is like i don't know don't name this function

something horrible or yeah use good variable names i don't know i'm just yeah there's there's a lot of stuff that would be hard to automatically identify and take away the burden of you having to give feedback on well why don't you just make a list of all those things you know just make a list of all the things you could do wrong and tell bob not to do those things just give him the list it's only it's only like a few million pages long and just have him read it yeah then your job turns into identifying like the inverse of good software engineering and completely enumerating it it's like an encyclopedia of all the things you can do wrong in software um yeah that would actually be awesome you get sucked into like the subjectivity of it too of like but sometimes this is okay and

it depends on the well i would i would i would waffle so hard and yeah yeah well that's why it's a long book that's true yeah you have to include all of the all of the edge cases and exceptions and listen i don't envy you but the world will be better once you produce this work Yeah, exactly. We need this. So what are you doing? Why did you write into us when you could have written the first chapter? Yeah. Why are you thinking at N equals one scale? You got to scale this process out to all of the Bobs out there. Actually, I'm only half joking when I say the following, which is if Bob is a steady source of bad practices and mistakes, you probably could turn this into a really good book. I think that's the Daily WTF blog. Do they still do that? Does

that still exist let's find out i wouldn't be surprised they're still going they started in 2004 and yeah i remember this from when i was first getting into software i think it's gotten a little bit less it had this certain like slash dot geek snark i think it's been toned down a little bit since then but definitely still there oh yeah snarks like kind of a core competency of the daily wtf yeah it's it's there that's awesome we that should probably be required reading i haven't looked at this in a long time but uh i think it's a good idea yeah okay i mean you've got your own little daily wtf that just auto generates for you all right so i've actually seen something like this happen and it i guess i'm stating the obvious when i say it sucks

it sucks on all sides it sucks to be bob i'm sure bob can feel i imagine every pr bob submits he does with dread knowing there will be like 25 bunch of comments and back and forth and i mean i assume it's not obvious to bob what those comments will be otherwise bob would have done the thing to to address them ahead of time yeah but that can't feel good to feel like well i do the work and then i just suffer until the work gets uh gets like battered into a state where it yeah it is acceptable yeah bob must bob probably feels like he's a bowling ball going down the bumper lanes where it's just like bump bump bump like oh constantly yeah it's it certainly sucks for you because you feel this burden of i mean you could also just say it looks good to me

and then destroy the the code base yeah let it let bob reap the reap the consequences of bob's actions well i they will not be distributed only to bob i imagine yeah that that is true so So let's talk through that for a minute. This might come across as uncharitable or lacking empathy, but maybe you are covering too much for Bob. Maybe Bob has now been molded into this thought process that this is how software is done. One developer throws out a bunch of ideas, another developer, you know, in PR form, and then another developer just makes like 35 comments on those. And then you take the feedback and iterate and he's like, hey, this is great. We make a great team. We iterate so effectively. Yeah. This is awesome. Maybe it's time. Maybe you have a culture

that eschews individual accountability for your own work. And I'm not saying the code review is bad, but I am saying that maybe in this case, Bob has adopted this mindset that we write this code together through the PR comment system. And you've got a mindset of your code should stand on its own and the comments should be just minor tweaks and nudges and maybe if bob had to actually deal directly with the repercussions of shipping the code to production maybe maybe he would actually learn like i don't know i i'm trying to i'm trying to step out of my knee-jerk reaction to this which is bob should be fired there there is an argument for that yeah if if bob is generating a lot of work for the team and and i don't see a lot of maybe there are upsides that the question asker

did not mention but they're not included in the question it seems like they do work it takes kind of while it takes a lot of effort from the team to get into a state where it's good enough it's not like they solve the problems well or tackle stuff no one else can do or are right especially productive that does feel like a net negative for the team overall yeah that's a bad that's not what you want an employee you don't want an employee that slows the team down overall i'm trying to think of what you could do yeah i think i agree with you that this does feel like a bob is not a good fit for this role type of thing if you do want to push on that it's pretty hard to go tell your manager this person needs to be fired yeah that never works yeah that then then your

manager feels like you're trying to back them into a corner yeah and and yeah not not good what you need to do is provide them evidence of the cost this is having on the team and that can be either your own sanity or your productivity or the quality of the code base if you can somehow say like i i know you want bob to grow and improve i just want you to understand there's a cost how bad this is like this is this is real bad and i need your help to fix it and like leave it to them to figure out the fix they will certainly imagine uh firing as one of the potential fixes but maybe there are others uh but but the fact that they're trying really hard to help bob improve is admirable they also seem like they're not aware of how painful this is for the team could be and there

seems to be an immutable law in on earth that uh that says when you go and ask your boss to fire someone they won't uh it i believe it puts them in a defensive position where they're like oh really you think it should be fine well i guess i gotta defend this person you know but yeah but if you provide your your boss objective data points that lead to an obvious conclusion of letting the person go, they will usually get there. But it's not going to happen in a five-minute conversation. So at this point, I'm probably thinking, look, Bob's not doing anyone any favors. Bob's not doing himself any favors on this team. There is probably a better team for Bob somewhere in the world than this one. Let's just take that for granted. How would you

actually go about sharing with your manager the information that they need in order to help Bob on to his next career opportunity. And I would probably start with collecting data on the number of PR comments that you and the rest of the team make on Bob's PRs relative to the PR comments that are made on the rest of the team. And just throw this on a bar chart. Take the last 60, 90 days of PRs and count up the comments for each team member. And just note, look, each of these comments represents time. Each comment is probably five minutes. And Bob's had 250 comments over the last 90 days. And the next closest team member has only had 30. You know, maybe that's, that's the number. And it's like, look at all these hours that we are sinking in to redirecting Bob to get

this done. I love it. Yeah, that's a great idea that that does reflect. I mean, you have that data already. That's part of the problem with measuring productivity is is sometimes collecting the data can be onerous or impossible, but this is something you do have already. And if it and describes the pattern of of how this is painful which is tons of back and forth lots of work to massage it into place if it was like the code is bad but it gets in pretty quickly that would be a different problem to reflect but you you also i mean it depends on how firmly you want to nudge your manager is already thinking how do i help bob develop so they might naturally go to well this seems like a training skills problem like how do we okay it's not working how do we how do

we train bob further and maybe there's an answer there that you haven't thought of so you shouldn't just reject anything yeah but you could i think it would be worthwhile to ask yourself beforehand have i tried to help bob systemically so there's there's you can kind of whack them all individual things on each pr and say don't do this do it this way here you can also pull out generic or more generalizable principles and and emphasize those and refer back to them in these comments so you can say i know don't repeat yourself this is repetitive or we need to have test coverage here as as we've outlined in this document or something like if you can if you can say what you're trying to do is demonstrate you have tried to not just tell Bob, don't do this, but like follow these

broader principles. And Bob has not done it. Or maybe you haven't done that. And maybe that's a thing you could try. Yeah, maybe. And I think in software development, we often have this expectation. And I'm still, even after 20 years, I'm still on the fence about whether it's a valid expectation that some people, quote, just get it. And some people, quote, just don't get it. and and i'm starting i get the vibe from this question that this question asker thinks bob just doesn't get it you know and it's like no amount of teaching or training is going to make bob get it and i got that from one thing where he's one one term that was used here in the question which was bob doesn't have the developer mindset yeah which is kind of a you know a code

for your doc cut out for doing development you would be better at something else yeah sort of like the the stereotypical like detail oriented and logical and likes dungeons and dragons and star wars yeah there's some baggage along with that one it's a whole basket of attributes really yeah anyway i i just i i'm honestly i'm still on the fence about whether this is real i i definitely know there are developers that i have met i've met thousands of developers over the last 20 years and there are some that just seem to naturally just get it like they're so good at it it just comes to them, they also practice a lot. They also work a lot on it. They consume tons of reading material. They try lots of new things in their spare time and stuff. And so I'm like,

yeah. So on the one hand, they just get it maybe. Or on the other hand, they have put in a lot of deliberate practice. But sometimes I think I confuse cause and effect. Do they just get it because they put in the practice or do they put in the practice because they just get it? And honestly, it's just not at all clear to me, which it is. I do think some of that mindset can be taught. I agree with you that there are some people that are just good at taking a complex problem and breaking it down into logical steps and building those steps and carefully making sure they work. But I think that's a thing you can get better at. I have to hope that because I'm not that good at it. I want to get better at it. So some of this might be

be emphasizing what you mean by the developer mindset to bob and seeing if you can um you speak continue has to correct the same types of errors over and over again like test your code before you submit it like maybe that seems pretty basic but maybe that's a you should have evidence that your code works and either that should be tests or you should have run it like it's a thing that you need to do differently from what you've been doing yes some people just do that and some people uh don't and need to learn from sad experience i usually just hope my code works and um sometimes it does but all this i i feel like if i were to put cold hard numbers on this i'm like 80

bob is not a good fit for this role and 20 if you want there's a bunch of work you could do to try even harder to help Bob improve. I mean, I guess that's what you have to focus on, though, because like we said, you can't fire Bob, can't make Bob get fired. You can't, but you can make a case for it, and I think that's the best bet you've got here. Your boss is also going to run out of stamina eventually

of trying to help Bob, but I think that it's your job to help your boss understand, or Bob's manager, whoever that is, help that person understand exactly where Bob is. Is Bob making progress or not? Because sometimes we get, I'm a victim of confirmation bias. Many of us are. And we think, well, I put in the work, it must be working. It must be good. The outcomes must be happening that I want. And managers can definitely delude themselves into that because it's not, professional development is not kind of this obvious measurable thing. It's not like a

stock price or a sales number. It doesn't just go up and to the right and you can't see it when it does and so um your it's your job to bring consistent data points to your boss that are objective unemotional and as unbiased as possible so that your boss can actually see the fruits of their labors either flowering into beautiful roses or just not or moldering on the compost heap exactly or like me like like in my house on the counter the other compost heap the back of the back corner of the counter the yeah if you really do think you've tried to help bob improve and it hasn't worked then i feel like we're going in circles now but i'm i guess i will complete the circle yeah provide your manager with evidence that bob

is a is harmful for the team and has not improved despite lots of effort trying to help bob improve and then you need to put the problem on your manager and say you you have to i mean don't say this but say say please help us fix this don't say you have to fix this but really it is it is their responsibility and one of the tools they have is to let bob go they have other tools like transfer bob or or uh help bob in some other way but you want to you want to answer the questions that might come up of like well what can we do about it in their mind exactly all right have we answered the question i think so good luck good luck tough situation all around i always you know i often wonder am i am i the bob are you the bob yeah

Well, if you don't know who the Bob is on your team, it is you. I do write a lot more code at this job than I have in past jobs. And how many PR comments do you get? I don't know. I get a normal amount. But I also have the cloak of a managerial authority, which definitely affects the way people review your code. Oh, this is wonderful.

No matter what you try to do. This code is so good. Yeah. Then I must not be the Bob. My code is so good. Yeah, clearly. Your code is so good. All the people that depend on me for their livelihood say my code is great.

All right. We've answered the question. What can people do if they want their own questions answered, Dave? Go to softskills.audio and click the ask a question button where you can fill out our little form. As always, we must thank you from the bottom of our space law hearts for all of the wonderful questions that you write in every week. We love and appreciate them and we will answer all of them.

We promise. It's just obvious. We will get to it. Just get off our backs already, all right? We will answer them. we've been we've been doing some deep cuts lately i've been pulling out some some old ones from the archives i'm going to keep doing that nice all right thank you for listening we'll catch you next week