Workplace woes
Aug. 22nd, 2013 10:01 pm![[personal profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mellownessI'm 19 years old. I'm a novice Ruby on Rails web developer who has a little over two months of experience with web development in general. My knowledge of Ruby is decent, but I still have much to learn. And my basic web development tools - HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and JS libraries like jQuery - are adequate at best. So I don't take it personally when people don't expect much of me. That's fine with me. However, I can't help but be bothered by people who have a smug, condescending view of my skills. To clarify what incident I'm alluding to, I'll talk about the following to explain what has transpired at work over the last few days.
Two days ago, a colleague of my boss decided to test the Rails application I am working on. My boss asked me to call her and help her log into the website. She sounded nice on the phone when she answered, and then when the subject of testing the application came up, she immediately told me that she is good at breaking applications and that she can find bugs quickly. I felt weird about her saying this, given that she framed the testing process in a completely negative way for no reason, but I put it aside and told her the username and password.
Suddenly, she started telling me that she kept getting "bumped off" the page (she never clarified what she precisely meant by that), an error that has never occurred on any other browser on any other computer I have tried using the application on. I thought this was very strange, and I found myself unable to provide a confident response. I became nervous. I then remembered that our application is currently running on a free Heroku cloud server, and so I told her that, once we start paying for Heroku's hosting service, the application will run faster and have fewer server-side complications that may lead to bugs. I wasn't completely confident in what I was saying, but it was at least an explanation that made sense on some level.
Her response? "Heh, well, I've worked with developers for quite a long time, so I definitely know much more than you."
Granted, due to nervousness, I was a little long-winded in my explanation. But I t explained things to her in a polite yet matter-of-fact manner, and I tried my best despite sounding a bit awkward and nervous at times. Yet all I got in response was her assertion that she knows more than me. Perhaps she acted that way towards me because I'm 19. Or because I'm being paid minimum wage for this job - she could have seen me as an inferior employee for that reason. Regardless of her motivation, she sure made me lose a great deal of respect for her. Of course there's a lot I don't know, but her assertion was out of the blue and says a lot about how she sees other people.
I mean, I don't have any need for praise. In fact, I appreciate critical feedback - I can't move forward and improve if I always do things with the assumption that I'm perfect. But even if her response merely reflected part of a general "business attitude", as my apologetic older brother put it, I still have very little respect for someone who audacity to respond to a calm and polite explanation with nothing but an assertion of being superior.
She then used a feature of the application that involved uploading files and complained about the image she uploaded not being displayed on the page she was on. I asked her about the file type of the image because I know that the application's file uploader accepts only typical image files (.jpg, .png, etc.). This person, who had just told me that she has vast experience with testing applications and working with developers, answered my question by telling me that she just didn't know what the file type was. I clarified by asking if it was a .jpg, .png, etc. file, and she just told me that it was a file containing an invoice. Am I unreasonable for expecting someone supposedly experienced with web development to know the difference between the content of a file and its file type?
The following day came along, and even more unpleasantness from her ensued. She tested the application again and sent me and my cousin a report containing very large list of problems she found with the application - I think there were at least 20 complaints. Needless to say, my cousin and I were very disturbed - we didn't know that we had messed up so badly. So we immediately started looking at her list.
...And it turned out that there were pretty much only two complaints she had highlighted actual problems. Everything else - literally everything - was based on severe misconceptions regarding the purpose, features, and structure of the application itself. Things that she, a person with a role almost as significant as that of a project manager, should have been aware of the entire time. As an example of her strange complaints, she said she was uncomfortable with the fact that a user who signs in isn't automatically signed out right away once ze exits the application and goes to another website - she called it a security issue. Have you ever heard of a website that does this? Not even websites like Gmail and Chase's website, which share a strong focus on user security, cause users to sign out once they go to other websites. There's simply no need for it, and it creates a huge inconvenience for everyone using the application.
Again, look - I'm 19, I have very little experience in web development, and I'm prone to making a lot of mistakes. But I like to think that I know enough to detect this kind of absurdity. By the way, about the email that contained the list: every single bit of it was critical and negative. No hint of appreciation, no consideration of our lack of experience - just negative, poorly-informed judgments.
And the absurdity just kept going on. My father, who happens to be a business partner of my boss, told my boss' colleague that merging two different websites owned by the company is extremely unfeasible because one is based on PHP and MySQL and the other is based on Ruby on Rails and PostGreSQL. Two radically different website architectures. He had to explain this 5 times to her over a course of three weeks - to someone who claims to know about web development. Of course no one has a perfect understanding of web development, but some things are much easier to grasp once you have some experience in that field. At one point, the conversation escalated, with her asserting that she knows how Ruby works - just so you know, two days ago she didn't even know that Ruby on Rails is based on Ruby. And no, I can safely say that she has very little knowledge of Ruby because she admitted herself that she's not a programmer.
So, yeah. I'm pretty annoyed. I welcome constructive criticism given in good faith and without arrogance. Something that my boss' tester happens to be unfamiliar with for some reason. Needless to say, I'll be overjoyed once I'm done with this job.
Two days ago, a colleague of my boss decided to test the Rails application I am working on. My boss asked me to call her and help her log into the website. She sounded nice on the phone when she answered, and then when the subject of testing the application came up, she immediately told me that she is good at breaking applications and that she can find bugs quickly. I felt weird about her saying this, given that she framed the testing process in a completely negative way for no reason, but I put it aside and told her the username and password.
Suddenly, she started telling me that she kept getting "bumped off" the page (she never clarified what she precisely meant by that), an error that has never occurred on any other browser on any other computer I have tried using the application on. I thought this was very strange, and I found myself unable to provide a confident response. I became nervous. I then remembered that our application is currently running on a free Heroku cloud server, and so I told her that, once we start paying for Heroku's hosting service, the application will run faster and have fewer server-side complications that may lead to bugs. I wasn't completely confident in what I was saying, but it was at least an explanation that made sense on some level.
Her response? "Heh, well, I've worked with developers for quite a long time, so I definitely know much more than you."
Granted, due to nervousness, I was a little long-winded in my explanation. But I t explained things to her in a polite yet matter-of-fact manner, and I tried my best despite sounding a bit awkward and nervous at times. Yet all I got in response was her assertion that she knows more than me. Perhaps she acted that way towards me because I'm 19. Or because I'm being paid minimum wage for this job - she could have seen me as an inferior employee for that reason. Regardless of her motivation, she sure made me lose a great deal of respect for her. Of course there's a lot I don't know, but her assertion was out of the blue and says a lot about how she sees other people.
I mean, I don't have any need for praise. In fact, I appreciate critical feedback - I can't move forward and improve if I always do things with the assumption that I'm perfect. But even if her response merely reflected part of a general "business attitude", as my apologetic older brother put it, I still have very little respect for someone who audacity to respond to a calm and polite explanation with nothing but an assertion of being superior.
She then used a feature of the application that involved uploading files and complained about the image she uploaded not being displayed on the page she was on. I asked her about the file type of the image because I know that the application's file uploader accepts only typical image files (.jpg, .png, etc.). This person, who had just told me that she has vast experience with testing applications and working with developers, answered my question by telling me that she just didn't know what the file type was. I clarified by asking if it was a .jpg, .png, etc. file, and she just told me that it was a file containing an invoice. Am I unreasonable for expecting someone supposedly experienced with web development to know the difference between the content of a file and its file type?
The following day came along, and even more unpleasantness from her ensued. She tested the application again and sent me and my cousin a report containing very large list of problems she found with the application - I think there were at least 20 complaints. Needless to say, my cousin and I were very disturbed - we didn't know that we had messed up so badly. So we immediately started looking at her list.
...And it turned out that there were pretty much only two complaints she had highlighted actual problems. Everything else - literally everything - was based on severe misconceptions regarding the purpose, features, and structure of the application itself. Things that she, a person with a role almost as significant as that of a project manager, should have been aware of the entire time. As an example of her strange complaints, she said she was uncomfortable with the fact that a user who signs in isn't automatically signed out right away once ze exits the application and goes to another website - she called it a security issue. Have you ever heard of a website that does this? Not even websites like Gmail and Chase's website, which share a strong focus on user security, cause users to sign out once they go to other websites. There's simply no need for it, and it creates a huge inconvenience for everyone using the application.
Again, look - I'm 19, I have very little experience in web development, and I'm prone to making a lot of mistakes. But I like to think that I know enough to detect this kind of absurdity. By the way, about the email that contained the list: every single bit of it was critical and negative. No hint of appreciation, no consideration of our lack of experience - just negative, poorly-informed judgments.
And the absurdity just kept going on. My father, who happens to be a business partner of my boss, told my boss' colleague that merging two different websites owned by the company is extremely unfeasible because one is based on PHP and MySQL and the other is based on Ruby on Rails and PostGreSQL. Two radically different website architectures. He had to explain this 5 times to her over a course of three weeks - to someone who claims to know about web development. Of course no one has a perfect understanding of web development, but some things are much easier to grasp once you have some experience in that field. At one point, the conversation escalated, with her asserting that she knows how Ruby works - just so you know, two days ago she didn't even know that Ruby on Rails is based on Ruby. And no, I can safely say that she has very little knowledge of Ruby because she admitted herself that she's not a programmer.
So, yeah. I'm pretty annoyed. I welcome constructive criticism given in good faith and without arrogance. Something that my boss' tester happens to be unfamiliar with for some reason. Needless to say, I'll be overjoyed once I'm done with this job.
no subject
Date: 2013-08-23 08:22 pm (UTC)also which she ask, that the user be logged out of website when they visit another website, shows extreme misunderstanding of how internet and internet security works.
btw, you have interest in doing programming as career? because if you enjoy the developing in environment which you are now, it is 10x great when in the good company working on exciting project with fun people. well i am bias, because i am programmer, but if you have interest, i recommend to investigate!