What Did She Do?
I was just complaining about CubeBuddy, when it occurred to me, I haven't filled you in on the latest.
When FrenchGuy left our team he had two things that we needed to take over. Twice a week a cron job is run for two countries: Canada and Japan. It was determined that I and CubeBuddy would take over the corresponding countries. This required two things: (1) Setting up our profiles on the correct machine so that we could actually run them; and (2) Changing over the owner to ourselves.
It seemed really straight forward, so I put it off for almost a month (we had to have it finished by the end of the month, and I waited until the last week, practically). When I finally got around to it, it ended up taking a bit more effort that I had originally believed. In total I probably spent a couple of hours one it. I sent a lot of emails to FrenchGuy, and we waded through some things, but in the end, I searched the company wiki and just figured it out. When I got everything running and set I let FrenchGuy and our boss know that I had taken care of it.
CubeBuddy, on the other hand, still hadn't even started.
FrenchGuy emailed her to remind her that she needed to take care of it. She asked me how long it had taken me to do it, and I told her that all the figuring it out had taken me about two hours. She asked (if you can believe it) if there was any "documentation" on how to do it. I told her no, just what I found in the wiki's. She asked if I was planning on writing any documentation (oh, this was in the middle of the height of my most recent stressful two months), to which I simply told her, no, I didn't have time. She asked if FrenchGuy was going to do it, and I told her probably not, since he was, by this point, officially not supporting us any longer. She complained and said that she would email our boss and ask him for the documentation, and explain that she couldn't do it because of the lack of documentation.
Now, you're probably wondering why I didn't just tell her how to do it, and save all the headache. Let me let you in on a little secret: solving people's problems just means that they keep coming to you to solve them, rather than figuring it out themselves. I figured, if she learns how to use the tools we have such as google and the internal wiki's then she's better off in the end.
Fast forward one month.
She still hasn't changed the stuff over to run in her name. Why not? No documentation. FrenchGuy keeps reminding her, and she keeps telling him she (a) doesn't have time; and (b) needs documentation. Yesterday the proverbial 'it' hit the fan. Japan broke, and we had to run it by hand. She couldn't do it, because she hadn't fixed her machine, and the guy who was trying to help her couldn't, because he had never had the need to set up what he needed in order to help her out. I tried to help her fix her computer so it would work, but I couldn't remember exactly how to do it, and, because time was of the essence, after letting her work on this for about two hours of this I offered to run it myself.
After that was all finished I returned to my desk, did 10 minutes of research and figured out exactly what she needed to do to fix things. 3 commands. That's all. Three.
I called her over to my desk, where I showed her how to do it, and she took copious notes. Later she typed it up, tossed it in a wiki and sent it around. Here's the ironic part: that's a one-time deal. She'll never have to do any of it ever again. Oy!
So, today, we were in team meeting with our boss (who has finally arrived from the UK). He asked what more we needed to make things run smoothly, to which she replied, "Documentation on how to fix things when they are broken." He asked if specific training would help. I couldn't let this go on, so I interjected my thoughts, "We don't need exact documentation on how to solve a given problem when it arises, since the problems seem to change. What we need is to be better able to research and figure out where the problems are, and how to solve them. I think that having specific documentation is just unnecessary effort." She didn't agree, and no one else said anything.
Later in the afternoon I ran into FrenchGuy. He thanked me for helping her solve her problem, and complained, "I think it was above her abilities." I think he's right. The most frustrating part is how it reflects on me. I know that sounds bad, but I really think that our boss can see past her incompetencies. I seriously hope that we can find a good sde-t who speaks Japanese soon, so that she can move on to somewhere else where she has better opportunities for success.
Have I mentioned that her soul qualification for my job is that she knows Japanese? Well, hot damn! I know English, and that's used in three countries, give me a raise!
When FrenchGuy left our team he had two things that we needed to take over. Twice a week a cron job is run for two countries: Canada and Japan. It was determined that I and CubeBuddy would take over the corresponding countries. This required two things: (1) Setting up our profiles on the correct machine so that we could actually run them; and (2) Changing over the owner to ourselves.
It seemed really straight forward, so I put it off for almost a month (we had to have it finished by the end of the month, and I waited until the last week, practically). When I finally got around to it, it ended up taking a bit more effort that I had originally believed. In total I probably spent a couple of hours one it. I sent a lot of emails to FrenchGuy, and we waded through some things, but in the end, I searched the company wiki and just figured it out. When I got everything running and set I let FrenchGuy and our boss know that I had taken care of it.
CubeBuddy, on the other hand, still hadn't even started.
FrenchGuy emailed her to remind her that she needed to take care of it. She asked me how long it had taken me to do it, and I told her that all the figuring it out had taken me about two hours. She asked (if you can believe it) if there was any "documentation" on how to do it. I told her no, just what I found in the wiki's. She asked if I was planning on writing any documentation (oh, this was in the middle of the height of my most recent stressful two months), to which I simply told her, no, I didn't have time. She asked if FrenchGuy was going to do it, and I told her probably not, since he was, by this point, officially not supporting us any longer. She complained and said that she would email our boss and ask him for the documentation, and explain that she couldn't do it because of the lack of documentation.
Now, you're probably wondering why I didn't just tell her how to do it, and save all the headache. Let me let you in on a little secret: solving people's problems just means that they keep coming to you to solve them, rather than figuring it out themselves. I figured, if she learns how to use the tools we have such as google and the internal wiki's then she's better off in the end.
Fast forward one month.
She still hasn't changed the stuff over to run in her name. Why not? No documentation. FrenchGuy keeps reminding her, and she keeps telling him she (a) doesn't have time; and (b) needs documentation. Yesterday the proverbial 'it' hit the fan. Japan broke, and we had to run it by hand. She couldn't do it, because she hadn't fixed her machine, and the guy who was trying to help her couldn't, because he had never had the need to set up what he needed in order to help her out. I tried to help her fix her computer so it would work, but I couldn't remember exactly how to do it, and, because time was of the essence, after letting her work on this for about two hours of this I offered to run it myself.
After that was all finished I returned to my desk, did 10 minutes of research and figured out exactly what she needed to do to fix things. 3 commands. That's all. Three.
I called her over to my desk, where I showed her how to do it, and she took copious notes. Later she typed it up, tossed it in a wiki and sent it around. Here's the ironic part: that's a one-time deal. She'll never have to do any of it ever again. Oy!
So, today, we were in team meeting with our boss (who has finally arrived from the UK). He asked what more we needed to make things run smoothly, to which she replied, "Documentation on how to fix things when they are broken." He asked if specific training would help. I couldn't let this go on, so I interjected my thoughts, "We don't need exact documentation on how to solve a given problem when it arises, since the problems seem to change. What we need is to be better able to research and figure out where the problems are, and how to solve them. I think that having specific documentation is just unnecessary effort." She didn't agree, and no one else said anything.
Later in the afternoon I ran into FrenchGuy. He thanked me for helping her solve her problem, and complained, "I think it was above her abilities." I think he's right. The most frustrating part is how it reflects on me. I know that sounds bad, but I really think that our boss can see past her incompetencies. I seriously hope that we can find a good sde-t who speaks Japanese soon, so that she can move on to somewhere else where she has better opportunities for success.
Have I mentioned that her soul qualification for my job is that she knows Japanese? Well, hot damn! I know English, and that's used in three countries, give me a raise!
posted by granola girl at 11:39 pm
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