Behavior Unbecoming of a Senior Developer − 30 April, 2008
The senior developer we (perhaps shouldn’t) have hired pulled a very un-senior-like stunt recently. My department is an all-Windows desktop shop, but I use a Mac laptop. Not only that, but although I had a cube, I never sat in it. Instead I used our conference room, which was much quieter and less chaotic.
Last fall, her Windows desktop developed a problem whereby she couldn’t deploy her application via another department’s web-based WebDAV client. She asked whether she could use my computer. I figured that this was a short-term kind of thing because it meant giving her my password, which, as anyone knows, you are not supposed to do.
Several weeks later, she frantically asked me for my password again, saying she couldn’t log in. I was kind of surprised. I wondered whether this meant that she had been leaving my desktop logged in all the time, which would be very much against regulations. Nevertheless I gave it to her. I might have asked her whether she was going to fix her machine, but then again, I might not have, recognizing that in a time of panic, such a comment would probably be forgotten.
I was irritated by her lack of resourcefulness because it seemed consistent with a series of other non-senior-developer-like behaviors of hers. Various people on our team, including our manager and our tech lead, had struggled with her over things like working on other projects and migrating to new technologies.
In early February our conference room was converted to a two-person office. Now my Windows desktop was right next to me, although I virtually never used it. One day, my co-worker came into my office several times and actually logged into my machine and used it while I was working. It felt extremely intrusive, and I couldn’t believe that she hadn’t gotten her machine fixed yet. It had probably been two or three months now. This didn’t seem like the behavior of a senior developer to me.
I peevishly told her that she was disturbing my work, and should find a way to make her own machine work. She stopped coming into my office. Near the end of that day or the next, I noticed her peek into my office, and then leave when she saw me. She was waiting for me to leave so she could use my machine. I was disgusted. Instead of fixing her own machine, she was just going to wait until I left so she could use my machine. Sometimes I don’t leave until 5:30 or 6. I knew that she had kids in a daycare. I wasn’t sure how that was supposed to work.
I thought about changing the password on her, I didn’t, because I was about to go away on vacation for 10 days. When I came back, I asked our tech lead what he thought I should do. Without hesitation, and with a grimace, he said, “Change your password”. So I did. I imagined with a certain amount of glee my co-worker’s astonishment the next time she tried to log in to deploy her application and couldn’t. I imagined her coming to me in a panic to get the new password.
But you know what? I never heard any more about it.
Comments:
intrepideddie (May 1, 2008. 02:00am)
No no no no no no no no no!!! Yer killin' me! Giving out your password *and* letting her use it unsupervised? "Ow my heart! I think I'm having a heart attack. You hear that Elizabeth? I'm coming to join you honey!"
peahayes (May 1, 2008. 02:13am)
ROTFL!
peahayes (May 1, 2008. 02:17am)
Hey if I die from my gastrointestinal thingie, maybe I'll see you there! Or maybe I'm going straight to hell for aiding and abetting a security-violating miscreant.
edunn (May 1, 2008. 03:05am)
You have GOT to be kidding me?! WOW hmmm... you might want to have someone double check those creds. on her resume!
peahayes (May 1, 2008. 04:06am)
Well, the positive thing about this co-worker is that she writes very stable software. I've been on call for it every other week for many months, and I've gotten one call. However, I am currently receiving (probably auto-generated) emails from one to three per minute from some runaway process she has created. It's going to an email group of which she isn't even a member. At 8 pm, I calculated that by 8 am, there will be at about 1,500 messages.
PandoraBox (May 1, 2008. 04:54pm)
Wow. Good thing you changed your password ! I am paranoid about this even with the computer technicians at work, I change my password as soon as they have gotten it (for technical purposes). It feels like your senior developer isn't quite ethical...passwords are like a toothbrush, a deodorant or panties...it's just not lendable. Anyway I'm kind of a freak with my laptop. When someone touches it I become hysterical so...lol