Monday, January 24, 2022

Scammish: C.P.S. Letter/Mail for Annual Report Instruction Form

Just received a letter addressed to my company that looked like an official letter to submit an annual report. By looking official, I just mean that it looks professional. It does not look like the one that you get from the state. 

Be careful. They do not provide any additional service because the information you provide them is essentially the same information that you submit to the state. For me, they charged way more than filing myself. The state filing is pretty simple and this form already looks more work.

This is not a scam per se, but I almost mistaken it for the actual annual report. It can still be potentially a scam as I do not know if they do submit on your behalf. I imagine they do because why take the risk for easy money already? I wouldn't be surprised if this is still legit with all the crazy stupid law stuff that can happen.

Any case, if you run a simple business, this is not worth the extra cost. I also assume that you will not get your money back if you already sent it. They'll claim they do and they will likely claim that it is in the mail. Be additionally careful if they request more information for them to return your money, as there is a scam for that too. 

The return money scam basically has you pay more money to get your money back.

Monday, January 17, 2022

Work Life: How to report a coworker who is meeting way below expectations?

Simple answer is do not. The farther they are from you on the corporate tree, the bigger the no.

I have been a part of a few colleagues' end to the team. I hated doing it but one directly impacted my work (transferred), the other was requested upon me (fired), one that did absolutely no work (transferred), etc.

There is no good to snitch on someone especially if the boss does not bring it up. Boss bringing it up may be the only opening but even then tread very carefully. If you are unsure, then do not say anything negative. Feel free to omit positive but at worst stay neutral.

First Example

He was hired because he was a friend of a director. His career was a very non-technical role put into a role that required multiple technical roles. I did my job and trained him. I repeated multiple things to him. Things got ugly when he started "throwing me under the bus" by saying that I didn't train him.

Unfortunate for him, I had really good reputation by the time he joined so most of his attempts were met with a lot of question marks. I have worked with difficult colleagues before, so I started to use these strategies.

Keep records. I made sure that I always emailed everything to him. Even if it was a call, I will send a summary of the call, the decisions made, and the information he needed. Anytime he said he didn't know or said I didn't tell him, I would just respond to the email to remind him the information that I supposedly did not send. Near the end, I had resent the same email 5 - 10 times.

I basically did all his work. If he did work, I had to redo all of it and have to go through many people angry that that have to explain the work again. I can even tell him (when we are alone together) exactly where it was in his notebook.

Eventually, I just had enough of it. 1 month of training; 2 months of "re-training"; 2 months of supervising his work and correcting everything; 1 month of basically just doing his work. I basically just wrote to my boss and asked her to give me his work directly and exclude him completely. I explained I would save the company time and money if he just stayed home.

Her solution was that she will take over supervisory role of his work. I do not know what happened, but he was eventually transferred to another group. My boss was eventually let go couple months later although this may not be related to the guy. She was not very well-liked to begin with. I was the only one to send her off.

Second Example

The second person can talk the talk. He sounds very impressive after working with the company for a year after graduating. I suspect he was not well liked by the previous group and sent to us packaged like it was a great deal.

We were in the same line of work. I did not have to do the initial training or the second training. Supposedly he was not getting it correct and I was tasked to train him again. His work is full of errors: grammatical, data, format, etc. Each time I would point it out, he would thank me because he is such a perfectionist and cannot stand those things. There are quite a few things that I do not point out mostly due to the sheer amount of time that I spend just correcting the fundamental parts of his work.

I did not have a good impression of him. My boss kept assigning me to help with his work. I eventually documented all the time spent on his work. At this job, I was able to do my assignments within 3-5 days. It would take me 6-10 days to "help" him complete his.

This time, I spoke with my boss and said that I was no longer any help to him. I was spending more time fixing his work than just doing the work myself. My boss also took over primary supervisory role. Eventually, he was fired.

At some point he was put on probation then a second probation.

Sadly, he was not even fired for terribly poor quality work but he was snoring during one of the executive meetings.

Third Example

I had to train someone who used to do the same work. I later found out she used to work for our team before I was on the team. I also learned she was transferred out because no one wanted to work for her.

Yet somehow I had to train everything from the start. I would give her tasks with expected dead lines. She did not do them.

I simplified the tasks. One of these task would just be to create a template (copy, paste, then rename a file) which takes 5 - 10 minutes. I'll check the next day and it will still not be done. When I question her, she would say she will work on it. On the second day, she will say that she did not know how to do it. I would show her on that call, then explain she can do the rest. Third day, still nothing done and she does not even join the meeting. No show on fourth and fifth day. I reported the missed meetings to my boss because I was not sure she was on PTO which he said she was not. After a week, she has not even completed the first task and was not joining meetings.

At this point, the assignment is overdue so I just do the work. I give her a new assignment with the same tasks. This time I just do the work in a separate folder because I already expect her not to do the work. After another week of no progress, I just submitted my portion.

I have only reported to my boss that she has not shown up for most of her status meetings, does not even respond to emails or instant message, and has ignored most other things. I tell him just give me the assignment because I am just wasting time checking on her. I was also a contractor and I get paid the extra hours anyways.

Eventually, I learned that she was transferred. After another two years, I still saw her on the active directory.

Suggestion to Manager

In most cases, no one will ever jeopardize their reputation to snitch on someone else. I have talked to many colleagues who have complained about others. I can guarantee you that none of them will say a peep to a manager or HR. Anyone that snitches already have pretty bad personality, and no one wants to be lumped with them even if it is with good intentions.

I just happen to be confident in my work. I also make sure that I already have a good standing reputation. I am still very careful on what I share and who it is shared to. Everyone else have always just quit and did something else. Then you are just left with the crappy people who also just moved up a spot on the seniority ladder. 

Why do I suggest others to just say no? Look how hard it is to fire someone. I cannot imagine providing any more evidence on how useless someone can be. #1 and #3 provided absolutely zero value. #2 at least did something even if it was still zero value. If anything I can argue that they provided negative value because I have to spend more time to correct the work. My team even got back an already known low-performing person.

Unfortunately, I have no way to prove that I am a pretty optimistic and patient person. I have given them lots of passes and liberties before I started my list on them. Technically, a list of CYA (or CMA in my case). Because no matter what, you always need to watch out for yourself. You never know when someone will push you under the bus. (Also doubles as a good source for yearly reviews)


If Any Action

If you do need to do something, my recommendation is to phrase the request as a detriment to your performance. I used to be able to do 20 tasks in a week; now I can only do 10 tasks a week due to addressing other tasks like training or assisting others. Or, I used to be able to complete a task in 2 weeks; now it takes me 4 weeks to complete. Or, I have been putting in overtime to cover these additional tasks that are not mine; I've worked overtime everyday for two weeks.

If manager does not do anything, make sure to track the changes. If management has issue with your decreased performance later, you need this list to back yourself up. If you get below expected year-end evaluation, this can prove that you have gone beyond expectations. If you leave work incomplete, this will also help back you up.

If management still has issue, do not invest more time in that company. Start looking elsewhere. 

In more cases than not, having a detailed list will make you appear to have more leverage compared to someone that does not (assuming both people are on somewhat same level). I prefer to be more passive aggressive. Not to be a bad or evil person, but also as my "hidden" test for the manager if they understand some level of relationship intricacies. If they just want only hard evidence and facts, then I do not believe they are very fit managers. They clearly will not understand a good number of people.

Friday, January 14, 2022

RANT: I hate poor-quality developers who appear to be ace developers- Consistency

The first problem I have with poor-quality developers is how inconsistent they are with many aspects of development. I especially do not like the ones that self-claim to be "good" developers because they delude themselves that they are not susceptible to bad habits by pretending they are one-off issues not to be addressed.

The latest list of request consisted of something like the follow:

WebAPI

webApi

WEBapi


Those are the names of the databases a list of objects I was supposed to copy. It is in a nice table, and it is to me so clearly obvious they are not in the same format. One can argue that this makes no difference to the database, but this attitude to inconsistency is everywhere in this persons work: email, documentation, chats, etc. Anecdotally, I feel there is a strong correlation to poor consistency with the quality of developers. If they cannot even be consistent with a simple list, I question their consistency with more important details.

And this is evidenced by other changes that I have to promote. I promoted an object that had the word "complited" in it. AND it passed code review. This could be a "fat finger" problem but there are times when the spelling is completely off where I already feel sorry for the other developer that has to troubleshoot this. They also have deal with names that developer had mistaken a number 1 with lower case l or a capital I, or when there is a mysterious space in a name where the agreed pattern is to not have any spaces. I also have had requests to objects that do not exist because they used the wrong database name or server on a regular basis. The list goes on and on: missing documentations, missing dates, wrong ticket number, even numbered lists that have missing numbers, etc.

I can understand mistakes here and there, but when does it become a real problem. In most cases, I can figure it out but it is taxing on the amount of time it takes me to research (or time to rant).

What triggered me to write this post is that these types of developers tend to be the first to claim their #1 pet-peeve is inconsistencies or they have an OCD to be perfectionists or they rarely ever make these mistakes. From my own experience, I can tell you that the best developers I have worked with never had to make these claims. Even developers of average skills would not make this claim. Somehow the worst offenders ALWAYS make this claim and out of no where.

I rarely ever have to ask if this bothers them. I just point it out and suddenly they will say one of the three statements above. It takes all my efforts to not have my jaw hit the floor. Not only that, but they have never improved in this area.

But how does this really translate to their code quality. They go through a lot of defects. Their code is consistently returned. They always claim poor quality of requirements yet other developers seem to have much fewer code returned to them.

Are you detail-oriented?

This has made me question the interview question "are you detail-oriented?" I always answer this with a lot of concern and I do intentionally do that in my interviews. The reason is I feel that anyone that says they are detail-oriented with a lot of confidence are the above type of people. In some sense, I feel this is almost a trick question for both the interviewer and the interviewee. Could there be people who are hyper detail-oriented? Yes, but that will show in their answers to other questions.

There does seem to be an aura of detail-oriented wanabes versus actual people who are. To me, the difference in the way they approach problems. Wanabes tend to give lots of information that seems relevant but does not quite answer the question. They are the people I would go into a meeting for a simple question, spend an hour, people feel it was productive, but then seem like they didn't get an answer to their question.

On the other hand, real detail-oriented people gives you what seems like a very short answer. Sometimes it even includes information that seems irrelevant. But then once you start working on it, you realize that you do need that information.

I answer the question that I am not very detail-oriented but that I seem to be more consistent than most of my peers. I even explain why I answer hesitantly. I also explain that there is a level of detail that is warranted for different cases. If we are discussing the big picture, we do not want to be inundated with details questions that is not ready to be answered. If it was a life-critical component, I am quite capable to be consistent most of the time. I will admit that I am not super consistent, but will explain that I have methods to improve on my accuracies.

I am not detail-oriented at all with these blogs. Most of the time, I just type as I think of things to talk about. I rarely go back and proofread my blogs unless it is too obvious that I need to move something to another part of the blog. I also "proof" if someone leaves a comment only because I cannot remember what I wrote and need to reference... and I have found quite a few grammatical and spelling errors.