No senior, no safety net

You want me to read it one more time?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I love it. Okay, just in case you didn't get it, he says, I just want to say that this is the worst project that I think I have ever seen, and I am embarrassed, embarrassed that this is something that we would even think about releasing as a company.

You're listening to Off the VPN, the show where two work besties get real about working in tech.

Wait, that's it. I have to tell you, I went to the store and I got the actual like oat milk with lavender in it. So I've been making the matcha lattes at home. Oh my gosh. With mushroom powder. Like with the mushroom powder. Yeah. Matcha and lavender. So you can have all the deliciousness at home.

Oh my gosh, I literally need to like make myself a note for when I go grocery shopping.

Starbucks brand too.

Oh, this is actually the best news. You just made my day. It doesn't take much. I'm literally writing it down to my grocery list. And it's, oh well, I love it. We're not here to sponsor Starbucks.

No. But you know what else is just as good as a matcha latte?

What?

A good story.

I am so ready. What do you, what do you have for me?

All right, so we have an interesting one. What can I say about this story? This story is about like just how tough the tech industry can be and how many things you need to know as you grow in your career. I wanna like maybe even tie this into. The word, and you're ready to hear it. Let's tie this into AI a little bit. I actually think this story is really relevant because, you know, we keep talking about AI can replace us all, but I think that AI wouldn't have even known some of these things. There's still a requirement of like hands-on experience and understanding the needs of systems. And so this is kind of a story about a junior engineer's experience and some things that they just didn't know. and they had to learn the hard way, which I think we've all had to do to get to our points in our careers. Not to tie it into AI, but I actually do think it's relevant how I feel about how basically the idea of like AI replacing us, like I've tried to replace me, like that would be great.

But it has, I've, I've seen it actively.

I actively pursue that. And so I, I actually do think there's so much nuance in development work that's not just coding. And I think this story highlights that, but it also highlights some like team dynamic stuff that I think you'll really have some opinions about.

All right, let's get into it.

So the story is about David. So David, like I said, was a junior software engineer, right? So there may be less than a year, I think, of experience, something like that. And they're just a few weeks into a new role. So they're already a little bit into a new role. They just joined this company. It's a fintech company, and they've been like really excited about this. They don't obviously have a ton of coding experience under their belt. The great thing about being super junior is you're also very eager. So they're coming into this very eager about all the stuff they get to do. It's a good job, but like he's only a few weeks in and he already gets moved to a different team, which this happens, right? Moving of resources, timing, sometimes it's not obvious where to go. And the reason was this specific team was just really understaffed and so that's why he got moved over there. And this team, what they were working on is basically this company had a web app and they also had a mobile app. And so the web app was just severely behind the mobile app, like it just lacking in feature parity. And so this team was trying to like move the web app forward in some meaningful way. And so they're, they're catching it up, trying to get the platform to have the same functionality. And so David's now on this team and the first thing that he's assigned to do is go add what's called like a reward section onto the web platform. So there's, presumably something on the mobile platform that's of parity, and he's supposed to go work on that. And he's supposed to work on it, it's supposed to be considered like a two-person job. He's working on it with a senior engineer, so they're supposed to pair, your classic senior engineer, junior engineer duo, to go tackle this project. But shortly after they start the project, the senior engineer ends up super busy. They're like tied up on like back-to-back interviews. They're doing like a huge hiring push at this time. And quote, he unfortunately couldn't help with the project too much. He was off doing interviews and so it just, he wasn't able to support this project. So like David, this super junior engineer is left doing this entire thing himself. Whew.

Rough. Do we know how much time they estimated for this project? Is David on his own for like 2 months? or is it like, so 2 weeks?

Yeah. So that's exactly what happened. So actually this wasn't, I don't think this was scoped because basically David says a PM comes up to David and is like, so do you think this thing can be ready in a month?

And David's like, I knew you were gonna say that. Like, I knew it was just gonna be like some unreasonable question that David's like, what do you mean?

Yeah, basically. And David, junior engineer, he's like, Yeah, yeah, yeah. This could be done in a month. He says yes.

Of course.

And my question is for you, like, what's your comment on that before we even keep going? Like a junior engineer is giving a timeline to a PM. They're saying it's a month. It sounds like it's an entire feature. What's your thoughts? What's your initial kind of take on that?

Well, I said of course, because I'm just not surprised. Like estimating is truly like one of the most impossible things to do in this profession, and everybody has different tactics for how they try and estimate, but like no matter how hard anybody tries, it's still just going to be like an unsolvable problem. Like we can get better at it for sure. Like let's not be way off, but no one's ever gonna nail it 100% of the time. And as a junior engineer, I think something that you have to learn that's really difficult over your career is like pushing back and saying no and finding the line between, I want everybody to be impressed with me and I want everybody to think I'm so good and I'm so smart and they can count on me. And so of course I'm gonna get this to you by a month from now or a week from now or whatever. Pick any timeframe. The answer from the junior dev is almost always going to be, yes, I will get that to you at that time. You have to learn over the course of your career that there's, there's a difference between yesing people and being accurate and reliable and predictable and saying like, actually, no. That's kind of my thought of this is just one of those things that David's gonna have to learn. On the PM's front, I love that the PM is like not going above David and being like, when is this junior engineer gonna get this work done? And the PM's just, hey, when do you think this is gonna get done? Like, I love that direct line of communication, but also I think if I'm the PM, I would consult with the junior engineer and also the senior engineer who was supposed to be on the project and just be like, not to like go behind David's back, but just to get everybody's sense of when this thing is gonna be done, just so I can do my job better. What do you think, senior engineer? Even though that person was sort of off the project at that point, they probably had some idea in their heads, like at the beginning of starting it, like how long it would take.

I completely agree with you. And I think on the senior engineer, like the difference between those two is just experience. Like this junior engineer doesn't have experience to pull from of what's going to take to make a project like this successful. Maybe they've pushed out one project, maybe two tops within this timeframe. Like they just don't have that experience to pull from. They can make their best guess, but, and it's good for them to practice, but having a leader or some senior folks to lean in on to double-check that timeline to make sure that the plan makes sense. Also, they're gonna be very optimistic. Engineers in general are usually optimistic about timelines and junior engineers even more optimistic. Like having to teach people how to do this too of they'll be like, oh, we're gonna do this timeline. And I'm like, no, you're not. We're pushing out the date. Like I used to be very like strong on that. And I'm like, this is the date. I'm like, you guys set that date, but I'm gonna externally do it this date. I think it's a skill I have, unfortunately. But I, I do feel like because of the optimism and people's excitement about something, they're not considering— yeah, if you had no interruptions for X amount of time, nobody's taking vacation, nobody's getting sick, no escalations show up, you don't have other projects taking your time, sure, maybe you could have gotten it done in that time. But take into consideration all of that work, all of that investments split, it's going to change. It's going to affect the project. So you gotta keep in all of those signals. And I think sometimes that's where the optimism comes from. But yeah, I agree with you. I agree with you on all the points you're making about junior engineers. David, in retrospect, is like, I should have just said no.

I'm like, why did I do that?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And unfortunately, and this is something that happens, I'm sure you've done this. I know I've known plenty of junior engineers that have done this specific thing. You're gonna, this is gonna feel very, it's gonna hurt cuz I feel like I've had to stop junior engineers from doing this, I bet you can already guess what he does after he commits to this day. He just starts working a ton of hours.

I was gonna say Red Bull. All nighters.

Yeah. Red Bull. Yes. He's starting to put in long days. I'm grinding in day in, day out. I'm putting like 12, 13, 14-hour days in to get this thing done. Because also junior engineers, they're like learning as they're going. Yeah. So they don't have skills to pull from. They're just naturally gonna take longer. and that's okay. And that's like what they need to learn. And they get frustrated and they're comparing their skills to a senior engineer when they shouldn't be. Like, this is very normal behavior from a junior engineer. This is just what they do.

Yeah.

Um, I've done it.

Oh yeah.

I've done it. Like I, I do that. Like it's happened. But yeah, so poor David, he's in this situation, but he gets it done and he's like, the feature's working. He's happy about it. He gets it done. Here's the thing. He finds out, he's like, actually, you know, he's just been testing with a small set of data, he wasn't working with a ton of data on the page. Oh, so he's doing all of this testing and he pushes to staging. Guess what happens?

Is it just not, it's not performant. It's not, it wasn't scalable. Oh my gosh.

Yeah. So this is what I mean by experience teaches you something, right? Yeah. So he pushes to staging and he finds out he doesn't know that staging is a full clone of production. So when he pushes, he's thinking, yeah, I did the feature. And then he's not realizing like the database has like thousands of records and he's like, oh, the feature's just lagging. It's super slow. He's, it wasn't like totally working. There's just like way too much data. And he just didn't account for it. He just didn't know. He's again, like to repeat, he's junior. This is non-experienced, maybe in previous work. He never had a staging environment. There's also like different ways to architect things when you're thinking about massive sets of data. Like these are all things that just come with time or experience, or someone could have told you. And he's also new to the company.

I was just thinking, I was just thinking, yeah, it could also just be like a failure on everybody else's part. Not in like a, a mean way, but like just, yeah, I don't, maybe he legitimately just thought that the database that he was working with was similar to what the production database actually looked like in terms of size. So like he might have been like, what, what the F is staging?

We don't know how level— I've been there. I've definitely been there where I was like, a what? You don't know.

I'm just sad. I'm like thinking about all of the all-nighters and I'm like, ugh.

Yeah, I know. I, I, I know. So he ends up like showing this thing, like demoing it to the team. They're on a team meeting and he's like, you know, for the most part, he's, despite the performance issues, he's, the team has his back. They're like, Everyone on the team is like, you know, you're good. We're super understaffed. You weren't supposed to do this by yourself anyway. They're like validating him. They're like, this probably should have taken more time, right? Like they're trying to like validate, like, this is all kind of all sorts of messed up. You weren't really put in a situation to succeed except for this one teammate. Okay. This one teammate, I guess they're on Google Meet and they, there's like a raise hand feature. So they raise their hand. Uh-oh. They've been quiet this whole time. Nothing.

Wait, is the senior engineer in the meeting? I need to know.

I'm not sure. All I know is that they marked that like the team lead is in them, is in the meeting. Okay.

And then this is a new random team member who we haven't heard of yet.

Okay. So anyway, so this one teammate, they raise their hand on the call and they're like, oh, like what do you wanna say? And he says, I just wanna say that this is the worst project that I think I've ever seen. And I'm embarrassed that this is something that we would even think about releasing as a company. Wait, what?

You want me to read it one more time?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay.

Just in case you didn't get it, he says, I just want to say that, like, he was about to— he was laying the groundwork.

Yeah.

That this is the worst project that I think I have ever seen. And I am embarrassed, embarrassed that this is something that we would even think about releasing as a company.

Yo, what? Do you think everyone's jaws were just like—

So, so David says he's— at first everybody's laughing. And everyone's all like, they think he's joking, like he's making a joke. But then he just keeps going on and on about how shitty he thought it was. Wait, just like how bad he thought it was.

Is he pissed at David, or is it just like the idea of the— this like rewards project?

Unclear. All I know is David is getting dug into deeper into a hole. David he turns off his camera. He's, I'm not dealing with this. Like, he's just like, oh, like it was that bad.

Oh my God.

And you wanna know what's crazy? I mentioned that the team lead is there.

Team lead didn't say nothing.

They didn't, they just let this slide. Like they just let this guy like absolutely trash this junior engineer.

You know what's funny is, well, because you're the one telling me this story is like, I can immediately like put us in a room where that's happening and I can just hear your voice like unmuting and being like, Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I think we need to— like, you would immediately interject and handle the situation. The fact that nobody did that and David had to go off camera, that is like just like red flags everywhere. That's—

oh, it's toxic. This is toxic.

Where do we go from here? I need to know how this—

yeah, okay, so it seems like he doesn't say anything, but After the meeting, David gets a DM from the guy who is just going off about how— yeah, Engineer Number 3— about how terrible, worst project in the history of his career. He's like, yeah, my bad. I've been kind of depressed and I've been in a rut.

I'm sorry, you deal with that. Not on my time.

David's like, I don't care. Don't take your shit out on me.

That's like, hell yes. Hell yes, David.

So I'm like, pro, he apologized, but like, like the damage is done, Engineer Number 3.

Also critically, there is a difference between apologizing to your teammate and apologizing to your teammate and making an excuse for why you acted the way you acted. Like, yeah, I think that a lot of times people think that helps and sure, it's good to provide context, but I wouldn't like lead with that, you know?

Yeah.

Lead with the apology. It won't happen again. That type of thing. Don't immediately be like, sorry, and sorry, I'm in a rut and really pissed off. Because then you get a reaction like David, which is, don't take your shit out on me. I didn't deserve that.

Yeah. I mean, I think the appropriate apology here especially given it was in a public setting. Like, there's a bunch of people watching this. The right thing would have been like not just apologizing to David— I would apologize to him and said— and I think the context, I'm like, hey, that had nothing to do with you. I'm so sorry that I've been dealing with stuff, but that is no excuse for my behavior, and I sincerely apologize. I would also apologize to the team. I would make sure I clarified with the team, I overreacted, that was really inappropriate. Like, that is a true apology because David is still gonna have to walk away. Oh, you're cancer clean, you apologize, bye. Like, David has to deal with the shame that you just like, right, just threw on him because you just wanted to lash out in a public setting. He's a junior engineer. Like, already, like, they already have massive anxiety and what are they called, imposter syndrome they're dealing with. And for that, like, it just completely dissolves any sense of safety that David could have had at this point. And from what I see, especially knowing the team lead didn't have their back when they're, in my opinion, and David does say this, I feel like team leads should be, that's part of their job is to protect 1000% junior engineers. Like where's the engineering manager? I don't even know.

Engineering manager's not even mentioned here, but the fact that nobody said anything is very frightening to me.

The day someone comes at my junior engineer, they're, they're getting, they're getting, yeah, no, there's. They're gonna be mad at all the meetings I book on their calendar to talk about it. After this, he said, so David says this is even the worst part. He said the teammate that was there had been out of office when he said all of that. So I guess that's the senior engineer wasn't even there. So that answers the question.

Oh, okay.

Senior engineer wasn't there. The worst part is that other people heard about this meeting. He's like, everybody lowkey at the company knew, like they would release basically a shitty product. They're just like, uh, the feature just isn't working properly. And it was super embarrassing. Everyone took like what that teammate said and just like, it just became like this, the, it hit the rumor mill. Yeah. And it just looked really bad. So David took that and was like, I'm start job hunting because this is not good. Poor thing. Yeah. And you know, he's upset. He's like, I, I just feel like it, you know, it didn't work as expected. And he could have said something in private. That's like inappropriate to disrespect your colleagues in that way, which is what we discussed. That could have been a private conversation that was just inappropriate on so many levels. And especially like on the team lead, they just shouldn't have allowed that. They should have did something about it. That was not okay. That was just like a bad for psychological safety, especially for junior engineers who especially need protecting and support. But none of those things happened.

When you are in that position as a junior engineer and you're presenting your work, you are literally, I don't wanna assume for everybody, I've definitely had this, but I, and I assume this goes along with all the people out there who have imposter syndrome and those thoughts and feelings as they're like early in their career. You are literally thinking that the people in that room are thinking what that person, engineer number 3, unmuted and said. Yes, that's already going on in your head that you already like, I— they think I'm dumb, I'm dumb, I'm dumb, they think I'm dumb, this is the worst project they've ever seen, this is clearly shit work. Like, you're thinking that they're thinking that, and to have somebody literally say that out loud is wild. Like, it is literally— I never thought of that dramatic. Like, I hope David is like a CEO at this point and it's just like this was probably like recent, but I hope David will, will be fine.

We do have a conclusion on David and I kind of stalked David a little bit, but David did do job hunting. He landed a new job and it paid double. He's really happy. He's, this was a few years ago, so he's gone on to have pretty good career. He has like a following, he has a social media thing. So if you wanna follow him too, like he has like a whole thing helping people navigate tech. And so, oh my gosh, yeah, check him out, David on TikTok. So I love that.

Oh, he's giving back. He's trying to set a better example. Wow. Engineer number 3. I need to know what happened to engineer number 3. Yes. I hope someone had a conversation with engineer number 3, but the fact that no one intervened tells me maybe that type of thing happens.

Listen, my feelings on this, I feel like I, I will say this forever is I think that in engineering there has historically been like the okay for people to have bad behavior because they're either really excellent in their skills. And so that will always allow for poor behavior. People will say engineers have a certain quote personality type, and I think because of that, like narrative about engineers are like the people that you put the Twinkie under the door with some requirements and they come out of the door and they're not good at with people or talking to people. Yeah, they're prickly. That sets a very low bar for engineers and it allows for stuff like this and it also gatekeeps others from being able to enter because they have to deal with this. I've cried. I've told you, I was saying this the other day about making jokes about like when I was like a junior engineer, like crying because I got ripped apart on a PR and I had no one to to talk to, and I'm like the only female, the only person of color. I don't know. I haven't, I have no one. And I was the young one, so I had, there was so many reasons why I couldn't speak to anybody about this and I had to just eat it. And you get like tough skin. It's okay to like push engineers and stuff, but there is like a line where it's not okay. So I think like as leaders, it's really important for us to not allow for that behavior. And it's also important to make sure people are getting these people skills. A lot of people are promoted when they don't have people skills or they haven't developed those things or gotten any training. And so, it just continues to propagate in this way. And that's what makes tech culture toxic at times. I hope that, and going back to like the AI thing, is like maybe with the improvements of these AI that like the actual coding part is gonna become a lot easier and open up the door. So, maybe these skills are gonna be even more important. And hopefully, we hire, we, We raise the bar on behaviors this way and we can be more collaborative and make better software. Maybe I'm being like overly optimistic about its role, but I do think like there are niche things like this that, no, it's not niche. It's very prominent in the industry. Yeah. But that's my soapbox.

No, I think that's 1000%. Like one of the directions that all of this can go in. I'm no matter what though, I. I do think AI or no AI, like that soft skill element is becoming more talked about at least, which is really good. And the very fact that like David turned this around and it's like, I'm going to help other people so that they don't have to necessarily go through what I went through. Or like, at least we're just gonna make these stories public and talk about it more, keep people in check. I think that's. The best possible outcome for David's story instead of just like repeating it, right? Like the hazing phase that could happen for new engineers. Or once you become a senior engineer, like that's how you learned how to become a senior engineer. So you just repeat those patterns, like, right? That's not the way to do it. So, ah, very relieved for David though.

Shout out to David.

Shout out to David.

I keep doing this. I'm trying to close it.

Okay, let's go. Let's just leave it as shout out to David. Yeah, I have to go.

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