Author: zingblog

While we’re on the topic of amusing office annoyances, here’s another.

I work for a really big company. Big enough that people’s idea of what they think is the right thing do in the corporate context can vary greatly depending on their particular role. This can get rather surreal. My floor alone is well over 100 people, all working on just one small set of applications.

The other day I’m working and I get a last minute and urgent request from a project manager to implement some absolutely boneheaded feature ASAP. This is actually not that uncommon, but more often than not it’s the result of poor communication, so usually the solution is to find the person who made the request and go talk to them, figure out what they really want and implement something sensible instead of their flaky hack.

(The project manager is a neither-fish-nor-fowl role in our organization. They not developers or technical managers, nor or they produces or have anything to do with defining features or product direction. They are basically organizers and mediators and their job is to schedule and track things and make sure people who need to know what’s going on know what’s going on. And to insulate developers from random noise from creative.)

This request came from a producer over in creative, so I go over to ask him about it directly. This particular guy is often more of a “big picture” than a “details” person, but he’s a nice guy and smart and if he can see that his idea doesn’t make sense to a developer he’s usually willing to listen and find a solution that works for everyone.

But not this day. I explain first issue, which is with usability. “You’re right, it makes no sense,” he tells me. ” I know it’s a terrible idea, but we have to do it anyway.” He actually said this. Pressure from the legal department apparently.

I’m sure it seems like a simple request to him but it actually would require some substantial reworking of a nontrivial set of code, and it touches other parts of the code base, so I’d have to get other developers involved. This would make the whole thing run over schedule, and have cascading consequences. So I think it over and tell him, “Actually I think it’s a great idea, but the problem is we can’t do it.”

So the other day I’m at work, writing code, in the zone, working out some complex and esoteric problem. Concentrating, you dig?

The phone rings. “Hello, is this John [horribly mispronounces my last name, which is not even that hard, and doesn’t even come close the standard mispronunciation most people use]. My name is Michael [somethingorother] and I [blahblahblahblahblah]”, talking a mile a minute, without a comma and without getting to the point. No good morning how are you, am I interrupting? or anything.

Eventually he has to pause to take a breath so I ask him “Are you a recruiter?” We’ve been having a growing problem with headhunters cold calling random people in my office looking for an in. They go onto LinkedIn and see your job title and the company you work for and then call the main switchboard and navigate the phone directory to get out numbers at our desks. I don’t know why they do it; it’s a complete waste of time. It aslo seems to me extremely rude. We all tell them about our HR department, whose job it is to listen to people like them. Usually the headhunters are pretty pushy, and some developers will wait patiently to get a word in edgewise, and plead “I’m really sorry but I can’t tell you that. You’ll have to call HR.” Sometimes the hapless developer will repeat this 3 or 5 times.

So the guy says “Yes I am I work for [some recruiting agency] and I [blahblahblahblahblah]”. So before this gets too out of hand, I tell him to talk to our HR department and hang up the phone.

Steve, who sits across from me and is not a developer but a “Resource Manager” and has to put up with more of these calls than anyone, looks up and says “Good answer.”

A minute or so later the phone rings again. I should mention I’m expecting a legit phone call right about then, so I pick it up again. “Hello this is Michael [somethingorother] and I just want to say that it is very unprofessional of you to hang up the phone on me …” Well I’m just floored! This is your sales pitch Mike? You cold call a complete stranger just to spam me, and when you’re told the right way to pitch candidates to our organization you don’t listen? Then you call me back just to insult me? And you expect me to help you because why? I thought for a second or so about trying to explain to him that it really is appropriate to hang up under these circumstances, and that had the info he called me for anyway. But I figured he probably wouldn’t listen to that either. I never found up what his second point was, cuz I hung up again.

I guess I should cut the dude some slack. He was probably just having a bad day. He’s probably just figured out he’s going to get fired for being such a lousy salesman.