One company had three subsystems, each with their own architecture. Two of them were fairly grounded, but the third was overrun with architecture astronauts. You know, the type of architects who implement bidirectional stateful subflexion via multi-delegate topographic inheritance and neotransflexive subordinated surrogates. There's barely a line of documentation, because they consider it intuitive.
Of course, the entire development team was completely confused, and struggled constantly because they couldn't understand any of it. Management's response was to say "just ask an architect". The architects said "I'm busy, just read the code". And then when things don't work, despite following the comments in the code (if any existed), they'd say "oh yeah, that's how it's named/described, but that's not what it actually means. You'll need to read the code to see what it really does".
So developers had to try to understand why a protected abstract virtual base pure const virtual private destructor had been converted to a protected virtual abstract base pure virtual private const destructor instead. If they got didn't understand the implications, the app could crash. Which it did. Frequently. Management was demanding to know this kept happening. Of course, the architecture was rock solid (posters on the wall proved this), so clearly it was the quality of the developers.
Eventually, senior management asked "what kind of training is there for all of this nonstandard and abstracted code?". The answer of "just ask an architect" was not well received, so management was ordered to implement a mentoring program.
Senior developers (not the architects, of course, don't be silly) were assigned the role of mentor to junior employees. It was their job to explain the architect's code (which they rarely if every understood) to the juniors. There was a huge meeting, where management sternly told seniors that it was their responsibility to ensure that juniors learned the undocumented design, and that it would be part of their annual evaluation. They were expected to spend at least four hours a week with their mentee, and keep logs of the knowledge transfer.
The supposition was that management would take the seniors notes to generate documentation that the architects couldn't be bothered to write in the first place.
Since every hour was billed to a project, developers had to account for them. So, the first question that was asked was what the charge code was for this activity that was going to take 10% of the team's time.
The answer was "there isn't one. You can mentor the person during lunch, or take walks with your mentee". In other words, it was required work, but they weren't going to pay for it, you were expected to do it for free.
When my manager complained to senior management that I hadn't started mentoring, senior management asked me why not. I said that I hadn't received the charge code for it yet, and since (as per their edict) I had to account for every hour, that was holding things up. They agreed, and asked the middle management chain what was holding things up with the charge code. The answer of "there isn't one, we expect them to do it for free" did not go over well.
Why bother? I made a point of always taking my lunch breaks and going for walks, to the great annoyance of management who expected everyone to work nonstop.
I found in companies like that, the best move was just to follow the rules - the printed ones, on record with HR - and ignore their verbal ones that contradicted them.
Complying with the company's actual rules and ignoring management's edicts that contradict them eventually resulted in a disciplinary meeting to discuss "my" failure to follow the edicts. And HR and/or upper management would discover that I was following company policy and middle management were the ones violating them.
In cases like this, HR would discover that management was not only violating company policy, but labour laws.
The managers told engineers that their employee evaluations would be dependent on doing mentoring, and they put it in writing. When they then admitted there was no charge code for it, the HR rep's face went white, because if any employee made a complaint to the government it, they'd be looking at potentially millions of dollars in fines.
This happened almost verbatim.
One company had three subsystems, each with their own architecture. Two of them were fairly grounded, but the third was overrun with architecture astronauts. You know, the type of architects who implement bidirectional stateful subflexion via multi-delegate topographic inheritance and neotransflexive subordinated surrogates. There's barely a line of documentation, because they consider it intuitive.
Of course, the entire development team was completely confused, and struggled constantly because they couldn't understand any of it. Management's response was to say "just ask an architect". The architects said "I'm busy, just read the code". And then when things don't work, despite following the comments in the code (if any existed), they'd say "oh yeah, that's how it's named/described, but that's not what it actually means. You'll need to read the code to see what it really does".
So developers had to try to understand why a protected abstract virtual base pure const virtual private destructor had been converted to a protected virtual abstract base pure virtual private const destructor instead. If they got didn't understand the implications, the app could crash. Which it did. Frequently. Management was demanding to know this kept happening. Of course, the architecture was rock solid (posters on the wall proved this), so clearly it was the quality of the developers.
Eventually, senior management asked "what kind of training is there for all of this nonstandard and abstracted code?". The answer of "just ask an architect" was not well received, so management was ordered to implement a mentoring program.
Senior developers (not the architects, of course, don't be silly) were assigned the role of mentor to junior employees. It was their job to explain the architect's code (which they rarely if every understood) to the juniors. There was a huge meeting, where management sternly told seniors that it was their responsibility to ensure that juniors learned the undocumented design, and that it would be part of their annual evaluation. They were expected to spend at least four hours a week with their mentee, and keep logs of the knowledge transfer.
The supposition was that management would take the seniors notes to generate documentation that the architects couldn't be bothered to write in the first place.
Since every hour was billed to a project, developers had to account for them. So, the first question that was asked was what the charge code was for this activity that was going to take 10% of the team's time.
The answer was "there isn't one. You can mentor the person during lunch, or take walks with your mentee". In other words, it was required work, but they weren't going to pay for it, you were expected to do it for free.
When my manager complained to senior management that I hadn't started mentoring, senior management asked me why not. I said that I hadn't received the charge code for it yet, and since (as per their edict) I had to account for every hour, that was holding things up. They agreed, and asked the middle management chain what was holding things up with the charge code. The answer of "there isn't one, we expect them to do it for free" did not go over well.
You should have said that you don't take lunch breaks and that you don't go for walks. Case closed.
Why bother? I made a point of always taking my lunch breaks and going for walks, to the great annoyance of management who expected everyone to work nonstop.
I found in companies like that, the best move was just to follow the rules - the printed ones, on record with HR - and ignore their verbal ones that contradicted them.
Complying with the company's actual rules and ignoring management's edicts that contradict them eventually resulted in a disciplinary meeting to discuss "my" failure to follow the edicts. And HR and/or upper management would discover that I was following company policy and middle management were the ones violating them.
In cases like this, HR would discover that management was not only violating company policy, but labour laws.
The managers told engineers that their employee evaluations would be dependent on doing mentoring, and they put it in writing. When they then admitted there was no charge code for it, the HR rep's face went white, because if any employee made a complaint to the government it, they'd be looking at potentially millions of dollars in fines.
So true
Training is for people who can't figure it out. You are not one of those, are you???
Your encouragement is full … of something. 💩
Full stop 🛑🛑🛑 addiction
Let's bring back on the job training!
No need to receive training when we have AI now. 🙄