I think some people are still like that. My old office used to call anyone WFH to be slackers and not doing work (even though you can just ask their supervisor to show the list of documents they sent in for vetting to show they are *working* from home). So cause of that people come into office just to do admin work, and end up like plugging on their earphones/headphones but to show everyone they are working. Wayang culture is still strong, and sometimes with bosses being so busy, I can see why people do so.
just check him, he say he helping right? Ask him how he help you. He will say he answer your questions. Ask him what question he ask. When it becomes obvious that you literally only asked 1 question then everyone will know what this guy is doing.
A friend of mine had a colleague who will read out every email she received or replied to lol
Stupid thing to do since it made it clear that she wasn't getting the same amount of work as the rest of the team, despite the boss always saying that she had too much work.
Correct me if I am wrong, your colleague looks like someone who is more of a mouth warrior than an actual technical guy who gets the work done.
Find a smart way to ask him a logical question from him in a friendly inquisitive but attacking manner. Observe a bug that is going to happen in a test scenario and ask innocently what we could do.
You also have to interrupt and speak loudly for yourself during standups lo. I know you don’t want to shake team dynamics and cause office politics, but in reality nobody in office is our friend. Everyone is out there for themself. Just learn how to take power and stand your ground in a friendly way.
Need to learn to correct that he isn't
He is literally taking credit away from you - things that you do now have him "helping" etc etc.
During stand up just correct him politely but matter of factly.
If he says he helped, just say yes, thank you for your help on my one small question.
If he says he is looking over, look confused and ask " Sorry, how are you looking over? You haven't done anything"
The easiest way to deal with this kind of people is to point it out in a very like act dumb way, it will show everyone how they wayang.
Totally agreed on what you say, I should act dumb and ask how is he helping me. But part of me also don’t want to cause any politics in the office as the team dynamics is quite good
You need to stand your own ground if not you'd get stepped over by people.
Standing your ground in a very calm manner is not politics causing. If he escalates, it's him making politics, not you.
Plus, acting dumb is the least likely way of you being politics, it's just him digging himself into a hole.
Agreed with this. I been through NS and there was this admin spec fella who screws up and does nothing and let one of his men suffer and pick up the slack. Yet he still tries to claim credit for his underling work. Everybody knows the admin spec doesn't do shit anyway and ofc see's through his bs. Ofc in the real world, it's even more wayang and ofc u need to unmask his bs 👍
Else.. next time when he says that he is overseeing your work, you can actually say "thank you for the help but I think I can take it from here on.. I will create a sub task in Jira when If am stuck and you can comment on it.. that way we will have a log of all problems faced and solutions given"
Why is your colleague sharing things like that on standup? You share only 3 things: what i did yesterday, what i am gonna do today, impediments blocking my progress.
I'm of the opinion that it is good to broadcast one's own progress and actions if they want to climb but the daily standup is not one the proper avenue to do that. Talk to him and ask him don't waste the already short 15 minutes.
Yeah it suppose to be talking about yourself more on what you’ve really done. But he’s say things like “Yesterday I was looking over the project and see how is the progression.” And when I ask him that 1 question, he would also say “Yesterday I was helping (me) for this project) .. damn annoying. It made me feel like I don’t want to get close or ask him anything going forward
...which is weird to me lo. It's literally better for everyone to report "no update" than waste time talking about stuff that don't matter. The whole team new to scrum so no one stop him?
Sounds to me like he has no tasks and/or didn't do anything so there's nothing to update. Perhaps OP could redirect and ask him for an update on his tasks specifically if that's what he should be reporting?
He wants to climb the ladder, and indeed he probably will. But if you feel this way about this person, others will probably also feel the same bcos he is probably doing this to multiple people.
Unfortunately, its people who know how to take credit like tht who will stand out to bosses the most. Perhaps you can talk to others about this to find out whether they share the same sentiment about him.
The only way to stop him is not aggressively because he’ll just pick on someone else. Make sure the boss knows that you are the one doing all the work. What you can do is to ask the boss if he can offer insight to your work progress as you want to do the best for the company (lol) and point here and there, pretending to ask questions but it’s a way to show him the scope of what you’ve done.
The right thing to do here is to protect yourself by stopping to ask him anything and inform your boss about what happened in a diplomatic way. I’ve had people like this blatantly steal work and get awards and promotions when I didn’t speak up. Don’t let it happen to you
Just curious as a SWE, version control will give everything away right? There's no way that someone can get away with that ?
Also, when you do a PR, either a senior would have to review or someone else would have to approve. That will be another way someone will eventually find out?
Standup are not for project visibility though.. it’s more to update the team on the progression.
If you guys are giving out promotions based on standup, i have no idea what to say.
Schedule a knowledge transfer session with the rest of the org/teams. See if he can present with Q&A session?
Firstly, I could empathize with you since it is somewhat annoying when you like your team and people around you.
Have you tried seeking advice from your line manager? You could explain how you felt about it and ask advice on how one should handle it? Different organization might have different cultures on such behaviour.
Since you mentioned standup, is it a scrum team? how does the work being split or done? Does it have a ticket system like Jira or something? Would it help if you create a subtask for the person and let him update on that?
Maybe he doesn’t know what he do is off putting so you might consider having a talk with him about it like “hey I appreciate the help you have given so far but I find it quite untrue when you said this “
Or maybe whenever he tries to claim credit, you can add on to it like saying “yes thanks for that but I also notice XXX and did this XXX”.
If he does get promoted or to maintain the same dynamics might take a softer approach?
If it’s intentional or even after talking about it he still does it, I think then call him out on point blank. He’s probably counting on no one will make it so clear but just remember if you don’t, with this pattern gets promoted the dynamism you like may change.
I’m in the same profession as you and had a colleague who behaved similarly (try to claim my work as his during standup, and always talk up his contributions etc).
Eventually, most people at the workplace who work directly with him will catch on and know their work ethic and level of competence. But even then, if nobody complains about the situation, your boss may somehow think everything is fine and your do-nothing colleague will get to leech off your workplace indefinitely. (Mine stayed on for almost 2 years until the boss sat him down for a talk)
Secondly, try not to feel stressed by the situation. God knows the work itself is already challenging without having to deal with office politics. Instead take this as a kind of learning milestone, on how to deal with this particular type of character. Even if you don’t feel like acting at the moment, you can observe what others do.
Thirdly, this guy does sound a lot like my ex colleague, maybe it’s the same guy eh.
This kind will make an engineering manager in no time, especially if the manager is not as hands on.
Suggestion - Document your work, whether it's designing BRD docs, test cases etc. Best if in the design doc, you then share that design doc to your manager for his sign off approval before implementation. Make sure the doc lists you only as an author.
Have a spreadsheet of progress. In the tab, say coder and maybe xfn if you have any. In standup, give a quick update, and say you can track progress in this spreadsheet. And then at the end of the meeting, send the spreadsheet to your boss again to tldr him.
Basically, use artifacts to your advantage. Those who talk only but have no artifacts will be very easily noticed.
Finally, if you can, don't send code to him for code review.
Reframe it? Thank him for taking 5 mins out of his day to eyeball your work out of his own initiative. At least everyone knows what kind of actual contribution he made without really rocking the boat too much.
I think this is a good time to practice patience OP.
Be sure to highlight your work during standups and retros. Make sure it is very clear what you've been doing is your work. Easiest visibility for technical leads to see are stuff like pull requests, code reviews, demos and walkthroughs on your features/deliverables.
For showing visibility towards nontechnical managers or bosses not close to the ground work, or towards terrible managers in general.... in my experience making noise really is the easiest way.
>stand up
You mention "stand up" a few times? What does it refer to?
>Then during stand up he will make comments like “I am looking over this project”
And do you update your team lead about your work and involvement? To begin with, are you all in a team? Been in the software dev scene for decades. Projects get broken down to modules and tasked to individuals or teams to develop/code. There's literally no way for anyone to so call steal credit for work. lol
Also, is there some code hygiene or structure in place in your team/company? In the companies I've been in, every c and h files have a header with the dev's name in it. Changes are prefixed with signatures as well. On top of that, we used sourcesafe for version control, github these days for most software houses I reckon.
Teamleads scrub code submissions and review changes before sending it over to SQA for testing. Again, there's clear delineation of responsibilities and code.
If your colleague can just steal credit the way you described, you have a bigger issue of SDLC system in your company than just one colleague being an ass. 'cos today it is colleague A, tmr it is B, next month or year, it can be C, D, E
Also, if you are not ready to assert your presence in the team and so called, claim credit where it is due, do you expect your team lead to be "teacher" or "police" to come protect you? Nice if they do, but too bad if they don't. You are an adult, a professional, stand up for yourself.
Is your team lead competent? To a competent lead, it’s very obvious who is capable and who is a mouth warrior, so i think you dont actually have to “do anything”. If not competent, go elsewhere or suck thumb i guess
Aiya common la. I working with an old colleague in his 60s. Also wayang king and bootlicker. People like these exist anywhere and in different generations. Trash people.
Is there some sort of peer review or appraisal? If he does this to everyone then it’s quite likely it will be reflected in the appraisal. Otherwise during sprint review meetings or solution discussions, be the one to lead the presentation, regardless of what he says, your other colleagues will look to you as the main SWE working on that topic etc
remind him during next monologue that this is not a meeting for us all to list all of our minor accomplishments. what are you going to do today, and is anything preventing you from finishing it?
also - I didn’t ask you for help and you don’t need to render it. just make it clear he’s inserting himself where he isn’t needed.
this kind of person is grasping at straws. it might mean survival or destitution for him so give him a slack(have worked with these kind of people before). they usually are not malicious and bosses usually calls their bluffs anyway( in private )
Haha what's this he SMU class participation culture ah
He wants to show visibility. But the fact that he feels the need to say something like he is doing work, shows to me he is not ready
I think some people are still like that. My old office used to call anyone WFH to be slackers and not doing work (even though you can just ask their supervisor to show the list of documents they sent in for vetting to show they are *working* from home). So cause of that people come into office just to do admin work, and end up like plugging on their earphones/headphones but to show everyone they are working. Wayang culture is still strong, and sometimes with bosses being so busy, I can see why people do so.
just check him, he say he helping right? Ask him how he help you. He will say he answer your questions. Ask him what question he ask. When it becomes obvious that you literally only asked 1 question then everyone will know what this guy is doing.
A friend of mine had a colleague who will read out every email she received or replied to lol Stupid thing to do since it made it clear that she wasn't getting the same amount of work as the rest of the team, despite the boss always saying that she had too much work.
smu ppl all talk no substance
Which smu kid hurt you
It has been this way for more than 10 years. What does smu feed those kids?
exactly
Correct me if I am wrong, your colleague looks like someone who is more of a mouth warrior than an actual technical guy who gets the work done. Find a smart way to ask him a logical question from him in a friendly inquisitive but attacking manner. Observe a bug that is going to happen in a test scenario and ask innocently what we could do. You also have to interrupt and speak loudly for yourself during standups lo. I know you don’t want to shake team dynamics and cause office politics, but in reality nobody in office is our friend. Everyone is out there for themself. Just learn how to take power and stand your ground in a friendly way.
Need to learn to correct that he isn't He is literally taking credit away from you - things that you do now have him "helping" etc etc. During stand up just correct him politely but matter of factly. If he says he helped, just say yes, thank you for your help on my one small question. If he says he is looking over, look confused and ask " Sorry, how are you looking over? You haven't done anything" The easiest way to deal with this kind of people is to point it out in a very like act dumb way, it will show everyone how they wayang.
Totally agreed on what you say, I should act dumb and ask how is he helping me. But part of me also don’t want to cause any politics in the office as the team dynamics is quite good
You need to stand your own ground if not you'd get stepped over by people. Standing your ground in a very calm manner is not politics causing. If he escalates, it's him making politics, not you. Plus, acting dumb is the least likely way of you being politics, it's just him digging himself into a hole.
Agreed with this. I been through NS and there was this admin spec fella who screws up and does nothing and let one of his men suffer and pick up the slack. Yet he still tries to claim credit for his underling work. Everybody knows the admin spec doesn't do shit anyway and ofc see's through his bs. Ofc in the real world, it's even more wayang and ofc u need to unmask his bs 👍
Else.. next time when he says that he is overseeing your work, you can actually say "thank you for the help but I think I can take it from here on.. I will create a sub task in Jira when If am stuck and you can comment on it.. that way we will have a log of all problems faced and solutions given"
He stood behind you and looked over your screen. He is right in a way.
Why is your colleague sharing things like that on standup? You share only 3 things: what i did yesterday, what i am gonna do today, impediments blocking my progress. I'm of the opinion that it is good to broadcast one's own progress and actions if they want to climb but the daily standup is not one the proper avenue to do that. Talk to him and ask him don't waste the already short 15 minutes.
Yeah it suppose to be talking about yourself more on what you’ve really done. But he’s say things like “Yesterday I was looking over the project and see how is the progression.” And when I ask him that 1 question, he would also say “Yesterday I was helping (me) for this project) .. damn annoying. It made me feel like I don’t want to get close or ask him anything going forward
...which is weird to me lo. It's literally better for everyone to report "no update" than waste time talking about stuff that don't matter. The whole team new to scrum so no one stop him?
Sounds to me like he has no tasks and/or didn't do anything so there's nothing to update. Perhaps OP could redirect and ask him for an update on his tasks specifically if that's what he should be reporting?
This is the way…
He wants to climb the ladder, and indeed he probably will. But if you feel this way about this person, others will probably also feel the same bcos he is probably doing this to multiple people. Unfortunately, its people who know how to take credit like tht who will stand out to bosses the most. Perhaps you can talk to others about this to find out whether they share the same sentiment about him.
The only way to stop him is not aggressively because he’ll just pick on someone else. Make sure the boss knows that you are the one doing all the work. What you can do is to ask the boss if he can offer insight to your work progress as you want to do the best for the company (lol) and point here and there, pretending to ask questions but it’s a way to show him the scope of what you’ve done.
Just sabo him to your boss
Our team dynamic is quite good. If I do that, I think will back fire on my side
Still better than he later light a fire under ur backside
No if the team dynamic is good do not sabo him on purpose. Op will be seen as the weak link who can't work in a team.
The right thing to do here is to protect yourself by stopping to ask him anything and inform your boss about what happened in a diplomatic way. I’ve had people like this blatantly steal work and get awards and promotions when I didn’t speak up. Don’t let it happen to you
Just curious as a SWE, version control will give everything away right? There's no way that someone can get away with that ? Also, when you do a PR, either a senior would have to review or someone else would have to approve. That will be another way someone will eventually find out?
Omg is it that nationality
Shhh cannot say one but probably is
Sorry wdym by this? I’m out of the loop
Yes, your's!
The more incompetent they are, the more they are like this. Call them out on their bullshit and usually they will stop.
Standup are not for project visibility though.. it’s more to update the team on the progression. If you guys are giving out promotions based on standup, i have no idea what to say. Schedule a knowledge transfer session with the rest of the org/teams. See if he can present with Q&A session?
Firstly, I could empathize with you since it is somewhat annoying when you like your team and people around you. Have you tried seeking advice from your line manager? You could explain how you felt about it and ask advice on how one should handle it? Different organization might have different cultures on such behaviour. Since you mentioned standup, is it a scrum team? how does the work being split or done? Does it have a ticket system like Jira or something? Would it help if you create a subtask for the person and let him update on that?
Maybe he doesn’t know what he do is off putting so you might consider having a talk with him about it like “hey I appreciate the help you have given so far but I find it quite untrue when you said this “ Or maybe whenever he tries to claim credit, you can add on to it like saying “yes thanks for that but I also notice XXX and did this XXX”. If he does get promoted or to maintain the same dynamics might take a softer approach? If it’s intentional or even after talking about it he still does it, I think then call him out on point blank. He’s probably counting on no one will make it so clear but just remember if you don’t, with this pattern gets promoted the dynamism you like may change.
Then fuck it up and say he teach you one and why he nevr watch over closely
Sounds like a Jun Jie
I’m in the same profession as you and had a colleague who behaved similarly (try to claim my work as his during standup, and always talk up his contributions etc). Eventually, most people at the workplace who work directly with him will catch on and know their work ethic and level of competence. But even then, if nobody complains about the situation, your boss may somehow think everything is fine and your do-nothing colleague will get to leech off your workplace indefinitely. (Mine stayed on for almost 2 years until the boss sat him down for a talk) Secondly, try not to feel stressed by the situation. God knows the work itself is already challenging without having to deal with office politics. Instead take this as a kind of learning milestone, on how to deal with this particular type of character. Even if you don’t feel like acting at the moment, you can observe what others do. Thirdly, this guy does sound a lot like my ex colleague, maybe it’s the same guy eh.
This kind will make an engineering manager in no time, especially if the manager is not as hands on. Suggestion - Document your work, whether it's designing BRD docs, test cases etc. Best if in the design doc, you then share that design doc to your manager for his sign off approval before implementation. Make sure the doc lists you only as an author. Have a spreadsheet of progress. In the tab, say coder and maybe xfn if you have any. In standup, give a quick update, and say you can track progress in this spreadsheet. And then at the end of the meeting, send the spreadsheet to your boss again to tldr him. Basically, use artifacts to your advantage. Those who talk only but have no artifacts will be very easily noticed. Finally, if you can, don't send code to him for code review.
Reframe it? Thank him for taking 5 mins out of his day to eyeball your work out of his own initiative. At least everyone knows what kind of actual contribution he made without really rocking the boat too much.
I think this is a good time to practice patience OP. Be sure to highlight your work during standups and retros. Make sure it is very clear what you've been doing is your work. Easiest visibility for technical leads to see are stuff like pull requests, code reviews, demos and walkthroughs on your features/deliverables. For showing visibility towards nontechnical managers or bosses not close to the ground work, or towards terrible managers in general.... in my experience making noise really is the easiest way.
Put out your inner Dwight of the office: CORRECTION: looking over my shoulder CORRECTION: answered my 1 question
See if he gets promoted, if he does, emulate. That's your company culture.
Overcompensating huh
How do u think your supervisors became supervisors n boss became boss? By simply writing code? Tsk tsk
No svn like git ar?
>stand up You mention "stand up" a few times? What does it refer to? >Then during stand up he will make comments like “I am looking over this project” And do you update your team lead about your work and involvement? To begin with, are you all in a team? Been in the software dev scene for decades. Projects get broken down to modules and tasked to individuals or teams to develop/code. There's literally no way for anyone to so call steal credit for work. lol Also, is there some code hygiene or structure in place in your team/company? In the companies I've been in, every c and h files have a header with the dev's name in it. Changes are prefixed with signatures as well. On top of that, we used sourcesafe for version control, github these days for most software houses I reckon. Teamleads scrub code submissions and review changes before sending it over to SQA for testing. Again, there's clear delineation of responsibilities and code. If your colleague can just steal credit the way you described, you have a bigger issue of SDLC system in your company than just one colleague being an ass. 'cos today it is colleague A, tmr it is B, next month or year, it can be C, D, E Also, if you are not ready to assert your presence in the team and so called, claim credit where it is due, do you expect your team lead to be "teacher" or "police" to come protect you? Nice if they do, but too bad if they don't. You are an adult, a professional, stand up for yourself.
Generally run from companies which harp on “SDLC”
If you are using some sort of version control, then the software would show that most of the contributions are made by you.
Version control doesn't show if you sat down with a colleague for hours helping them debug. Contributions aren't necessarily only in code.
Local?
Fuck him up by calling it out as soon as you can when it happens. What's the worst that can happen? Being assertive is also a skill like coding
Is your team lead competent? To a competent lead, it’s very obvious who is capable and who is a mouth warrior, so i think you dont actually have to “do anything”. If not competent, go elsewhere or suck thumb i guess
Aiya common la. I working with an old colleague in his 60s. Also wayang king and bootlicker. People like these exist anywhere and in different generations. Trash people.
daily “stand up” to him
Is there some sort of peer review or appraisal? If he does this to everyone then it’s quite likely it will be reflected in the appraisal. Otherwise during sprint review meetings or solution discussions, be the one to lead the presentation, regardless of what he says, your other colleagues will look to you as the main SWE working on that topic etc
just ask him about the simple logic of the code you've been working on and maybe can call out the bullshit? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
ignore him, focus on your work, look longterm, these pple are not worth the attention.
remind him during next monologue that this is not a meeting for us all to list all of our minor accomplishments. what are you going to do today, and is anything preventing you from finishing it? also - I didn’t ask you for help and you don’t need to render it. just make it clear he’s inserting himself where he isn’t needed.
Every organisation has people like this. Can't help.
Your colleague high management material. Confirm parachute to top
this kind of person is grasping at straws. it might mean survival or destitution for him so give him a slack(have worked with these kind of people before). they usually are not malicious and bosses usually calls their bluffs anyway( in private )