Don’t help train anyone. Ok fine. But what if the new hires tell this to the main Boss?

Alright, so here's the scoop. I landed this gig at Technotronic Solutions (name changed) about two years back. Man, was I stoked! It is one of the biggest tech giants in my city and also kinda my dream company. This is the place which not just offers above average market salary, but bonuses, added pension schemes, stocks options, and also retirement awards. All and all, a place where you do not have to think about switching the job and you can retire there. 

But there is always another side of the picture,, right? So, turns out, the company has developed a help-yourself type of culture over the years. It hires well-educated and well-experienced employees and then gives them main projects from the word go. Anyone working in the Tech industry would know that no matter how much experience you have, you still need some training and one-to-one assistance in the new company, to get familiar with the software tools, the process, and overall output of the firm. Guess what, the firm believes in throw in the water and he would learn to swim culture.

Our project training for newbies? Utter garbage. I mean, two weeks of blah blah that didn’t even scratch the surface of what we actually do. Just saying how big the firm is, how good the product is, what we project to make in the next 5 years etc. etc., you get the gist of it. Once in a meeting I asked if there is a Wiki or Confluence page with steps on how to get or Git project running my local machine. I asked this because the project was based on a number of dependencies, and you have to know the correct version of every tool in order to get it working.  Can you guess what answer I got… "You should read Git manuals for that. I mean seriously. How dumb you need to be to not have understood the question or just give such a rubbish answer to a technical question."

 

But the actual story does not start yet. As I came in this company with more than 5 years of professional experience, it didn’t take me much time to scratch information from here and there and join all the puzzle pieces. In a month’s time, I not only had the project running, but was actively solving tickets for two major projects. Fast forward to 2 months, now I have been in this company for almost 3 months and have kinda get a hold on things and procedure. Here comes the new quarterly cycle of hiring. I think the quarterly cycle makes more sense now as I look back, as when a programmer leaves, he often gives a 2-3 months’ notice period and there are always new hires to get the old jobs,

Ok so back to the new hires. 2 days after the orientation, one guy comes to me to ask about how to ask for permission in the local Git repository.  For that, your local username and password need to be registered by the repository manager or someone with rights for that repository. Luckily, I had the Editing rights and so the issue was fixed in less than 15 minutes, and then I had coffee with the guy.  This is when I informally met other newbies and I kinda got popular in their group, someone they can rely on for their initial phase of adjustment.

 

Now here comes the main antagonist of the story, Mr. Saddy (not the real name obviously). This guy goes, "You can’t help your co-workers. You’re not trained for that." Seriously? I mean, come on, I was just lending a hand where he never did. Furthermore, I was not giving them orders on what task to do first, but somehow, he presumed that I am challenging his position by being the mediator.

But hey, I’m not one to rock the boat. So, I backed off. And guess what? The freshies didn’t like it. Unlike me, the new hires were not in awe with the firm and just thought it a negligence from the management side to not offer proper training in the first place and then going so low as to reprimand someone, who is trying to help them.  I get to know that the new generation do not really give two shots about all hierarchy and everything. They went straight to the higher ups, and I guess to the HR manager also, making it all seem the fault of Mr. Saddy and of the firm to have not kept him in checked. 

This went on for a few days. I remember it was Friday and I was hoping to get a half day and finish everything up by noon. just when I was finishing everything, the head of our branch, you can say the assistant to the CTO, came into my office. He has all the technical responsibilities of this branch and is often regarded as the SMALL BOSS. We chat for more than an hour, mostly he talking and me listening. Basically, what has happened that Mr. Saddy was not part of the final recruitment process or may be someone Mr. Saddy wanted to hire was not hired, I could not understand fully. So, Mr. Saddy wanted to prove the SMALL BOSS wrong, but ensuring that the new hires are not able to perform well. It was just too much for me to find out, because I also didn’t get any proper training, so I didn’t think there was anything more to it, but there it was.

 

Mr. Saddy left my room after the whole discussion. He had this hurried look on his face as if he has a plan to do something. Bam! Three days later, Mr. Saddy “resigns.” Ha! More like got the boot for being a stick in the mud. I can only imagine what the discussion would have happened between Mr. Saddy and the SMALL BOSS, that led to the resignation. Or maybe he was asked to resign, I don’t know.

 

And just like that, I became the unofficial go-to person for the team. Who would’ve thought, right? So, there you have it. My little workplace saga of how sticking to your guns (and a bit of sneaky evidence-gathering) can shake things up for the better. Crazy, huh?

 

Update...

There is one update to the story, more on what I found out more some events that happened after my first post. So, I found out that Mr. Saddy was actually asked by SMALL BOSS and another manager to properly train the new hires and may be make ME the in charge of this task, as I have been through the entire entry process very recently, so I would be the best person for the job.

Mr. Saddy was already on the radar of the SMALL BOSS as he was slacking quite a while over the last years. After the return to office policy in 2023, everyone was asked to work for at least 3 days from office. But Mr. Saddy was an exception, because he had a small son to take care off.  He would appear online but would not reply to any chat or emails when he was working from home. This made it very difficult for the team to resolve issues timely as Mr. Saddy had many admin rights and not much could be done without his approval or ticket assignment.

As Mr. Saddy was one of the senior employees, we are finding it hard to fill his shoes. But one of the other senior technicians was promoted as the team lead and things are looking better for now. Hope the company learns from this and don’t let the competitive culture to turn supervisors into Mr. Saddy type people.