Submit captions for this cartoon of “The Teflong-gineer” in this post’s comments. And don’t forget to submit captions for the other Software Engineer Types as well…
The Teflon-gineer
The Teflon-gineer will do anything to reduce his work. If you’ve asked for a sports car, this engineer will try his/her damnedest to meet your requirements with a Model T Ford. Deflects all bug assignments with his/her Teflon Work Deflector (in size ‘J’ for Jerk).
Distinguishing Characteristics:
- Says things like, “Are you sure the users really want that?” and “Is XYZ functionality really that important? How many users did you talk to? Can I see your notes?“
- Reassigns his bugs back to you with updates like, “Please provide more clarity“, even when you’ve already referenced the spec page and section which spells out the original requirements with blinding clarity. When you reassign the bug back to him, you get his Out Of Office response.
- Attempts to lock you into a legal contract specifying everything down to the last minimalist kilobyte of code that will be written.
- During spec reviews or Scrum, says things like “Oh, you want the page to validate the user’s password entry? Well that will cost you an extra 2 days of work…plus another day if you want that alpha tested.“
- Attempts to break your will to live with never-ending requests for excruciatingly documented detail to the point where it would be faster to code it yourself (inclusive of the time it would take you to learn Python).
- When he delivers, his code is solidly mediocre. He never surprises, never innovates, and never has ideas.
- Even his peers think he’s kind of a jerk.
- Likes to watch When Animals Attack.
Project Pitfalls:
Serving your sentence for justifiable homicide will impede the project schedule.
Do you need this engineer?
Did you need your sibling to hold his finger one inch from your nose and say “I’m not touching you. I’m not touching you. I’m not touching you…“4
Achilles Heel:
His manager thinks he’s a jerk, too.
Best Bet:
Get this engineer off your project. Confront him/her, document as much of this crap as you can, then confront his manager. No good can come of this.
Also in 7 Types of Engineers
- Caption Contest! (7 Types of Engineers)
- Caption Contest: The Veteran (The Seven Types of Software Engineers)
- Caption Contest: The Hotshot (The Seven Types of Software Engineers)
- Caption Contest: The Great One (The Seven Types of Software Engineers)
- Caption Contest: The Teflon-gineer (The Seven Types of Software Engineers)
- Caption Contest: Offshore (The Seven Types of Software Engineers)
- Caption Contest: The Maverick (The Seven Types of Software Engineers)
- Caption Contest: The Clockwork Mouse (The Seven Types of Software Engineers)
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I can hack it together in a week, but I don’t recommend that. To do it right will take about 3 months, at minimum. Why are you shaking your head?
I closed that error-message bug with a workaround. “Replace users with people who can follow instructions.”
“I remember we wanted to do it once but dropped it because it didn’t make sense. I don’t see the reason for doing it”
Before we implements this, can you interview every one of our customers and put together a report explaining why this feature is needed?
Dev: I didn’t know it was supposed to do that.
PM: It’s in the requirements.
Dev: Where? I didn’t see it.
PM: On the last page of the document.
Dev: Oh, I never read the last pages of documents. Why would you put something important there?
PM: ?!?
(true story)
From the comments here I think your requirements are vague; are you looking for a caption or another characteristic. Assuming it’s a caption…
My spec doc only goes to pg15; didn’t know it ran out of paper!
You mean we’re not using Spec v0.5 from 8 months ago??
Nobody will code review my deliverables? Obviously, they must know they don’t have the requisite domain knowledge and deep understanding of the SDK and programming language.
“You want the ‘Ok’ button to be spelled ‘OK’? It’s not in the MRD, the PRD, and I don’t see it anywhere in ClearQuest. It’s too late for any of the 2009 deliveries without introducing a dangerous risk to the program. If you want to get a VP to accept your change request, we will perform an analysis on the amount of engineering effort to make this change. If we can spare the cycles to make the change and test that nothing breaks and the docs team in Hyderabad can make the doc changes, we’ll see about getting it changed for October 2009.”
Do you have multiple use cases to support your request?
Who, me?
or
There is no documented requirement saying it had to produce correct answers!
“You call this a spec? It’s just a piece of paper with words on it – I need you to re-enact exactly what the customers want. And use convincing costumes – you know I don’t have the capacity for abstract learning and reasoning, so stop rubbing it in my face!”
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