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Dealing with That GUY

by BigJoe (Curate)
on May 15, 2001 at 00:29 UTC ( [id://80332]=perlmeditation: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??

Everyone has to have one in there office. Or I have been truley tortured. The one guy who believes he knows it all and proceeds to tell others their faults. He is the know-it-all that has no clue. He is also the person who believes that he is the project manager for everything. You probably know him as the person who will not hesitate to take credit for someone elses work.

Now that you have a visual of this person in your head, How do you handle them?

I am getting to the point where I am not brotherly like a monk should.

--BigJoe

Learn patience, you must.
Young PerlMonk, craves Not these things.
Use the source Luke.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Dealing with That GUY
by footpad (Abbot) on May 15, 2001 at 00:37 UTC

    Allow him to hang himself.

    Do your job to the best of your ability, keep the communication open and honest with your manager, and stay far away from the troll. Make certain your boss knows what you're working on and the value of all contributions/assistance you receive from your team members.

    Eventually, your troll will either get it and start contributing or he'll wander off, after suckering some other company into "luring" him away.

    In the mean time, make certain you are doing precisely what your manager expects, documentating your work (and activities) very carefully, and not doing anything to either help nor hinder the troll. Do not phone him; send email (it creates a paper trail). Do not have a meeting with him without having another person there. Don't tempt fate by trying to deal with him yourself. That's management's job.

    --f

      I really like your ideas but I think because of all of his hard work he may become my manager....

      --BigJoe

      Learn patience, you must.
      Young PerlMonk, craves Not these things.
      Use the source Luke.
        well, if he has done "hard work" and enough of it to become a manager, you have one of two situations on your hands.

        1. this guy is not so clueless as you imagine, and simply rubs you the wrong way. It may be that your skill set lies completely out of his scope and therefore when he butts in on your turf he is at his worst - at your expense. This is unfortunate. If this is so, then footpad's (very, very wise) advise above will handle the problem until he is your manager. At that point, you'll need to frankly and openly confront him. You cannot have a manager you feel this way about and be happy. You will need to change the dynamic of your relationship.

        2. this guy is really an idiot in all respects and the company is showing a bad trend by promoting him. All too often, the best sign that a company is having problems is that it is promoting the stupid and inept. In this case, you'll need to take some drastic options into consideration. I faced this situation once and, suffice to say, I am not reporting to that person.

        hope that helps...

        "A man's maturity -- consists in having found again the seriousness one had as a child, at play." --Nietzsche
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Re: Dealling with That GUY
by dws (Chancellor) on May 15, 2001 at 02:47 UTC
    Now that you have a visual of this person in your head, How do you handle them?

    Give his name to recruiters.

    In the event that doesn't work, have a quiet conversation with the people who would make the decision to promote him, and be blunt with them about his current impact on morale, and the consequences of promoting him.

    And in the meantime, nod at him when he yacks, and say "Too bad we can't all be you."

      In the event that doesn't work, have a quiet conversation with the people who would make the decision to promote him, and be blunt with them about his current impact on morale, and the consequences of promoting him.

      I would guess that there is only a small chance of such an action being successful, as opposed to the relatively large chance that the person 'having a quiet word' may be seen as a presumptuous, negative, envious "not a team player" whiner.

      I would only do something like that if I didn't mind needing to find another job, which I might want to do anyway if such a co-worker became my manager.

      My 2 cents, FWIW, YMMV, etc.

        I couldn't agree more. Nothing makes you sound like a whiner more than going to someone's boss and complaining about someone, especially if it's the manager's Golden Boy.

        In situations like this, I keep in mind two things:

        1. Sunlight is the best disinfectant: Once the truth of his incompetence comes out, the situation will clean itself up
        2. Nothing succeeds like success: Keep doing what you do, and do it well. Make it known that you're doing excellent work, and that the things you're doing are Hot Shit.
        But bringin' the other guy down is not the way to do it...

        xoxo,
        Andy

        %_=split/;/,".;;n;u;e;ot;t;her;c; ".   #   Andy Lester
        'Perl ;@; a;a;j;m;er;y;t;p;n;d;s;o;'.  #   http://petdance.com
        "hack";print map delete$_{$_},split//,q<   andy@petdance.com   >
        
Re: Dealling with That GUY
by Mission (Hermit) on May 15, 2001 at 15:30 UTC
    BigJoe, I understand what you're saying. We all have one (or many) of these people in our lives. It is one of those trying times that you're going to have to find a solution to. I'll throw my $0.02 in since I've been there as well.

    One of 'those guys' is my brother. I love him, but I shake my head everytime he tries to impress me with his computer knowledge. I wont go into details since I don't have that much time! However it works the same whether you deal with a family member, or a person on your work team.

    The first thing you must do is this: BE HONEST WITH YOURSELF AND OTHERS. Note that I didn't say rude! Be honest in your opinion if someone asks you. Be honest to this person when they make a comment that upsets you. Simply state, "If I understand you correctly, then I disagree completely, because ..." No matter what though be friendly about all conversations. It's going to be difficult to get this person to listen to you. If this guy is like the ones that I've met, they will most likely block you out as soon as they realize that you are criticizing them, or not in total agreement.

    The next thing: You don't have to be brotherly. Don't think that this is a requirement. I wouldn't start a flame war over it, but I'd make sure that you keep things professional. I would make sure that you take a good look at this situation and make sure that you are not causing strife.

    The last thing I can think of is: Don't let this become an obsession. There are more important things and people in life. If you spend all of your energy on this guy, they you're giving this guy what he want's... attention. Just remeber the movie "The Life Of Brian" and *whistling* ...always look on the bright side of life. *whistling*

    - Mission
    "Heck I don't know how to do it either, but do you think that's going to stop me?!!"
Re: Dealling with That GUY
by iamnothing (Friar) on May 15, 2001 at 18:33 UTC
    Here's a scary thought:
    What if you are that guy?

    I'm currently in the process of converting all of our departmental lab scripts to Perl and Python because I hate the buggy proprietary language (WinBatch) that we've been using for years. Now, the contests I've heard have run the gammut from "we don't have anyone else who knows Perl or Python" (though they poo-poo'ed my teaching workshops on either of them though we have several people doing web and database work with Perl and have MailMan running as a listserv processor) to "why don't you just use what everyone else is using?" There are four of us using WinBatch, and two of us are sick of it.

    So now, my quandary...am I That Guy? I never wanted to be, but my resistance to Windows Print Interfaces in favor of CUPS and my constant bickering with management over reliable vs. stringently proprietary and buggy makes me wonder. Am I THAT GUY?

    I choose to think not, but to them I most likely am.

    Instead I look at others. The Golden Calf of our little department. The man who believes that loops are too new to implement (you guessed it cutting and pasting every operation...imagine cleaning an MRU list with 200 lines of code instead of 10--in WinBatch). The guy who might punch a wall or your door if you dare comment on his code or suggest a code review. At least I'm not THAT GUY.

    But I work with him...and I hope I never become him.

Re: Dealling with That GUY
by blue_cowdawg (Monsignor) on May 16, 2001 at 00:21 UTC

    I have found that there are those that are discovered and those who are found out.

    Early on in my career I had a boss who had the wool firmly pulled over everybody's eyes. In classic PHB style he took credit for everything that went right and blamed his people on everything that went wrong.

    Life was fairly miserable with this boss in charge and he delighted in telling his underlings how to do their jobs even if he had no clue what he was talking about.

    One day we got a new VP at the company. The PHB attempted to convince the new VP that the test set that I was writing software for was all his doing. Doom on the PHB! The VP actually started to ask questions about how the software functioned. PHB demonstrated very well that he had no clue.

    In the end the VP knew not to ask PHB anything technical. If he wanted answers, go to the techies that were really doing the work.

    Moral of the story: Quietly do your job compentantly and the troll will eventually trip themselves up.

    ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Peter L. Berghold --- Peter@Berghold.Net "Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it."
Re: Dealling with That GUY
by Rudif (Hermit) on May 21, 2001 at 00:45 UTC
    He makes you feel bad? Breathe deeply. Exhale those bad feelings. Pop them. Undef them, if you prefer.

    He is probably a nuissance that you can live with, provided that you are decided to run your own (life) script, not let him run his script on you.

    And Don't Flip the Bozo Bit too rashly. It just might happen that he has something positive to offer, after all.

    HTH
    Rudif

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