Did you ever feel like mad rage for the junior devs when they blame you for their failures?

Had an intern at my last job with less than six months of coding experience, couldn't even build a basic html website. They assigned him to shadow me, but he had no interest in listening to anything I said and broke every single thing that he touched. He was fired, then re-hired (if you can fucking believe that). I tried to start over and walk him through a very simple task (basically checking boxes) that was assigned to him, to which he sighed and retorted, "I'm here to help out, not do your job." That kid made my blood boil. He didn't even last a month at the job he was last working. He's basically in love with the idea of being a developer, and nothing else about the career.

@CatFoodParty if an intern told me that I would tell my boss I refuse to deal with this and have him shadow someone else.

Before being shit, and before not listening, being so rude is somewhere I would not be able to start from.

@craig939393 I agree 10000% percent: attitude is #1 over skill. In fact, this same intern treated another intern horribly because he viewed them as a rival. This other intern-- you had to hold his hand with nearly everything when he started--but he had such a better attitude. You could see him genuinely trying his best and gradually making progress. Meanwhile the first intern, he's doing dumb shit like re-writing code other devs wrote on ALREADY FINISHED PROJECTS 'because I think I can do this better' instead of doing his tasks, throwing anyone else under the bus to cover up mistakes on a regular basis, and marching around telling anyone who listens, "I should be full time. I should be running this place." Dude couldn't use HTML.

Meanwhile, dev manager and boss got loads of complains from nearly everyone in the agency. The breaking point was when he committed files, after being told multiple times NOT TO TOUCH THE SITE, to a dev site that was being reviewed by a client. Just insane.

Worse still: when they steal my work, show it off to everyone, and claim credit as their own.

That’s when you take them for a relaxing walk outside the building, chat about some smalltalk topics like a nearby salad place, and after making it some distance away, say “you know what I love about the place besides their bleu cheese dressing? They don’t steal my work so I don’t need to get them fired or beat them down in the parking lot with a tire iron. Yeah, it’s a decent restaurant; we should try it for lunch sometime. ... So how’s that project of yours going, anyway? I hear you’ll need to rewrite some of it. Need any help?”

@Root I can relate to this... How hard is it to just credit someone instead of regurgitating an idea that is half-understood to climb what's actually a step-ladder or stool in the company? We're a team.

I always try to credit people: "I talked with X about [thing], and to add to that, we may be able to consider [thing with other thing]. What do you think, X?"

@CatFoodParty I think the only way to handle this kind of behavior is to keep detailed track of the person's activities.

@angrydev2357 Yeah, absolutely! This is great advice for anyone struggling with a problematic person at work! This is the bare minimum anyone can do, and they should just in case. Getting it in an email helps, too, if accountability is an issue.

I've seriously never even heard of this.
Ever junior dev that's worked with me is very apologetic, almost always take the blame for themselves - even if their error was caused by someone else they usually say "it was probably my fault for not being senior enough to have foreseen the problem, or for blindly assuming existing code was perfect instead of testing it"

Guess I've just been lucky to work with very humble juniors

@jiraTicket Part of it boils down to an individual's attitude, but I think workplace culture dictates that the most. It sounds like your workplace doesn't make your juniors afraid of admitting a skill gap, and that they have motivation and encouragement to keep pushing before asking for help.

It's one of the things I learned the hard way.

Never stop listening and watching.

More than once I debunked someone trying to either steal credit or blaming someone else for his own shit.

It's one of these things you never get used to as a human, but in management you need to be an arsehole and do it.

Arsehole as I really hate to be a peeping tom and even more to deal with scum who thinks he gets away with it...

Blame game hehe

@rutee07 yes. Thankfully most of them are not like them. But I think I am one of those unlucky few. :(

@CatFoodParty ah. Right. Some people just want to show the world that they are killing it at work but in truth they don't do shit. I know the type unfortunately.

@UnicornPoo Absolutely hate it when people acts like "your code your problem" to my face. I mean, I sometimes feel like this myself for my predecessors or the codes that my PM/lead wrote, but at the end of the day, since I am working on it, it is my responsibility to fix it. Why can't people just understand this?

@Root haha! Made my day!

@CatFoodParty This is a really late reply but I just wanted to say this - I think you're spot on.

I work in Sweden and the general work place culture here is that we value when someone admits to a skill gap or a mistake, we don't punish mistakes (as long as you're not covering them up or refusing to admit to them) and we're unlikely to blame an individual (at least not a rookie).