Life Lesson: Be a little more assertive at work
Back in June I posted about my first contract as I set down in Little England. The job was advertised as an ASP.NET role, and whilst the underlying code was written in C#, its been written in spaghetti style, ala ASP Classic. At the time, I was brought in to fix a few things up (initially this was nothing to do with the front end, UI), to get it ready for production and as such didn’t think it was my place to comment on the obvious short-comings in the code (and the percieved abilities of the guy before me), and that in NO way was it ready for production at all. I also didn’t want to diss my pre-decessor as it usually doesn’t make for a healthy workplace. But, I think in future I’ll speak my mind sooner…
Wind time ahead three months and while I was away on holiday they’ve got a new working on the same project. Whilst a lot of the administration and back end programming is secure/up to date and bug free, the front end still has blaring holes (most certainly because of the fifth or sixth new front end design being dropped over the site in the timespan of about 2 months). Anyway, he’s spoken up and I’ve now come off looking like I’ve been twiddling my thumbs for the last 3 months. Turns out everythings all good still, anyway, but I still can’t help feeling like I’ve been put on the spot a little. Of course, nows a better time than any to get things fixed up and ready for shipping I’m just torn between when to be an ass-hole, and when not.
I’m taking this a life lesson, stand up for myself a bit more and speak my mind when I’m not happy with things.
What is the correct course of action in this case, do I play the cocky prick and speak my mind straight away, or leave things as is (if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it kinda attitude, even if its not quite the right way of doing things) .
I’m sure there’s a mature responsible way of handling this situation. Ah well, next time!
September 12th, 2007 at 8:31 am
Tough! I hate that sort of situation, I guess you’ve just got to find a way to say it was crap to begin with tactfully. It wouldn’t be so bad if the guy that did it originally had already left the organisation anyway.
Hehehe, maybe you can use your original blog post as a reference… but then they’ll ask why you didn’t speak up in the first place…
hmm, guess it’s important to speak up, but maybe just do it in a manner that is defferential? I don’t know. Tough one.
September 12th, 2007 at 8:41 am
Yea, most definitely. As it is the situation’s come off pretty well, and now I’ve (we’ve) been given time to do a partial rewrite of the bad bits to get it all nice, but yea! I’ll remember for next time.
September 12th, 2007 at 10:43 pm
Duuuuuude, I start a new rotation on Monday, so I’ll have to remember all of your sage advice about speaking up early!
September 12th, 2007 at 10:52 pm
Aye! I just wish I had a little bit more wordly knowledge to give!