How to Deal With Software Developer Jerks
Photo by Michael Dziedzic on Unsplash
Listen: I love software development. Everything about it is rather excellent. The hunting for bugs, the battling against your own stupidity — all of it is fun.
The people are another thing altogether. The inadequate bosses are annoying.
Yet the worst thing is those jerks who are just bores you need to deal with (constantly). So here are tips and techniques to help you work with those colleagues who have worked to gain the tag of software development jerk.
The Nitpickers
I’ve had my fair share of code reviews that felt more like personal attacks. I’ve come to realize that some of these comments are in fact personal attacks. The order of imports or naming of something? Come on, it’s not a customer-facing issue and frankly is barely a developer-facing issue.
The best technique I’ve found for this type of developer is to simply ignore them. Want to change our naming conventions? Set up a meeting and document it.
The Passive-aggressive
Ah, my favorite. They never say anything in meetings but give them a keyboard and suddenly they’re the Shakespeare of code critique. “This could be improved…” they write but without any helpful suggestion on how. It leaves you wondering, if they know so much, why don’t they just fix it?
Then the realization hits you. They don’t know how to fix the issue you’re working on.
Set up a call with them to talk over their suggested solution, and watch their criticisms melt away to nothing.
The Showboater
Ah, the one who likes to play up to the boss. You come up with an idea, they’ll take it as their own. They tend to repeat your technical solutions word for word in order to show what they know.
Unfortunately for this one if the showboater succeeds and gets promoted I would recommend you do this: leave.
Ghost developers
These are the folks who commit incomplete features or, my personal pet peeve, comment out blocks of failing tests. They might as well leave a note saying, “I hope future me (or some other poor soul) has the time to deal with this mess.”
Stop accepting their pull requests, and if you have the political power ask your colleagues to stop doing the same.
Don’t Despair
But it’s not all doom and gloom. For every coding villain, there’s a team of heroes who genuinely want to make the product better, who support and uplift each other. It’s these relationships that can transform a toxic team dynamic into a thriving software development powerhouse.
It’s just a shame managers are seldom up to the task. However, it is a great team that we should all be aiming to work for rather than that next pay rise (probably).
Conclusion
So, next time you encounter one of these charming individuals, take a deep breath. Engage when it’s worth it, provide constructive feedback, and sometimes, just sometimes, it’s okay to let their snarky comments slide into the abyss of ignored Git notifications. After all, the best revenge is writing code that’s so clean, so efficient, and so downright brilliant that it speaks for itself.
Who knows, maybe your commitment to excellence will inspire Mr. or Ms. Jerk to rethink their approach. Or not. Either way, you’ve got some fantastic code to commit!