New Job - abandoned

[Anubis]

Just wondered what everyone's initials thoughts are on this. A bizarre situation has arisen in terms of my IT career. Have about 15 years development experience. I've transitioned from desktop app / database development to web development - i wanted to do something more creative and fun to be honest.

Last year I had a lot of months off (as in...no paid work) so I could sit down and learn a new programming language and frameworks; I was serious about changing my career to go in that direction and fortunate to have the ability to have time to do this. Got to grips with the new tech to the point whereby i could apply to other roles. I had to take a massive hit on salary (almost half of income less) as I could no longer be the senior developer (just don't have enough web dev experience yet).

I did some interviews - eventually a small company (15 people) offered me a job. I took the big salary cut compared to roles I had prior to pivot in a slightly new direction.

In the interviews (over webcam), the two chaps interviewing (new boss and a web developer) were nice people, promised to help me learn and progress and see the role as long term if I wanted it to be. I also spent 4 solid days to make a mini app for them to prove i could create something in the tech they use (something I wouldn't normally ever entertain). I got the job offer and started in July. Happy days!

Then the following happened:

1) The job description for the interviews stated they were seeking a 'front end web developer" (making the website basically), which is what i wanted to do. 7 days later after verbally accepting their offer the paperwork comes through for me to sign - it had a different job title - "full stack developer" (doing the whole lot - front to back). No issue (i think at the time), this gives me more exposure and experience...it's just a job title and happy to get involved and learn all sorts. I've worked on databases, servers, etc in previous roles (just not in web development)

2) Their team of developers last year numbered 4 people. 3 left just before i joined (wasn't aware of this)

3) Received a 2nd hand laptop sent to me by post. Promised a new one in a few weeks (never spoken of again). No big deal - does the job

4) New boss sets up a weekly "check in" meeting (30 min) for first 4 weeks to see how I was getting on. Week 3, he forgot to join the call as he was "in the garden on another call and forgot...sorry about that. Everything okay?"; again, no major flag but still not great impression these things happen.

5) 1 developer guy I'm learning from is 28 years old. Basically running the whole commercial web app for them when it should be a team of people. Really nice guy, stops to help me out and everything but is clearly over worked.

6) The app is extremely hard to work with (coding). It's a mess; huge blocks of spaghetti code. Nothing is just straight forward in this thing; overly-complex, nothing commented / documented and it just takes forever to just figure out what is going on. In all my years as a developer this is by far the hardest, messiest, un-enjoyable thing I have worked with (and i've seen some shockers). In the car world it's like working on banger racing with management asking for (and believing) it's a rally car - total disconnect to reality. Still, quit whining and keep learning right? ...

You get the idea...

Any way, fast forward to today (I have been at the company for just over 2 months).

Manager: so...there's no way to say this and i know we said you would be trained by our team developers in the interview. Unfortunately Joe bloggs (the only developer left) has handed in his notice just over a week ago. So yer, it's not great as it's just you left working on the app"....

Me: erm..thats not good. I've only been here for about 2 months and joined on the promise to help out and learn from you guys - it's just me alone with no help it seems.

Manager: yer, unfortunately so. We are trying hard to backfill the positions with more senior people but as you know it's hard to get others with similar skillsets and experience. You won't be expected to take full responsibility of the app yet and i'll be happy to step in and try and help where i can (says the man who has never worked directly with this seriously complex messy thing and knows nothing about programming...so no help there!)

Me: i'm not sure what to say. I've only been here for a couple of months and now it's ended up as just me. I don't have enough knowledge or experience of your app to be able to help others, provide support, fix bugs, add enhancements, etc yet.

Manager: i fully understand that. sorry this isn't good news - you won't be expected to do everything (says the man that made the 28 year old do everything when others left)

I spoke to the other dev on another call (he's leaving in 10 days time; nice of them to let me know this little "problem" huh). Apparently after a frank chat when the other developers left earlier in the year (before I arrived) he was "promoted" - as in; here's a fancy job title but no more pay. He was however told to look after me on top of doing everything else (doing the whole lot...front to back); as you can imagine he had enough and got a job doing half the work for more money. I don't blame him at all. He did say "if they did that to me...what's stopping them doing that to you", which pretty much repeated what I was thinking in my head.

So...here i am typing on PH wondering how I have ended up in a company no one has ever heard of, by myself, 2 months on the job working with something I hate.

I feel gutted to be honest. I turned down two other offers from big companies to join this small one - purely because they seemed nice people and that they promised to give me time of the day to learn from others willing to share knowledge and best practices...even the job itself hasn't turned out to be what they said it would be!

I'm now looking for another job. Not sure what else to say really...I'm not sticking around picking up the pieces. Why would i? They treated the other poor guy like crap and for the salary hit I took to do this on empty promises...no way.

Gutted and so fed up...still, gotta think towards the future.

Edited by Anubis on Wednesday 8th September 16:25

[Sheepshanks]

Ask for a massive bonus and massive pay rise. And keep looking for another job.

[DanL]

What a crappy situation. Sounds like you do need to find another job, and ASAP - the company you work for appears to be going down the tubes…

[geeks]

Ouch!

Cant offer any constructive advice but I have seen similar before (it's why I stayed well and truly away from Dev) good luck, fortunately the job market seems pretty buoyant so I am sure you will find something, best of luck.

[Munter]

Sheepshanks said:

Ask for a massive bonus and massive pay rise. And keep looking for another job.

The place is about to sink, so grab what you can before it does.

[anonymous-user]

Yep, leverage the situation, you’ve been there no time so you’ll have a 1 week notice I guess?

Big bonus / money within a week or you’re off!

[Taita]

3 persons wages back in the pot.

+massive %age immediately whilst job hunting.

ETA What language / stack is this?

[Anubis]

Thanks for the replies so far.

I have a weeks notice until 20th September. Then my probation ends and it'll be a months notice.

My skillset is in demand - Javascript, React, Node, HTML, CSS, SQL. some others that aren't used for web dev (more desktop stuff).

I don't want more money...it's a demoralising sinking ship. I just want out - problem is, do i cut my losses or ride it out and take the 1 month notice. I assume stay in the job until i get something else as any normal company wouldn't be too fussed waiting for me to arrive in a months time.

Or i have been thinking all afternoon to negotiate a sort of "leave on good terms" thing - 1 month pay (yer right...keep wishing!) and leave asap as it's inevitable it's game over. However even raising this shows my cards; as soon as I say this, I'm gone. No matter how much I don't like the place.

I just don't want to be stuck doing tons of random stuff thats going to distract me from getting the next role. I've lost and wasted enough time on these idiots and empty words tbh.

Edited by Anubis on Wednesday 8th September 17:17

[Anubis]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

The guy who handed his notice in was doing a job a team of 4 people should be doing. the whole lot - devops, back end, front end, support, enhancements, bug fixes, answering customer queries, internal questions when stuff goes wrong or doesn't look right. Going to meetings, discussing new designs...the poor guy, despite being 28 literally almost burnt out. No way am I doing that on half the wage I'm used to - not even full wage!

They have basically made this guy suffer because they can't or won't replace the team that left. All of this was not mentioned at all - until today (i knew some devs worked before but didn't know the full story or history of all this).

it's all sadly landed at my feet to become "my problem". The way I see it is - it's not my problem. it's a management problem and it's being pushed on to a guy with only 2 months experience. not cool. not cool at all

[Taita]

Get another job first whilst carrying on. Should be doable in 10 days. Put notice in 1729 on the 20th.

[jesusbuiltmycar]

They promised you on the job training from more senior developers and now you are left on your own - sounds daunting but can't you use this as an opportunity to shine?

Software development never really becomes easy - technologies change all of the time and developers have to constantly learn new skills. It is also worth remembering that each new project you work on will bring new challenges - it is very rare t be asked to develop something you already about...

In your situation you should be able ask the company to provide/pay for training courses (either web based or using external consultants) which should help.

There are also a lot of free online resources (StackOverflow, YouTube etc..) which can should also help.

Does the project already have a clearly defined set of requirements?
Have those requirements been analysed? If not I would start by:

1. assessing the requirements in order to create a backlog and a number of "user stories" where each "user story" implements a single feature.
2. work through each "user story" and determine which parts of the system it affects, t
3. estimate which skills are required for each "user story"
4. assign a difficulty to each "user story"

Once you have some idea (even an inaccurate one) of the effort and skills involved you should be able to convince your bosses to provide the appropriate support (training, extra consultants etc)...

All of this effort will be great on your C.V. in six months time you will be in a position to either get a large pay boost where you are or leave with the experience for a higher paid job.

[Munter]

Anubis said:

Just don't want to be stuck doing tons of random stuff that's going to distract me from getting the next role. I've lost and wasted enough time on these idiots tbh.

So don't. They can't make you work more than you want to. Do your hours, do a fair amount of work, the rest is their problem.

[Anubis]

jesusbuiltmycar said:

All of this effort will be great on your C.V. in six months time you will be in a position to either get a large pay boost where you are or leave with the experience for a higher paid job.

I totally hear what you are saying.

I've even been there before in my career elsewhere and took the opportunity to "go for it" (circumstance were different of course).

Sadly seeing what they did this to the other guy (here's a new job title, no money though...work yourself to death), I'm not even going to entertain that.
I've been burnt out before; like the guy said "if they did that to me...whats stopping them doing it to you?" - that statement is 100% correct. It seems they have no qualms of putting the problem on to those lower down for management failures.

You don't get a builder to build an entire housing estate, so to speak. You get a team of builders. It's not about how good a single person is...it needs more people.

The app itself is huge - this poor chap was not only working on the app, but juggling the cloud (devops) side of things, waking up early to speak to their customers to resolve issues for them, going to management meetings to add new features and design changes. This simply isn't a 1 person job - it takes an entire team of people as there isn't enough time in the day to do it all. He was a bit foolish to even do it, but i guess he learnt the hard way. It seems management now think this behaviour is acceptable and to do it to someone still in their probation period.

appreciate your reply btw.

Edited by Anubis on Wednesday 8th September 17:33

[T6 vanman]

So you've identified that they need
a team of 4 people should be doing. the whole lot - devops, back end, front end, support, enhancements, bug fixes, answering customer queries, internal questions when stuff goes wrong or doesn't look right. Going to meetings, discussing new designs,

Or to put another way ... they need a manager (You) to manage a team of 4 doing ................................
State "all work stops whilst these 4 roles are filled" and develop organisational and process plans along with job descriptions - otherwise your off as well

[aparna]

If it were me, I'd give them a weeks notice today.

I had a vaguely similar situation, I agreed to stay two months out of a sense of misplaced good will, nothing changed.

If nothing else it's disrespectful not communicating more proactively with you, and you don't owe them anything. Get on with your life .

Edited by aparna on Wednesday 8th September 19:27

[fat80b]

I agree with the "see it as an opportunity" crowd.

It reads to me like you are in a bit of shock, a bit of grief and a bit scared because it is a bit of tricky situation.

But if you stop and think, it's quite cool, you might get the opportunity to lead a big project years ahead of when you otherwise could, you might learn some new stuff and if you pull it off, it might be the best thing you've ever done.

And if you think about it from the management's point of view, they have a massive problem and are probably more shocked, in grief, and scared than you are, as without a team here, they don't have a product at all and they are hosed and they probably know it.

This means that in the meantime, you probably have the negotiating position to get some extra stuff, be that some team mates, some training or some extra money. You probably should get all 3.

If it was me, I'd start a doc describing what you think needs doing, and what resources you need, make it specific and thoughtful, position yourself as the person that given the resources, can fix it. (you have 10 days of help from the person leaving to do this)

Don't get sucked into doing what the other guy did - trying to do it all and drowning, you need to move 1 level up and present a solution to the actual problem.

[shouldbworking]

Just have a think about the positive outcomes that could arise from you being solely responsible for maintaining someone else's mess and repeatedly pass the word that changes can't be made because of previous design decisions and are in no way related to your skillset.

After you've realised there aren't any upsides, start looking or quit straightaway if you can afford it. This is one of those occasions where the only positive you're going to be able to take is putting on your CV that you can recognise a disaster and avoid wasting effort on something that is never going to work.

[anxious_ant]

15 person company with only 2 (soon to be one) dev? Interesting

Sounds like the current company is not condusive to where you are in your career.
Not sure of your age but would make hay whilst the sun shines.
Start applying for jobs now, and get out of this toxic environment.
There are other companies out there where you can gain web dev experience.

[DanL]

shouldbworking said:

Just have a think about the positive outcomes that could arise from you being solely responsible for maintaining someone else's mess and repeatedly pass the word that changes can't be made because of previous design decisions and are in no way related to your skillset.

After you've realised there aren't any upsides, start looking or quit straightaway if you can afford it. This is one of those occasions where the only positive you're going to be able to take is putting on your CV that you can recognise a disaster and avoid wasting effort on something that is never going to work.

This. If you’re working for a tech firm that relies on the programmers (of which you’re about to become the last one) then the company is basically screwed. If the management don’t realise this then it’s even worse!

You’re a newly trained front end dev - with the best will in the world, you’re not about to do the full stack (which I assume is Java) unless that’s the background you came from and you wanted to try out something more “creative” in the front end. You can be pretty sure the rest of the code is no better than the crap you’ve already seen, and will be hard to maintain and poorly commented / documented.

You know the answer as you’ve been a coder for long enough - this isn’t going to end well. The fact that they’ve not replaced 3 of the other coders and are now letting the last one walk rather than hiring more to take on the load, while making him an offer he can’t refuse to stay, tells you all you need to know. If the company relies on the work the coders did, it’s a zombie firm that just hasn’t laid down and died yet.

Of course, if the website / software is just tangential to everything then maybe it’s not so bad, but I’d be surprised if that was the case if 1/4 of the employees were coders.

The only reasons not to quit tomorrow are:
1. It might be easier finding another job while you already have one.
2. You are in a strong position to ask for whatever you feel you need (money, training, etc.) while you look for something else, and
3. You need the money this job pays while you look for the next one.

[Olivera]

Taking a near 50% pay cut was a bad idea to begin with, unless you had no other option.

Regardless, I would find a new job. The current one will be nothing but a car crash.