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Ask Slashdot: How Do You To Tell Your Client That His "Expert" Is an Idiot?
Esther Schindler writes "It's a danger for any consultant, and for most inter-departmental internal project staff: To get the work done, you need to work with someone else who supplies expertise you lack. But when the 'expert' turns out to be the wrong person how do you tell the client (or boss) that you just can't work with that individual?"
Tell the truth?
If its your last day on the job. Just say, "You're an idiot and so is that moron you hired."
Just remember though, burning bridges isn't always a good thing.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
Many years back a CEO of a subdivision of a company wanted to know why his email service was disrupted. I told them that it was because their idiot webmaster took control of their DNS and did not copy the MX record. The webmaster defended himself claiming that a document was not in place explaining how to handle the client's DNS. This went back and forth a bit between the three of us, and ended with me calling the two of them incompetent and irresponsible. I never spoke to the webmaster or the client CEO for better or worse.
A few years later, the CEO of the parent company called wanting to know why his network was suffering intermittent downtime and demanded it be fixed immediately. I explained that his outage was caused by antiquated equipment that could not do debugging, and there was a proposal already on his desk for replacement gear. He was in a huff, but he knew I didn't mince words or advice, and that quote was signed in minutes.
While you can't always directly point to a net gain after a net loss, your experience and attitude will help define how other perceive you. You can go in quite politely, or you can be very blunt. I have been both depending on the situation.
Either way, if you can't call out losers, you'll wind up being one.
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
I hope you have the credentials to back up your claim that the person is an idiot. Many people with no IT experience think if you don't have the answer within 5 seconds you are an "idiot." I've dealt with people like that before and needless to say I moved on to bigger and better things. I won't stay with a company that works like that. I also have 20 years in the field and many certs. I will never ever know everything, I know I'm competent at my job functions.
Most experts are idiots at what they claim, but an expert at earning trust regardless of their knowledge. So be careful of these people, as they are quite aware of their lack of expertise and their fragility. Gain trust of the client first before taking on people your client trusts.
Oddly enough, I never had to work with anyone who was completely incompetent. Some didn't know squat about the technical side of things, but their business knowledge was impeccable, and that was what they brought to the table.
Maybe the problem isn't whether they're an expert in the field, but whether you know how to communicate with someone outside your field.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I don't know, but I'm sure if I read the free eBook that the article is advertising I'd become a management expert literally overnight. !!! DOWNLOAD NOW !!!
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
If I don't want to work on a project with an "expert", as part of my job, but I don't want to work on the project anymore because of something someone else is doing...I'd complain to my supervisor, then if I still wasn't happy, I would quit my job. If I wanted to keep my job (even if it was just to see them fail) I would manage to hobble through by doing the absolute minimum. It's not exactly controversial. How is this interesting enough to be a topic?
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
it's been done before
I believe the phrase "different points of view can help ...." makes for a decent excuse. Trust Your Doctor? When to Get a Second Opinion
How is this an Ask Slashdot when the article answers the question. Are we supposed to argue that the author(expert) of the article is an incompetent?
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
Have you already billed and been paid? Do you know if the 'expert' has already voiced an opinion to said client about your voracity? Is the client a relative?
This happened in two different contracting jobs. In one, first indication of possible trouble was when the contractor in question put all of his certificates of course completion (framed) up in his office. Second indication was when he tried to convince our client that he should manage the rest of the contractors. Eventually, we stayed, he didn't. The bad news was that I had to untwist and make coherent all of his "solutions".
In another job, similar experience, one of our team of four complained loudly and often about the state of our administrative solutions, saying over and over again "it's just a mess". He was hired into project development. About six months later he left for unstated reasons, and our client offered all three of us full time positions.
I never did figure out how to tell my client that he had hired a poser, but in both cases, things worked out for themselves. I'd say, wait and see if the client wises up.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Just remember that "getting it off your chest" is usually a bad, counter-productive approach. Usually (there are always exceptions). Think before you leap. Then couch the news in very diplomatic language that sounds complimentary to the "other expert" to any third party listening (probably not your boss though) but which also states that their expertise such as it is, is not necessarily a good match for the particular project.
Going around calling co-workers morons generally is a bad idea, except in certain environments where you wouldn't want to work anyway.
Just read, Dealing with Dummies for Dummies...
Figure out what you'd need to get the job done. That might be an additional person, not a replacement person in order to make up for the deficiency. There may even be someone else in the company that could "assist".
Go to your client and tell him that this is what you'd need to get the job done because you'd assumed a certain skill set.. If the client won't go for it, regretfully let him know that you're not the right person for the job under these circumstances and that his "expert" might be able to suggest someone else. Or maybe you can and then you've solved the problem, even if you're not the solution yourself.
In any case, walk in with a solid proposal for fixing the problem that doesn't paint the "expert" as a complete idiot - just say that the skill sets don't line up right - and be prepared to lose the client. But if it's really that bad, you might be better off losing it now than getting dragged into a giant fight over breach of contract or cost overruns.
As a consultant it is *my job* to work with the client and their people. Incompetent or not, it is still my job to work with them.
If you are complaining about this as a consultant, you have no business being a consultant.
I'm using the slas^H^H^H^H a website's beta and its designers have the same issue.
Near as I can tell, they don't plan on listening....
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
Come on, be honest. But before you open your mouth, THINK carefully.
I have a policy of ALWAYS assuming that any problem somebody brings me is MINE to fix. I most likely caused it and it's my responsibility to fix it. Problems are not always my fault in the end, but until I've proven to myself and more importantly to the person who brought the problem to my attention that it's NOT my fault I'm taking personal responsibility to see it gets fixed.
With that in mind, before you go off and start calling somebody you don't know well an idiot to his face you better be darn sure. And before you go tell anybody else about your suspicions they are an idiot you better be doubly darn sure you can back up the claim with absolute, you'd bet the farm on it, proof. Otherwise, you are going to be shot full of holes because YOU are the idiot.
Given that you obviously are NOT the subject matter expert (or why would you need one given to you) I would say that what we most likely have is a personality clash between you and the expert. There is a non zero chance this is not true, but unless you are ready to make yourself into the subject matter expert and PROVE it, you really have two choices...
First choice: You can suck it up, stop complaining and start working with the expert regardless of how you feel about them. You don't have to like them, but you need to respect them and stay professional about any disagreements. This will involve trying to figure out how you can best approach this person and doing things you would consider wasting time by taking their advice. Get their advice in hard copy, just to CYA in the future, but do your best to play in the sandbox with them.
Second choice: You can go in, guns blazing and shoot the idiot full of holes, preferably in public in front of management. If you are wrong, you will go down in a blaze of glory, fully burning the bridge behind your hasty departure. If you are right, and manage to prove it without stepping on a land mine in the process, nobody will ever want to work with you and the disgraced "expert" is still likely to be there, possibly on your team, which puts you back to your first choice where you will eventually have to work with them. When they start like this, such relationships don't go well and your life will be a mess.
So, I suggest you suck it up and do what it takes to work with the idiot and if you really just cannot make it work, look for another job.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
[EOM]
and examples.
Reminds of the time I was talking to an 'Expert Computer Engineer'. I had to explain binary to him.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
With computers with computer networks the idiots always declare that others are the idiots. Whenever they make a mistake they say "it's because of that idiot" behind the alleged idiots back. In computers and computer networks everybody is an expert and every problem is because of somebody else. There is a reason why an employer likes to see the word a team player on a CV, it is because team players help each other and turn all the computer network experts into non-idiots. No company can function without the self-declared experts until the self-declared expert is gone.
... and if the client still doesn't see sense, drop the client, let him/her use their expert and pick up the pieces when it all goes to shit.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
You find another client.
You really should avoid names like "expert" and "idiot" as they are opinions. You should provide technical answers backed up by fact. Once done, you will let the other person draw conclusions about expertise and idiocy. We are all experts in some way and idiots in another. Please put your emotions aside and be a professional.
If you find yourself always having terrible roommates, guess what? You're the terrible roommate.
Structure contracts, fees, tangible goals so if the "expert" slows you down, you get paid more.
The idea of avoiding idiots is lunacy, you make due with the cards dealt. If they have an "idiot" as an "expert", this speaks a lot about them and they probably need your help quite a bit.
If they didn't need your help, they wouldn't have hired you!
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
(1) Is there more than one idiot you work with or near?
(2) Do you think you are substantially undervalued by the company?
(3) Are you of the opinion that you are doing your coworkers a favor by working with them?
If you answered "yes" to any two of the above, you're the idiot.
...and doesn't know the first thing about the job the people under him do.
Actually this is NOT a reason to trash your boss. I've had a number of managers who didn't have a clue how to do my job who where extremely effective and great to work for. We had a mutual understanding and respect for each one's roll. With one, he didn't have a clue how to design a network and stand up the equipment because it was MY job to do that for him. He just pointed me to the project and we would discuss the details he needed to know (cost, schedule etc) and I did what was required. He knew I was going to tell him what I really thought about the cost and schedule and trusted me to do the work within the cost and schedule I gave him. I knew he would insulate me from the management garbage and wasn't going to throw me to the wolves if there was some unexpected slip or overrun. We did status reports on large projects and he would stop by regularly to talk about things, but he NEVER wanted to tell me how to do this or that, and if we where behind schedule or over cost I WAS TELLING HIM about it. We trusted each other to do their jobs and it worked great.
So, I actually think that the most effective bosses don't have to know all the ins and outs of what his employees do. But what they DO need is the ability to surround themselves with people who DO KNOW what needs to be done and empowering them to do their jobs. Bosses that know all the details are sometimes way to eager to try and micromanage their underlings and it takes a rare talent to let your employees do the work for you. I'll ALWAYS take a manager with the talent to delegate over one with perfect domain knowledge.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Fact is most degree holding people are morons.
And you are the smart one who does not have credentials.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
You need to stop worrying about whether your expert is an "idiot" or not. The only question is: are they qualified to provide the input, or do the thing they needed to be brought in for? If yes, then if necessary remind them and the client what the scope limits are on what the expert is needed for, show the concerns proof that the expert was going a bit out of scope, and point out their "signs of incompetence" as specific problems/action points for the expert to address, or point out on how you know this expert has not so far brought the expertise in the area you needed.
You should not put yourself in this position in the first place.
If you lack expertise, and the expertise is not just vendor support, You should find your own experts to help you, not ask your client to go out and find another expert; which basically reduces your appearance of qualification to even make the decision that the expert is not clueful about the right things.
What about when the expert you had the client recruit tells them that you ( the consultant) are an idiot?
Over coffee
Years ago I interviewed for this hot up and coming company. Their stock was on fire and after a series of interview with all the top guys they had me in a meeting where they presented a pretty damn good offer. But in that same meeting they finally dished on their "secret weapon" Lotus notes. I just about threw up. They had this PhD CS guy who was their "Expert" I basically said, using Lotus on a project of this nature is like building a car out of sand. In the first few hours you might make something that looks like it is going to be a car but you will never drive it one inch. Their "Expert" made a face like I farted and told me that I knew not of what I spoke; even though I just just finished a project that required digging the guts(business logic and data) out of a lotus notes database and making it actually work in a sane development environment. So they basically said that it didn't look like it was going to work out and I said something like, even without me rethink your choice of Lotus.
About 2 years later they flamed out in a huge stock and legal disaster. The lawsuits and criminal investigations are still moving along after many many years. A critical part of their disaster was their complete inability to deliver what they promised to their biggest customers/investors. Not that they were unable to deliver exactly what was promised but basically deliver anything.
Another PhD CS "Expert" I later dealt with was a fan of some stupid browser and insisted that any development be done for that browser and not others.
But my favorite PhD "Expert" shoot down was one that worked for a company that I worked for, she was an expert in DSP. But after years of working in a dark room somewhere basically everything she knew could be purchased in a chip. In the end she was doing paperwork audits.
I am not saying that PhD CS people are all useless. I know many who are damn good and doing cool useful things. Just that many people in the business world are blinded by a PhD, they assume that the person has some sort of magical ability to make things happen. A PhD basically indicates that they know a whole lot about some certain thing at a certain time. If your business is that thing and their knowledge is recent then great. The reality is that things move so damn quick in the CS world that anyone who is good is always keeping up to date and doubtfully has any paper to show that.
...and it's not your decision. You don't. You take the job as it is, for what it is, or you leave. You don't get to change the client, and that includes their decision in other persons.
This happened to me. The boss man had "taken the initiative" and brought in a new consultant. The guy was an idiot. He opened tickets with the software vendor asking things like how to set the date on a Linux system. He told one of my co-workers that if the root password was lost, he'd need to boot with a rescue disk and do some trickery with /etc/shadow. Tasked with building a cluster, he failed miserably blaming it on poor documentation and other nonsense. I tried many times to tell the boss man that his consultant was an idiot but was told I was being "combative" despite the guy's obvious failings.
It all worked out though. As this guy's contract was being renewed, we asked him to show what he'd done. All the lies he'd told the boss man evaporated when it was revealed that his cluster was just a cluster fuck, his vaunted "remote management" system was really just a "yum install webmin" (left unconfigured), and he'd informed another co-worker not to reveal where he was sitting.
Even years after, the boss man still insisted that the contractor "had fooled everyone."
So no, if the boss is an idiot, you may as well just distance yourself from the idiot. Let him dig his own grave.
Your other option was to play nice like the dummies are advocating, and have a failed project as a black stain on your resume.
You did the right thing. So did they. Good people are incompatible with idiots.
Futurist Traditionalism
It can be much, MUCH worse when your boss DOES know about your job, but doesn't take the time to see whether it's actually being done before declaring that it is not.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
You are correct!
I wish I had some mod points but unfortunately I don't
I have some! Oh, wait. Crap.
...and tell the client he is an expert on "that", but you want a expert on "this". If you search hard enough, you can surely find some related topic, that the expert is actually little bit knowledgeable. But that is the easy way out.
On the other hand, if the client actually considers the person an expert, it is possible there is another problem. The person may actually know things, but may not be interested in telling you that. S/he might be misguiding you on purpose. Or if s/he is not really an expert on the topic in hand, you may even get that expert to tell the client that s/he may not be the right expert for the job, and someone else might know better.
So you actually need to analyse your specific situation in depth before figuring out exact action needed.
My best advice for anyone in this situation is to document everything .
I spent a few years working customer service handling orders for manufacturing company. One particularly customers was a consistent problem. This company believed one of their personnel shat gold bricks, but I realized right off that they were incompetent and used lies & intimidation to cover this up.
This person would routinely fax their orders at the end of the day (right before they would leave) without confirming that they actually sent me the files necessary to start their order, and that their orders were almost always "rush" orders with very very short turn around times. Another thing this person would do, would be to call me up, tell me they had an order and ask me what the latest day they would need to receive the order by a specific date and time. I would tell them, then they would wait well past this final submittable date, submit their order and then claim that I had promised to turn around the product by that time. Over the years, the turn around time necessary to complete their orders shrunk to impossible expectations and their customer began getting upset as my customer started blaming me personally for the delays.
The irritating part, is that whenever I some how failed to live up to this person's errors (i.e., I was unable to cover for them), they would call up my boss and complain about me. My boss only believed half their bullshit, but it was still enough to impact my career.
Unfortunately for them, one of their customers wasn't an idiot, and had remembered me when he came along to our plant for a facility inspection prior to us beginning production of their product. This customer set up a meeting between our companies and asked me point blank when I received the purchase order, when I received the files and when I delivered the product. Thankfully, I had records of the time and date of every purchase order that company had ever sent, along with records of the time and date of receipt of every file to begin production, as well as the delivery date of the product to their warehouse.
It turned out that the end customer was sending the purchase orders to our problem person up to three weeks before the problem person would send me the PO and files. The problem person would sit on the file for weeks before submitting it to their production and farming out our part to us. The problem person ended up losing their company around $2million in sales yearly when they lost their client.
We ended up being directly contracted by the end customer to continue manufacturing our part of their product.
Document everything and make sure that everyone has access to the documentation you produce. Direct confrontation seldom yields favorable results, but if you document everything that is going on they will eventually read the status reports and documentation and come to a conclusion that either a) their fair haired child is being exposed to excessive risk through involvement in the project and needs to be moved away from the project or b) They need to get rid of the idiot before the idiot looses them their job when their management reads the documentation/reports. Plus, in the meantime the documentation can help protect you from backlash related to the idiots actions. (Make sure the documentation does not come out and state that the individual is an idiot. If they are an idiot then eventually the evidence of neutral statements of action will build up to the point that gets the point across. (Based on experience, I once caught serious flack for specifying "Individual X is the most significant risk to the project", it was true, but not what the customer wanted to see...)
You get them both in a meeting, and when the "expert" presents an idea, you point your index finger at your temple and rotate it in a circle around your ear.
Rolling your eyes and bursting out laughing is also good.
When the expert starts his powerpoint presentation, sigh loudly, raise one butt cheek and give an audible fart. Look around the room and say "Is he serious?" in a stage whisper.
There, I think that's a good start.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I'll agree with everything you said. The main problem I've tended to see in managers who aren't familiar with the work you're doing is that they often fail to recognize good performance (or bad performance, for that matter). They sometimes also dismiss the importance of individual skill and focus more on process/etc. The fact is that you need both.
I've had excellent managers who could never have done my job, but they made me feel valued and they complemented my own skills. Honestly, the more I've grown to appreciate good managers the less inclined I actually feel to become one myself. I think I'd do a better job than many of the mediocre managers I've met, but I don't think I'd perform the job of a manager as well as I perform the jobs that I really excel at.
Unfortunately, one of the best manager that I've ever worked for (who led a team that did truly great things) ultimately feel victim to corporate politics. Regular re-orgs ensured that he could never really cultivate a strong team and have time to deliver, and then when anything went wrong the managers above him tended to perceive him as not being a strong manager, probably because he didn't just throw people under the bus or go throwing his weight around. He was also tossed into an IT org that was extremely process-driven where he had little control over the processes, and the processes tended to discourage teamwork/etc which was his strong point.
This programmer guy I know who works for Verizon, calls himself "The best of the best of the best" . He has no problem telling people he works with, people in other departments, and even clients, that they are morons. When he has a mouthful he never holds back. If he can(and has), he will go out of his way to get people fired for being stupid. He will berate people to tears. He says he just can work with morons, and he lets every one know that. He thinks he's the Dr. House of programmers. I ask him if he can get in trouble or fired, he says how he is the best programer ever known, and verizon would fold if he was fired.
What is it with programmers? Are they all arrogant?
This is an add for the article from Intuit. I've never had any success with any of the products i used from intuit. My company tried their Quickbooks Enterprise which was a horrible nightmare. But i'm sure this is useful. Seeing how they are being so straightforward about their approach, and they aren't using someone elses website to try and make money.
Mean what you say...say what you mean.
Is the consultant really an idiot or does he not bring anything useful. If he has expertise that you don't have and do need, then you need to make the case that he can't communicate that expertise properly. If he doesn't have expertise that you don't have but do need, you should explain that the scope of his expertise is outside the scope of what your project requires. Many people have accomplished a great deal in life which wouldn't help you at all if you tried to work with them. Jobs are often too narrowly focused to need general experts. Of course, if you are just a dick who was hoping that you'd use someone's else's money to hire an expert and then use him as a grunt, you deserve what's coming your way.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
I was a consultant for a while and trained more than a few FNGs. I would always advise them that the choice was theirs, but that the chances of a positive result were slim to none if they took their concerns to the customer. Sure enough, I saw several otherwise excellent consultants get shown the door because of this exact scenario.
Part of your responsibility as a consultant is to "work magic". If you run into roadblocks, you find ways around them and that includes the occasional professional vegetable. What typically isn't in your domain is giving advice on personnel, unless you were specifically hired to do exactly that. In the end, almost nobody wants to be told that one of their chosen workers is sub-par. It's negative, it's dangerous, and it's usually pointless.
Just work around them, document everything, and communicate that sort of stuff with your own manager behind closed doors. You should also be sure to have customer "witnesses" in your emails and meetings. Team distribution lists and direct managers are excellent for that.
I had a great job in the chicago suburbs working for a guy that owns garrets popcorn in chicago and has a crapload of jimmy johns franchises in Seattle. I worked in a spinoff tech investment and I tried to build a server for him, his expert said that there was no way to be sure the components I ordered would be compatible, and that Dell would be able to build a better server and support it than anyone else could.
I convinced my manager that his bosses expert was an idiot and ordered the parts. They arrived on a cold winter day and I let them sit overnight to defrost, when I came in the next morning to build the server, I had to box the parts up to ship them back and pay a restocking fee because the bosses expert wanted the dell with the warranty. A few months later I lost my job.
My advice? Just smile and nod. People who are tech idiots and have drinking buddies will always triumph over brains.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
In my experience, a good boss who isn't technically minded will take advice and just let the tech-heads get on with it, and look forward to a viable result*. If there's more than one boff in the mix, a good boss will take regular updates and stir the pot as necessary. Sometimes that will involve some firing and hiring of new blood. If it takes an unsolicited approach by an employee to make the boss aware outside of a regular departmental meeting that something is wrong, then he isn't a very effective boss. This goes both ways: if you have a complaint, document EVERYTHING, who did what when and what the result was, summarise it, summarise the summary and take it to the next meeting.
*that's what I do. I'm no code monkey, if I need something to spin I don't know or particularly care about the mechanics behind it, I just want the spinny thing to spin. That's why I surround myself with people who know the shit I don't.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
AC is bang on. A diploma only means that when you took a three hour exam you had the ability to recall from memory, something you read in a textbook. It does not make you smart any more than donning a black cotton belt makes you Pat Morita's stunt double. Only innate skill, common sense and most importantly, experience (in ANY field) will not only get you hired right off the bat but will more likely ensure retention than a college degree and no work history.
Anecdotally, I have received resumés, over many years and in two industries: ICT consultation and law. Of all the ICT speculative applications I ever received, I called ONE for interview in 2004. He was a pleasant guy, about 25, had nothing past a few average-grade GCSEs under his belt but he had worked since the age of 13 (paper round), later in a warehouse until he was 20, then food retail. He wanted in on the ICT racket. I called him in because he printed his resumé on a home built printer (he even supplied a polaroid of it!), on a computer he built himself, using a word processor he coded himself from the ground up. OK, he didn't have a college degree, he didn't have anything resembling even a vocational ticket in computing, but he had two things I was looking for: the drive and determination to achieve, and the willingness to learn and demonstrable *experience* in problem solving. I mentored him for three years and to this day he's still consulting.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
....find another client.
http://tinyurl.com/4ny52
Have the person make definite statements in documents. Test them so that you can demonstrate they do not work. Report the failure and ask for more money as you cannot build on these preparations and hence the "expert" did not fulfill a contractual obligation. (Do not have such an obligation in the contract? Well, you are screwed and you learned something.) If the person refuses to make definite statements, report that as blocker for your work.
Never, ever accuse anybody of incompetence. It is far better to list failures and state that they are not "consistent with the claimed/stated level of expertise". The problem with accusing anybody of incompetence, is that you automatically accuse the person that hired them of incompetence as well. That is however your usual escalation path.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
"But when the 'expert' turns out to be the wrong person how do you tell the client (or boss) that you just can't work with that individual?"
Here's how: Boss, I just can't work with that individual.
You're welcome.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
It is like using references, I have learned that if a company asks for them, they are idiots. Nobody EVER calls them and if they do they are basically saying "I have no clue from interviewing how good this guy is, so I got to ask someone else". Stellar performance right there!
The solution is relatively simple, see job interviews as a two way process. They are interviewing you BUT you are ALSO interviewing them. And gosh darnit, you can reject THEM as an employer!?! Shocking ain't it.
When I read a site like clients from hell, (not linking because it has an annoying nag script) I can't help but feel that a lot of the time all the problems could have been avoided if the complainer had just said at the interview "you are an idiot, I am not going to work for you".
If you spend sometime in your field you should know the warning flags. If a client/employer for instance is looking for a lead developer, the existing code base is a pile of steaming shit such as you have only seen in every single job before where the existing lead had to finally admit he needed an extra hand (translation: needed to be taken outside and shot for the good of humanity). If they are looking for a replacement team for the software project, the existing code doesn't (exist that is, what is there is maybe some scripts that on some days, does something but nobody knows what). If they are considering a rewrite, the servers are on fire and the the sys admin has slaughtered the entire office and is sniping from the rooftop.
You get to regonize the signs after a while. Does the boss spent the entire interview bitching about what gone wrong before? Translation: He is to busy still raging and hasn't yet learned from the mistake which was HIS, for hiring the wrong people.
There is no handover period because the previous guy already left? Translation: Make a sentence with rats, ships, sinking. Question: Do you want to come on board? Consideration: At least the ship is rat free.
If the ship is on fire and they are haggling over budget with the fire-fighters, translation: they spend all their money on flammable lifeboats and have nothing left for you. Another form of this is if they talk about how much money already has been sunk into the project and/or whining about recovering investment. Fact of life: money sunk into a project that has failed is lost, deal with it. A projects worth is NOT measured by how much money has been lost on it.
And hey, you can ignore all of this and think YOU are going to be the perfect employee who can deal with idiots... and I will point to you and say "this guy is going to be on a rooftop someday, sniping at the police while chewing on someone's leg". Either that... or... you are one of them... got an MBA?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Who is a loser? It's not always so obvious. Short term winner may be longer term looser may be looonger term winner. Short term winner may cause others (1..n) become short term and/or long term losers. As so often, nice catchy phrase - and utterly useless. It does not spare you from looking at the individual complex case. This only becomes "simple" when you suppress most of reality. Example: You say the guy who makes the most $$$ is a winner - but he may for his/her entire life lack all the things that are associated with that state. Is a lack of empathy winning or losing, and/or an overblown sense of entitlement ("I did this all by myself" - like the pharao building the pyramids, right?), in this context? Depends on the point of view, but the more of the world you include in your view the harder it becomes to see clearly using simple term such as winning/losing.
If you're a consultant, you've just struck gold.
Now I dislike consulting work and only do it if the project is irresistable, but during my corporate days I worked with many consultants, from the big names down to tiny but actually competent companies.
Business secret: This is how the big names all make their money. You've found a fool, and a fool and his money are easily parted. If you play your cards right, you've got guaranteed contracts for years to come, because this "expert" will create more and more problems and all you need to do is position yourself right so you are the one who gets hired to fix them. The easiest argument is that you already know the system.
It's pathetic and borderline illegal, but it's how half the consulting industry works. That idiot is the pig that'll lead you to truffels. Just follow him and don't get in his way.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I've come to compare our field with that of doctors. Everybody has something bad to say about them and their field, yet everybody needs one at one time or other and will consult one then. At the same time, whilst everybody is commenting on the field, very few people actually really know anything about it or are confused by the fields complexity.
That makes it very easy for charlatans to gain traction and the trust of unsuspecting novices and puts a burden of an ongoing bad-reputation-influx on the useful workers in the field. That the field of IT is constantly moving and is still quite young on top of all that doesn't help much either.
This is a problem we'll have to deal with as the industry moves on. It's one of the downsides of the job. Just like being a MD and getting all kinds of BS from everybody all the time *and* having the odd quack, fraud or charlatan inbetween spoiling the reputation of medicine.
Professional organisations, advisery boards, certifications and tried and tested regulations and procedures are what helps lawyers and doctors deal with this kind of shit. ... Maybe we need more of that sort of stuff too? ... Just sayin'.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
The best thing to do is communicate your doubts (with functional and technical arguments) and document every step.
Some years back I was hired as technical consultant for a public tender. I dealt with the head of the department that needed the solution and did my work independently of the CTO. After the usual pre-qualification round, we had about five or six companies lined up for the tender proper.
I wrote the Requirement Specification and sent it to the CTO for approval. It came back with exactly ten demands for changes and not one of them made sense, being purely technical requirements. I wrote a memo to the CTO countering each of the ten changes — with a copy to the department head. The CTO wanted a meeting to discuss the issues. The department head and I attended the meeting, which had seven people from the IT department attending (but strangely, not the CTO). I once again countered each change and the IT people seemed to come around in the end.
A couple of days later the department head called me in and said that I had to give the CTO something, at least concede on one point. After reminding the department head that all the changes demanded were for specific ways of solving the problem (i.e. purely technical) and that a Requirement Specification should be purely functional, I had to find the one that was least likely to cause actual harm.
In the end I chose to include one of the CTO's requirements, stating that "the solution should be based on a relational database", hoping that none of the companies would use other types of databases. I changed the wording, informed the CTO and the department head (in writing, naturally), still emphasizing that I thought it was not the best idea and that it potentially could stop one or more of the companies from bidding. The CTO now approved the Requirement Specification and it was duly sent off to the pre-qualified companies.
Shortly after, one of the companies told us they had to opt out as their database was not relational but rather object orientated. The department head sent me a furious note asking me why we had included that requirement. I calmly told him, with a copy of the previous correspondence, that it was the CTO's requirement and that I had warned him at the time.
It did, luckily, not have any influence on my future work for that department, but the CTO only lasted about six months in all before discreetly being replaced.
... and don't comment about the person. Find and document the mistakes of the supposed idiot (and make sure they're not actually brilliant and correct solutions), and the costs of fixing them. Hopefully, when the list gets long enough, the client will get the idea.
If you act like a prima donna, you'd better sing like one as well.
More importantly, how do you tell your boss that the consultant is an idiot!?
Bravo!
If you're a consultant, you owe your customer a warning if they're being scammed. In the very few cases where I've had to deal with this and had the freedom to demur, I've formally entered a "no bid", with an explanation of the form "upon analysis, the proposed plan will take substantially more time than budgeted, and that failure will reflect on the competence of the consultants involved".
I just wish I'd no-bid on on "teach TDD to a PM", a few years back (;-))
davecb@spamcop.net
It's hard to imagine this situation happening at Google and Facebook, these places are pretty picky about who they hire. People who are installed as experts when they shouldn't be are likely part of a larger problem that has to do with a management team that's not on the ball. And if you're working at an organization that has this problem, better to just not mention anything because the truth shall not set you free, it shall get you fired. I hate to say it, but sometimes you just have to sit back and watch projects crash and burn. Logic and reason doesn't work on people who don't want to hear it, but a devestated project and its inevitable fallout always does.
As a consultant, part of your standard contract should include Project Risks. Amongst those risk it's typical to list things such as "Client provides timely access to data" and "Client provides timely access to Subject Matter Experts" and then you can track this on a risk management plan and identify mitigation strategies - which in this case could involve having a backup (or backups) of the "Expert" that can be called on. You'd want to word it carefully in a way that doesn't scream "Expert is an Idiot!", but it's pretty standard and I'm sure you can find examples out there.
Basically the article is "suck it up, shut up and drive on".
If you have an imbecile actively, if not maliciously, deep-sixing a project, you notify the client. PERIOD.
Sure, it may hurt feelings. Sure, it may alienate the client.
IT ALSO PROTECTS YOU FROM LIABILITY!
At my current job, my bosses have tried going the "suck it up and drive on" route several times.
Occasionally it works out, and we're able to educate said idiot.
Most of the time though, they're simply a millstone around our neck, damaging said project and making everything take longer and cost more.
What's worse is that if you simply do the "suck it up and drive on", you run the risk of said moron becoming the "liason" to your company for EVERYTHING.
At that point, they start blaming you for everything and anything they fuck up.
We've had multiple instances of this where the person promises a bunch of things, puts it off, puts it off some more, and as deadline approaches, FINALLY calls us, needing "just a quick thing" that's either:
A: Impossible
B: Possible but is going to take days/weeks/months of work.
And when you inform them of this, they get hysterical.
One of our clients was using a 3rd party consulting company to manage their backups.
Unfortunately, the app the client was using at the time would lock files if people left it open, resulting in error reports on the backup.
So what did these guys do? Did they draft policy to get people to shut down properly at the end of the day? Come up with an automated shutdown setup?
Nope! They simply removed the offending folders from the backup routine. No more errors!
Then, about 6 months down the road, the application ate itself and it's data after an OS update.
So we head in and go looking for backups, only to find none.
Did we softball it and get blamed for a defective product and get the shit sued out of us? You damn well BET we didn't!
Annoying and dumb? Yeah, you can work around that.
Actively dangerous to the client and project? You don't route around stuff like that. It comes back and bites you if you do.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
First off, "idiot" is a very strong word to use when speaking about someone professionally. I would be very careful about using that word unless you have very strong evidence that its true. As a consultant I can tell you that reputation is everything.
Secondly, there is a good chance that your boss (or his/her boss) hired this "idiot". If you try to make the consultant look bad you are, in turn, making your boss look bad by inferring that they have bad judgement.
Thirdly, ask yourself what you have to gain by outing this person? Probably not as much as you think. Best case scenario, they get rid of the person and bring in someone else. What if they are worse? What do you do then?
So what to do? If it were me I'd try to document things that the person is doing that you know are bad decisions. Don't - under any circumstances - try to sabotage or impede the project. The blame will fall on you. When you think you have a very, very strong case then bring it to your manager. But if he/she takes the consultants side then you'd better be prepared to walk. Your boss doesn't have your back and you are finished at that company.
One last thought...I'm not suggesting this is true in this case but I have seen it many times before. Is it possible that you have a case of "consultant envy"? Envious of the money they make or the influence they have? If so, let it go. It won't change a thing and will only put you in a bad mood. Life's too short.
Consider this:
There are reason[s] why the idiot is in the position the idiot occupies. You may not agree with the reasons, you may not be able to work with the person, but you are a consultant and not internal.
And there are reason[s] you are the consultant there. It is doubtful that one of those reasons is because you need to pass judgment on that idiot, or that the employer wants your opinion about that person's competence.
So, suck it up and deal. If the idiot is truly an idiot, let their management discover it and handle it. If you are truly competent, you will either find a way to work with the person anyway, work around that person, or find a politically expedient way to exit the contract you're on in such a way it doesn't discredit you. Such is the life of a consultant. And, if you don't like that, then get hired as an internal somewhere, be exposed to the full office politics etc. and try to keep surviving... and you may become the same idiot you're complaining about.
People with technical prowess... are readily available out there. People with good people skills... are readily available out there. What makes a person truly valuable is to possess technical prowess plus the people skills. And if you had that, this question wouldn't have been asked. But good luck, as I'm still learning the fine arts of both of those, too!
I've run into this situation a few times. Clear communication is key. Raise your concerns, bring all parties into a conference call, and it will be clear who the victor is. It may not be you, but it's better to clear the air.
Be direct, specific, and non-punishing.
I think someone told them that the only computer citizens will be allowed to
have after the last coal plant is shutdown are crank up Ipads.
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
I dealt with this from the reverse perspective. I was the sole programmer taking over all operations of a 300,000 user business and trying to prevent the business from shutting down because of the terrible job the previous consultants did. My life was triage. We had a lot of trouble hiring people because they saw what was going on and everybody was worried about jumping into an unstable situation.
In the middle of this year long "what were you thinking" style repair the boss decided he wanted a mobile app and hired a local company to build it. The only problem was that the company was pretty terrible.
They had 1 really excellent designer, 1 programmer who was about a green as they come and 1 sales guy who go in really good with a VP. The programmer wanted to make a mobile app that directly connected to our main database. His "alternative" was to have the mobile app send raw SQL over the wire to a single PHP page that would spit out the response.
Incompetent does not begin to describe it. I took this to my boss. Explained exactly what you have to have in place from an infrastructure perspective to create an API that a mobile app could utilize. Exactly how much time that would take and exactly what we had pending that needed to be done prior to implementing a mobile app. I also told him what I could rearrange in the timeline to get to it sooner, how much simpler it would be in the short term to implement a responsive design, explained the complexities involved with mobile app development and API versioning. Also mentioned that I was extremely concerned about the level of competence of their programmer but that their designer was extremely talented and knowledgable.
Deaf ears. I'd been selling out my life for the previous year saving this man from bankruptcy and "sales guy" convinced him that I was protecting my turf. All he cared about was "yes" and I found out later that he didn't think I was working hard enough anyway...
Eventually, I left for a much better opportunity, the company wasted a boat load of money on an app that never materialized.
Moral of the story, "going to management" only works if you have management that will listen to you. If they won't then they go with whoever tells them what they want to hear.
"Don't teach a man to fish, feed yourself. He's a grown man. Fishing's not that hard." - Ron Swanson
Just do your job.
Casteism
I've been in this situation countless times. The advice I have is very simple, and very hard to do:
Be Patient
Every time this has happened... big drama in the team as everyone complains about "the new guy" - who is generally both an idiot, and dictatorial "my way or the highway" and on more than one occasion has threatened us, the development vendor, with his new found power that either we conform to his way or he will get rid of us, forever. And every time, after a few months... new guy is gone, and we are left standing.
So be nice to "new guy" - let hm hang himself. Don't create unnecessary drama - this is what drives managers crazy. Be honest about what's going on, don't exaggerate, don't appear to be emotional about it, hide your annoyance and frustration. And above all, just be patient, eventually the dimwitted ones figure out that new guy is an idiot too.
Murphy was an optimist
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The may feel insecure with an outside contractor. Have lunch with them, get to know them, give them some ideas to pitch to the bosses, so that they feel that they are able to contribute. Once you can disarm them with this, they will be your biggest fan. This works.
Occasionally, within a very narrow spectrum, we're talking Kelvin.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
I have this classic case. Idiot and he has social skills to talk and get listened to. Doesn't seem to matter that he's been slapped down multiple times for his gross incompetence by multiple departments. I thought we got rid of ours. Someone else's problem. Trouble is, they realized he's an idiot and fired him. Now "he's back!" (we started running).
Two things:
1) Whatever you do, don't do it by yourself. Enlist help from many different areas. Be overwhelming. Pull in help from other agencies/companies/entities if you can. Then lower the boom in a meeting. Your idiot should be in their place and out of the way.
Understand that you should make sure that you're not that idiot of course. You could be leading the way for the boom being lowered on you. I've seen that happen.
Your mileage may vary.
2) You can also just let things ride, help the idiot. Sometimes you can ride that idiot a long time. They get promoted up, you are brought along.
Then you really did work for an idiot. For that I'm sorry. Just remember, these kind of bosses are pretty easy to deal with. If you don't want to quit, just document everything and pull out the CYA trail when they throw you under the buss. (Yea, I've had to do that too.. )
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
"You're an idiot" then ignore the expert and report him.