AlabamaMike's Journal: Don't Trust Volunteers

Today's journal is another rant of mine. It seems that my Slashdot journal is turning into my own personal bitch sheet. The guilty will remain nameless for their own protection, but we'll call him Mr. VP (he is a VP where I work.) So here's how it went down. Last week this guy begs me to use him for some code help on my current project. Now mind you, I didn't need any help, and I explained away that I don't need the help, I'm making good progress, etc, but he wouldn't drop it. Basically, I had no choice, let him help or hear the bitching. So I finally gave in and said "sure, here ya go, you can work on class X." Dropped my latest code into CVS, went over to his desk, helped him pull the code from the repository, and explained the architecture of the subsystem he'd be working on. For the most part I wasted 1/2 a day doing this. Now this guy is a VERY experienced coder (20+ years coding), and he's worked on tons of projects including some very high profile, enterprise-class offerings. So I feel assured that this will get done, the quality will be high, etc. Fast-forward about 10 days. I'm sitting in a developer's meeting and we're going around the table giving status updates and such. When it's my turn to go, I ask him how he's doing, and he tells me that he hasn't done shit, and he doesn't have the time to do this. NICE! Here we are 7 working days from GA release freeze, and I've got my dick swinging in the breeze thanks to him. Tomorrow's my b'day (YEA!), guess what I'll be doing ... that's right! CODING! WOOHOO! Thanks a ton for that one Mr. VP. Next time you get a piece of work farmed out from me is when the Winter X Games are hosted in Hell. Grrrrrrr .... live and learn.