My Colleague’s Double Life

                                                             Photo by Evgeni Tcherkasski @evgenit on Unsplash

I know overemployed is a thing, and it does feel like everyone has multiple “side hustles”. Working from home has offered moneymaking opportunities, and I understand the temptation. 

However, I was shocked when a colleague decided to take another job and work it in the office.

Here is the story of mediocrity, disrespect and a lack of values. 

Sleepy

TBH I didn’t have much respect for my colleague. Although I was pretty junior at the time I didn’t like a few of their behaviors when it came to working.

For one they were always late to the office. This caused problems when we needed to work together. They also seemed tired all of the time (red eyes), so much so that I used to call them “sleepy” as a nickname. 

Little did I know what was really happening.

Busy, Busy, Busy

I was a pretty junior employee and went to my colleague to talk about some changes to the endpoint we were developing. My colleague sat on the other side of the office, so I’d take a walk over to them.

As was often the case in our small office, they were not free. I could just hear his side of the conversation as their hushed tones were just audible across the office.

The conversation went on for most of the afternoon, and I felt I needed to leave the query to the next day.

Sure enough an opportunity arrived so we could talk about the technical issues. Sure, they wasted some time, but it happens and being understanding of other’s priorities is what teamwork is about.

So, I was shocked when they shared with me why they were not available.

Double Work, Double Pay

My colleague shared with me what they were doing. They were not apologetic but rather matter-of-fact in explaining to me what they were doing.

They said they had his own business coaching developers 1-to-1, and they would call him for assistance working on their code. They claimed to be making a great deal more money than we were paid for, but they needed to keep working for a visa.

To say I found the news upsetting is an understatement. It had a negative effect on my work efforts.

Team Impact

I’m not a developer who thinks that the number of hours you work is really important — it’s the outcome. 

However, in this case my colleague wasn’t available to work on our project. The issue for me is that we were paid to work together. As the more junior developer I needed to lean to some extent on the more senior colleague and they simply were not there for me, meaning I needed to invest extra hours to complete my work.

This particular colleague got away with jerk-like behavior as they were the best developer in the company. I’ll give you another example; they missed standup every day (they slept in each and every day). This meant working with them was a difficult task in itself, resulting in delayed work.

The end result was, it didn’t take me long to leave, as I really wanted to work in a company where people cared something about the work they do. Once I left the company the team quickly disbanded, the company recruited new developers and carried on as before.

Conclusion

I wish that companies would employ software engineers who actually enjoy their job, and who would work hard with dedication.

They could target these employees with an interview process that actually looked for the values of potential staff rather than asking technical quiz questions. Wouldn’t that be a thing?