At Sun, where there was a structured management chain, there was a time when one of the folks in my group reverted a big chunk of changes I had committed, and I went to our common manager and demanded satisfaction. The response was 'if we left them in he threatened to quit, there isn't anything we can do', and the only conclusion from that statement was that if one of us quit, the manager would rather it were me than this other person. Needless to say it was really annoying.
They're not crazy, and it only works if they have more political capital than you do. If I was forced to accept substandard work, and had no other choice but either maintain that bad code, or quit, I'd threaten to quit too.
No, they are crazy. Reverting someone else's changes without explaining why is crazy. No one is telling these people they can't explain their actions.
If any of these people has a disagreement with a co-worker over the co-worker's changes, it's their duty as a fellow employee to explain to the co-worker why they disagree, or at least explain to the manager why they disagree with the change, so that the manager can explain it to the co-worker. But just making the change and then threatening to quit... that is most definitely crazy.
Just want to clarify that my response here is not related to the GitHub story. I have no knowledge of the circumstances that aren't in the story.
> No, they are crazy.
That may be.
> Reverting someone else's changes without explaining why is crazy.
Not necessarily. There are times when you are so wrong you aren't even wrong.
> If any of these people has a disagreement with a co-worker over the co-worker's changes, it's their duty as a fellow employee to explain to the co-worker why they disagree, or at least explain to the manager why they disagree with the change, so that the manager can explain it to the co-worker.
Let's imagine a scenario where they had done this, and yet nothing had corrected the problem. At that point, it would be quite reasonable to revert someone's changes without explaining why, and threatening to quit if one wasn't allowed to.
> If you are so wrong you aren't even wrong, there are bigger problems at play and you probably shouldn't be working in that position in the first place.
Which is precisely why it would be eminently reasonable to quit, and therefore reasonable to threaten to quit.
> But in that scenario, whether or not you quit should not be contingent upon whether or not the change is kept, it should be whether or not you have to continue to work with that person.
Right, but anything less than reverting the change means you have to put up with the person, which again... is why one might threaten to quit.
Well in this particular case it was pretty much all politics. Had it been about the code it would have had a different outcome.
The person making the threat felt they were immune from backlash, but they were threatened by where I was working in the code base because they lacked the expertise to compete on a technical level. What I found even more interesting was that our mutual manager felt that his position was an even more tenuous political position so he wasn't going to do anything he wasn't told to do by someone above him in the chain of command.
If someone working for me threatens to quit, I first ask them if their issue can be resolved rationally, and if it can't I ask them when will their last day be. But that is because even if my boss then comes to me and says "You told this guy who is friends with <important person> to quit? Your fired!" I am totally ok with that. Not everyone is.
To look at the flip side though as to whether I screwed up or not, I'm reasonably self aware enough to know when I do. And prior to this incident going 'nuclear', as it did, I had come at it from several different directions to try to eliminate bias. Every third party consulted felt my reasoning was pretty sound. But we all know that being "right" doesn't mean you get what you want in a politicized environment. Just ask the Ukrainians living in Crimea, life is what it is. We move past it.
