What would you do?
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You've just joined a new company as a senior developer. During the interview process your role was discussed in depth...
- Lead a development team
- Deliver a new application
- Using state of the art tooling
- Highly ambitious
You start, and in your first few days you are shown more details of the task at hand. The project plan and delivery timeline were created by the head developer - a person for whom you have a great deal of respect. Internally you are no really about how you will deliver this in such a short space of time.
What do you do next?
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Ask questions
posted by
dcw
on
1/4/2007 8:57:13 AM
:
I think it's usually a good sign when you start a new assignment and see challenges. If there's no risk involved, I think it's unlikely that you'll achieve much growth!
That said, the best advice I can give is to ask as many questions as possible. Companies generally have a hard time disseminating a project in detail - this is natural as domain knowledge and implementation detail evolves informally.
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what would you do?
posted by
JosephCooney
on
1/4/2007 3:50:23 PM
:
Does this company have a "culture of dishonesty" or are we talking about a different hypothetical situation?
I don't think having a deep respect for someone precludes you from disagreeing with their ideas and estimates. I'd raise my concerns as soon as possible, but try to do so in a positive way that acknowledges you're working from a position of lesser knowledge.
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I learnt this from you
posted by
Grant Holliday
on
1/5/2007 9:14:11 AM
:
Point #4 "Highly ambitious" is the most interesting. It means "theres a high risk of failure involved".
What I would do is start prototyping the high risk components. Bite the things that are going to bite you - before they do.
Then you will be able to talk to the lead developer and revise estimates and deliverables before it's too late and you're working 20 hour days.