A coworker sniped my assignment-- what's the appropriate response?

October 19, 2015 7:51 AM

I am a paid intern for a small SaaS startup, and in the past month or so, I've been drowning a little at life. I remoted into the office this weekend to play catch-up, and discovered that a coworker, who until recently was also an intern, had publicly 'completed' (badly) the task clearly assigned to me, which I had already spent some time on. Our workflow tool indicates he assigned himself to the ticket.

We use agile development methods, and our weekly sprint meeting is today. Said coworker does not generally attend these meetings. In fact, we're kind of on opposite work schedules. We have a work chat tool I can communicate with him on. My CEO would normally be the person I'd go to for guidance/mediation here, but he is overseas and unreachable for the next week.

Other relevant stuff:

* In the past, this coworker has pointedly ignored me during a discussion on computer science, whether because I'm a woman, not a traditional student, or something else entirely, I don't know. So between that and feeling threatened because of my own dip in performance, I'm having a lot of trouble not taking this personally. My blood's boiling.

* It's possible someone else asked him to assign himself, or he thought he was helping. I don't want to jump to conclusions.

* I'd like to be classy about this, but also recognize, as my boyfriend pointed out, "classy is for people who aren't worried about losing their jobs".

That's all I can think of. I'm trying to keep a cool head on this, but I am also pissed, am completely clueless about how to handle this situation, and feel the stakes are dire. Help!

posted by dee lee to Human Relations (19 answers total)

The first thing you have to do is remain calm. The stakes are not dire- why would they be? No one is dying. There is no situation, not even one where you got fired and they chase you out with flaming torches, that justifies you losing your cool. Can you drop him an email and ask him for the status of the project? I would also ask if he needs you to finish the (part he clearly did not do). This could be your chance to regain ownership.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 7:59 AM on October 19, 2015 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Also,

I'd like to be classy about this, but also recognize, as my boyfriend pointed out, "classy is for people who aren't worried about losing their jobs".

Your boyfriend is incorrect. Classy is ESPECIALLY for people who are worried about losing their jobs.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 8:04 AM on October 19, 2015 [64 favorites]

a coworker, who until recently was also an intern, had publicly 'completed' (badly) the task clearly assigned to me, which I had already spent some time on. Our workflow tool indicates he assigned himself to the ticket.

So he did a bad job, possibly against orders, and took credit for the result. How do you imagine someone might see this as your fault?

I'm having a lot of trouble not taking this personally.

It might actually be personal, but that doesn't mean it's going to hurt you. People misbehave. Don't join their party.
posted by jon1270 at 8:08 AM on October 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

Best answer: As ThePinkSuperhero says, don't let the rage control you. React in as calm and professional a way as possible, and assume the person was operating in good faith until proven otherwise. This is the email I would write:

Hi, coworker! I noticed that you did X on my ticket for Y. Thanks for pitching in! One thing, though -- in the future, can you let me know if you're planning to grab one of my tickets? I'd already done Z, and we could have avoided a lot of duplication of effort. Oh and you may not be aware, but ABC still needs doing. Would you like to take care of that yourself, or should I go in and tie up the loose ends?

Thanks!
posted by Andrhia at 8:15 AM on October 19, 2015 [14 favorites]

Response by poster: Quick clarification: we work on these assignments through a revision control system, so his progress is entirely separate from my progress, and he won't receive undue credit for anything I did. What is an issue is that the time I sunk into my version of the assignment has now been wasted for both me and the company.
posted by dee lee at 8:16 AM on October 19, 2015

Response by poster: Not to threadsit, but I thought I should update with the message I've now sent him in response to him 'hoping that is ok':

"Hey, [person with unknowable intentions]. Thank you, though I wish you'd checked in before starting, so we could avoid duplicating our efforts. Do you mind my asking who assigned you to my ticket?"
posted by dee lee at 8:26 AM on October 19, 2015 [3 favorites]

Best answer: Bring it up as a process issue. "I noticed that X was assigned ticket Y or assigned it to himself. I already had ticket Y on my plate and I had been working on it for Z hours. I'm worried about the duplication and wasted effort from tickets being reassigned mid-stream. What can we do to ensure we aren't redoing work that's already been done?"
posted by jacquilynne at 8:26 AM on October 19, 2015 [19 favorites]

Best answer: It's important to document, which means you have to communicate by email or by chat. No phone calls.

After that, start building a case. Contact your coworker and ask how (not why, because why is a threatening word) the ticket was reassigned to him.

Assuming he did it himself, you then have to explain the task was assigned to you, and that the task is incomplete for X, Y and Z reasons. Then say you will be contacting your supervisor (the "boss" who is overseas) to confirm that you will continue the project.

Then send a note to your boss, including the email chain (probably better to use email than chat).

Don't ask for permission. Just say what you are going to do: "I am going to revert the tag to me, and I am going to finish up this project."

Don't say fix (your email chain will have evidence that there are issues), just say "finish." This keeps the convo with your boss neutral.

If someone assigned the ticket to your coworker, then you have to follow up with that someone.

My point is, collect information about who reassigned the task, indicate the task is not finished, and state you will finish it. And communicate by email using direct but non-inflammatory language.
posted by Nevin at 8:27 AM on October 19, 2015 [15 favorites]

"What is an issue is that the time I sunk into my version of the assignment has now been wasted for both me and the company."

Actually I believe it is the time that HE sunk into it that has been wasted.
posted by chrillsicka at 8:28 AM on October 19, 2015 [9 favorites]

I like Andrhia's script. Depending how open your sprint reviews are (or maybe the retrospective would be a better forum if you do those) you could say "I started work on x, but then co-worker picked it up and completed it so we duplicated some effort. How can we avoid that in the future?"
Some places don't do "ownership" of work and do let anyone work on anything, but there is a point where that becomes counterproductive. Could be also that not everybody is aware they need to check assigned work hasn't been started before jumping in, but that is the kind of thing that the team should have a guideline about.
posted by crocomancer at 8:28 AM on October 19, 2015 [2 favorites]

Best answer: The stakes are not dire. In fact there are no stakes here. Even if your code is 100% waste product, you as an intern are learning firsthand the importance of having processes in place, and how to communicate about them.

No matter what the guy says in response to your check in, verify it with the person tasked with shepherding the project. Say something cool-headed like "I was working on xyz but I see that Jason forked a repo and is still working on it. How would you like me to proceed?"
posted by ImproviseOrDie at 8:29 AM on October 19, 2015 [17 favorites]

Can you re-open the ticket and finish the job well? If so, I would do so without comment.

It seems to me that the fact that you are drowning needs to be addressed more than the fact that your co-worker is clueless (or predatory) about boundaries. If you had not been drowning this would not have made you feel threatened.
posted by Jane the Brown at 8:34 AM on October 19, 2015 [2 favorites]

I'm a woman in IT surrounded by enraging behavior from male colleagues I think Andrhia's script is too nice-making and will note Nevin's points for my own use when this comes up for me. (I've edited this on preview).

You can always note your approach in the ticket's commenting system (explaining what your uncommitted code is doing)
posted by travertina at 8:35 AM on October 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

I would suggest that no matter what you do if and when you contact a supervisor about a problem or issue with a coworker, it's extremely important to keep the tone of the communication neutral and also action-oriented.

Unless it's very serious issues like bullying or harassment, supervisors do not want to be bothered with personality conflicts. If there are problems it's easier for the supervisor to analyze the solution and make a course-correct, rather than come up with a solution.
posted by Nevin at 8:43 AM on October 19, 2015 [2 favorites]

Best answer: I'm a woman programmer who's worked at small software startups, and I would not take Nevin's original route. The CEO does not care who does the task or even, likely, how well it is done. They do not care whether the distribution of work is fair to you. They should, because you are a valuable asset to the company, but I can nearly guarantee you they don't--they care about whether the product ships and if it can pull in and retain customers. Putting this (as others have noted, non-dire) conflict on their no doubt extremely full plate will not win you any goodwill from them. Casting it as an issue of team productivity, as Andrhia suggests, is definitely the way to go.
posted by kelseyq at 8:47 AM on October 19, 2015 [8 favorites]

Best answer: I agree with those who say you should discuss it as a process improvement. Bring it up in your sprint meeting and/or if you have any kind of retrospective (where you talk about the process). Ask if someone deliberately assigned the ticket to your coworker - it may be that if you were working remotely there was some in-office discussion about how the ticket needed to be finished by 4PM that day or something that you missed out on. It may have appeared to be a dead ticket if you'd been working on it for a few days without posting any updates. Ask about how to communicate that you're making progress, and ask to be notified when someone else picks up a ticket that's assigned to you.

I'm a female, non-CS-degree developer in a small B2B software company that shoots for Agile but where the team doesn't communicate quite as effectively as it should. The kind of thing you describe happens to me fairly routinely (I think it happens to others on my team as well) and it drives me crazy, but with us at least it's not malicious and it's mostly not even the patriarchy; it's mostly just disorganization and shifting priorities.
posted by mskyle at 9:06 AM on October 19, 2015 [3 favorites]

If he assigned himself the ticket before doing the work, you presumably got notified at that point - and that was the point to bring it up. If that happened and you continued to work on it with the ticket assigned to him, I'm afraid you probably did the wrong thing. (Maybe someone asked him to pick it up? Maybe he saw it and just figured he was in that area of code, he might as well quickly fix this at the same time?)

If he did the work and THEN assigned the ticket to himself to resolve, that's an issue to raise because it breaks workflow; if everyone did that the system would fall apart. Make a note, raise it in a standup or whatever, even if he's not present.

If I were you I'd stop working on it, leave your code in a feature branch, move onto something else. The company doesn't really care who writes the code, if this person is good enough to keep their job then their code is considered adequate.

You've raised possible *ism issues, I'm deliberately disregarding that because we don't really know. That's a separate thing you may or may not want to track and document with this person and bring up only when there's bulletproof evidence. The issue to solve in this case is a workflow one, some people suck at communication, maybe it's just that.
posted by dickasso at 9:44 AM on October 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

In the future, don't use "do you mind my asking" in conversations, written or otherwise. It is passive aggressive and will undermine your attempts to assert yourself to dumbass male coworkers.
posted by Hermione Granger at 9:49 AM on October 19, 2015 [5 favorites]

Response by poster: Thanks, AskMe! Using your scripts, I was able to raise the issue with a cool head. It was entirely a misunderstanding, with some of the fault on my part, no less. Hanlon's Razor. It's easy for me to get panicked about social interactions, and it's helpful to have a dose of reality here.
posted by dee lee at 2:16 PM on October 19, 2015 [6 favorites]