Hi, my name is not convexer and this is my garbage site. I created this site
because I wanted a place where I could be my full & terrible self without
worrying too hard about making a positive impression.
Topics of interest include personal shit, gender politics, regular politics,
and the modern workplace. I don’t really proofread my posts, so let me know if
I say anything that’s just wrong.
“If I have peed farther, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
:
Narcissist in the workplace
I have a worst enemy at work. Thankfully he (it’s always a he) is on a distant
team and we never really have to work together. We became enemies a few weeks
after he was hired, when he was given a chunk of my code to read just to familiarize
himself with what we do, and took it upon himself to call a meeting with me and
my various bosses to grill me on a bunch of difficult technical aspects and criticize
the notes I’d made for myself as “imprecisely phrased.” I held my own, but it
was a waste of time and a humiliating experience.
Lo and behold, turns out he has encountered a similar problem in his own work
and managed to create a solution using a different technical approach than I did
which works pretty well! That doesn’t surprise me; my implementation was hamstrung
by a bunch of client restrictions that prevented it from being its best self,
and he had the benefit of my code to see that these limitations were a bigger
deal than you might guess.
The problem is that now someone (not knowing the history) wants to facilitate
an “introduction” between me and this guy, and I need a subtle way to back out
of this meeting that doesn’t require going to war. I have nothing to gain from
talking to him: his technical approach is not new to me, it’s just different from
the one I chose, so it’s not like I would learn anything that would help me in
my career.
