Find out my 'teammate' is taking off for 10 days 5 hours before he leaves. 1

[Jacque]

I'm fairly new to the organization and was teamed up with a guy who is not strong on communication normally but who has really pushed that to the limit as of late. It's a team of two. I'm sitting in our weekly team meeting only to find out that my teammate is taking 10 days off and I have 5 hours to learn how to re-run failed ETL jobs and other miscellaneous datawarehouse issues. Those are not what I was hired for and have very little experience in those areas. If I hadn't pushed him those last 5 hours, I don't even think he would have thought to train me on anything. Worse yet, he's just an 'ok' teacher. He promised me, and my boss, that he would babysit the ETL processes remotely so that he could catch errors, spot failures and rerun the jobs so that I wouldn't be overwhelmed. I was pissed at both him and my boss for not communicating this time off and it's not my business as to why he wanted/needed the time off, but some advanced notice of taking the time off would have been helpful. I just need to prepare for it. My boss said, it's not you, it's just his way. Great...that's so helpful...NOT!.

Day 1, jobs are failing bigtime and I go to find out that I wasn't set up with administrator priviledges on the server so I can't really do anything. So I tell my boss this and ask for admin priviledges but they haven't been granted yet.

Day 6, I've been stressing out with all of the failures and bug requests that I'm getting that I can't do anything about. I have been trying to research the errors to help my teammate fix the problems and sending him anything - a link, a suggestion, whatever, that I think might be helpful. I've offered to do anything that might help give him more time to fix the problems but I get no response either by email or IM.

This morning I see that he's active on our IM site, send him a 'good morning' IM, nothing else, just 'good morning' and he immediately shuts down his IM. That made it very clear to me that I have no team...

I really like this company, my boss and my coworkers but this situation just sucks. I've spoke to the boss and he said it's just his (my coworkers) way...well that's just not good enough. My boss can make him respond because he's the boss, but that doesn't help me. I like my coworker as a person but as a teammate - he sucks!

Any suggestions?

 

[Jacque]

I don't know how or why he's been able to get away with his pissy attitude, poor communication skills AND keep his job.
I'm really hoping you're right about the flushing.
I'm not sure if he's related to anyone, I'll check around because I've wondered about that myself.

He's admins the data warehouse, creates cubes, universes, pretty much anything database/data warehouse related. He's supposedly very good at it and knowledgeable, unfortunately you couldn't prove it by me.

Woohoo, look at the time, my day is done and I'm ready for my drink.
Cheers and thanks for all of the feedback.
Jacque

 

[goombawaho]

Please don't turn to alcohol for your problems and don't you dare forget to report back especially if something juicy happens, like the dude gets canned. Ahh the days of having problems with coworkers, such fond memories........ Now I'm forever alone. Not sure which is better/worse.

 

[maybeimaleo]

This was an interesting read. Jacque, if you out there still, what happened?

 

[Jacque]

Hi All,
Latest update: A weekly job that had been consistently failing and had customers complaining, was supposed to be reworked and tested by my coworker. After he finished testing, he let me and the boss know that he thought the issue was fixed. He was supposed to monitor this job scheduled for the weekend and if successful, I was to let the customers know that we had fixed it and it was successful. So my coworker put out an email saying that it was successful, I checked the log and it said it was successful but my gut said to double check and when I did, I found out that while the job ran successfully, the code was 'transforming' every different project to one single project. Thankfully I checked the data before notifying the customer based solely on the fact that he job said success and because at the moment, I'm the person that the customers contact with data issues and hopefully, trust to provide them with accurate information. I told the boss about the project issue and put out an email to my coworker and boss that the job still wasn't correct. It turned out to be a copy and paste error - wouldn't you think to validate this???? After that was fixed and the data reloaded, I checked the data and notified the customers who were happy. So the next week, when I checked this job again, same issue although this time it split the data between two projects, notified the boss and coworker again and it got 'fixed' again. I wonder how many projects it'll be next week....hmmmmm.

I still have to tell him when I see job failures, job cancellations, remind him to rerun jobs, ask him to update me with any jobs run manually since they don't get logged in msdb and ask for updates of open/unresolved issues. He had told me that he received daily emails of job failures but I looked and saw that he didn't have email settings set up for any jobs, I did tell the boss about this because both he and I were under the impression that this was SOP for dba's.

I'm still putting out the daily emails which is an annoyance but at least now, everyone is aware of how shaky our ETL process is and it's putting my coworker in the hot seat in our weekly meetings. Every time we have a 'good' day, which is a day with relatively few failures, there's always the next day with more failures.

We added a new person who is also the 'team' lead, he's a take charge type. He and I get along very well and I welcome his leadership. The first thing he did was sit with both of us separately and discuss what we were doing and any issues we had. He allowed me to vent about the situation above and he asked for my thoughts on improving the situation, I gave him my thoughts and some suggestions. He's also knowledgeable about ETL, he's added the true back-up capabilities that we needed, so I'm feeling much better about that. I can see that my lead and coworker butt heads but I'm staying out of that. I watch and enjoy, but stay out of the fray.

I'm finally getting to do more of my own work which makes me happy since I like what I do. Also, my boss is very appreciative of the fact that I'm good with the customers, I'm willing to learn new skills and I've been requested by a new internal team which will give me more visibility.

So while it's been a tough road, in the end I'm getting back to where I want to be (even if I still have to put out that pita email).
pita = pain in the a$$.

Jacque

 

[maybeimaleo]

Good news! I am glad that you are CC'ing the boss on everything that is happening and not constantly complaining.

Sure, the stress of the situation is bad but if you take the "longview" of it you will see that you are not being blamed for the situation.

Keep up the good work and you will be rewarded with less stress when the non-coworker is gone!

 

[goombawaho]

Maybe new team lead can help you dump the your coworker in the ditch...................... But seriously, have the new guy help you to document the failures of the turd so that it's not JUST YOU looking like a whining/reporting rat. Maybe the guy will get flushed out yet.

 

[Jacque]

The team lead (new guy) was just new to our team, he was an internal transfer, so he already knew my coworker but didn't know this side of him. It's been quite the rude awakening for him. He is keeping track of the issues as well so it's not just me anymore.

Happy Friday everyone!
Jacque

 

[Jacque]

Latest Update.....
Guess who decided to leave the company????? The dreaded coworker . According to the boss in his announcement in our weekly department meeting, the coworker had been discussing leaving the company to start his own company for about a year. Some people knew, but of course, I was not one of those in the know. All I can say is good bye , good luck, and good riddance .

I can't believe that he thinks he can start a company with his communication skills or lack thereof, no clients are going to put up with his crap. But it means that I won't have to put up with it anymore, so Woo Hoo!

It sounds like our lead is going to take over a lot of his duties and maybe I'll get to learn some new skills. So all in all, I'll miss his sense of humor but not much else.

I just wanted to tell you guys how much I appreciate your comments and suggestions. Thanks everyone!

 

[maybeimaleo]

Great news! Whatever the ex-co-worker does now is irrelevant, he is out of your life! Good for you and good luck!

 

[goombawaho]

Hopefully he won't boomerang back to your company after he fails at his own venture, not to make you paranoid or anything. It's good news for now though for sure.