There's a time and a place for Leetness... and its not on your employer's time!

[MeesterTurner]

Hi,

Just wanted to put some feelers out on this subject, see what you think!!

I run a development department with 5 people, plus me, within the head office of a retailer. The way we've generally worked is basically I have a meeting with CEO about the next month's business priorities, and develop the systems accordingly.

We develop as quick as we can by keeping everything simple, so if it breaks, anyone on the team, including the less-knowledgable & newer staff, can have a stab at resolving issues. If WTF'y code is 1 and uber-object-orientated-for-breakfast is 10, we're generally a 5-7, and only getting more uber if we really have to.

However, I have a guy on our team (he's been with us a number of years), and recently he's trying to make mountains out of every single molehill. For example, simple bit of ASP & JS needs hosting on two websites, both on the same server that sit in our server room onsite (the project in question was a couple of drop-downs to work out the cost of a pre-selected item, the dropdowns to change size & colour).

My first thought - Easy! Include files, couple of virtual folders, change the CSS on the relevant site, and Bam! Working code. He wanted to go all out with XML API's containing an API key, the entire front end being just an XML client. I told him to find an easier way as we only had a very short timescale (like less than a week for this and a couple of other things). Starting the day after I had a 2-week vacation booked (fortunately or not as the case may be this time ), and came back to find the entire thing has thousands of lines of XML/API code across numerous classes across multiple websites (including one just to handle the API calls) to achieve what could be done in about a few dozen Javascript lines.

Apart from the obvious "missing deadlines" issues with his own performance, does anyone have problems with someone either getting bored and trying to make life more interesting (and more hassle), or just otherwise trying to show off with Best Practice or complex techniques "because I can"

[ua549]

That happens in every "technical" organization.
I've handled it by 1) establishing coding guidelines in writing and 2) making everyone codes to the standards in the established guidelines through the audit process.

Because you already instructed the person on how you wanted the work product coded and that instruction was not followed, I would have a disciplinary discussion with the non-compliant employee.

[TraCR]

I saw similar problem at my workplace.

That one person ignored the team leader. He was so "dedicated" that he was willing to stay after hours to re-write what was completed during the day, in the way he thought good.

The solution I saw is: The supervisor will consider the team leader’s evaluation when it comes to year-end performance grading.

Result: Not yet known if it will have good result or the person will find another place to work.