How to deal with the other team that handballs their own responsibilities
Posted by CaseOfInsanity@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 5 comments
So we have two main development teams.
Team A under my boss Andy. Team B under another boss Ben.
Boss B and their direct reports have a history of handballing every single prod incident support to my boss Andy and me mostly.
Even though Team B is supposed to handle production support, when I ask their tech lead to handle a new ticket related to the incident I had to solve after hours,
the tech lead gets very defensive and says it's none of his responsibility.
Boss Ben is also very evasive when it comes to any responsibilities that are supposed to be shared such as after hour on call support.
Today at group lunch, Boss Ben openly said he's taking leave during christmas so that the important release going out during his absence will be someone else's responsibility to support after hours.
I feel no sense of camaradrie with Team B and Boss Ben since they have zero care about how much more work they make me do by slacking off.
It makes me want to quit my job even though I love working with my boss Andy who supported me and had my back all those years.
Is there any point in trying to build relationships with Team B and boss Ben so that they become more willing to do their share of responsibilities like oncall and enforcing technical discipline among developers?
Or is my intuition right in that I should jump ship for my own sanity.
(This is on top of the fact that my company database will collapse within 5 years and my boss Andy confirmed that it will be an uphill battle to convince the upper management to do something about it in advance)
Foreign_Addition2844@reddit
Let's assume Ben and his Team are not paid extra, have not gotten raises to keep up with inflation and did not get a bonus the past year.
Are you paid extra to do extra work and take up the extra responsibility and worry? Do you get bonuses/raises for picking up their slack?
No-Economics-8239@reddit
What it sounds like you are asking is how to fix disfunctional management. You are one company. You have a single bottom line and CEO. If they choose to run it as competing fifedoms because they believe that is more productive than cooperation, that is a choice they can make. Having a different opinion doesn't mean you are right or can convince anyone else you are.
In this type of dueling management situation, if I can't count on my manager from protecting me from what direction downhill lays and staying out of the blast radius from excessive drama or conflicting responsibility, I do my best to extricate myself from the nonsense.
At the least, I work to refine and get in writing where my responsibilities are so I can have some degree of boundary control. At best, I try and build relationships both vertically and horizontally. Recruit allies and share stories about what you are all seeing and any obstacles or points of contention. Try and keep the narrative around company objectives and priorities rather than team or individual goals. Work to build unity and measure accomplishments together rather than having individuals claim them for themselves and their teams.
Bottom line, my goal is to always cover your own ass as best you can and decide how much you can afford to work on improving things versus an exit strategy.
throwaway_0x90@reddit
Honestly, I'd report this to Boss-Ben's manager.
bluemage-loves-tacos@reddit
Don't do the release. Cite Boss Ben being on leave, and his support being a hard requirement for the release to go ahead as he needs to provide support. Do not budge on it. He'll either need to rearrange his leave, annoy his own team to name support people, or the release will go out in the new year when he returns.
Your boss and his boss have a boss as well. Loop them into these issues you're having. Document tickets that they refuse to do. If there's a question of responsibility, get it written down, and signed off. Publish the number of support tickets your team are picking up for them. In other words, make it transparant they're halting progress on your teams responsibilites.
rwilcox@reddit
Document your history of collaboration, file it in a drawer, and then stop doing work that Team B should be doing / is getting prickly that you’re doing.
When (say during an incident report) it’s obvious that they dropped the ball, they will of course look around the role for a person to blame (you!) - that’s when your documented history of collaboration attempts come in handy.