Hey, what’s up, John Sonmez from simpleprogrammer.com.
I got a question about passive aggressive coworkers annoying me.
This ought to be good here.
This question is from—let’s see, I don’t have a name on this one, but he says, “Hi
John, I don’t want to bore you with details, but long story short: I was working on an
app at my company, that was taken over by another pair of programmers.
I was moved to another project, to help another senior dev.
Since then, every now and then, they will send me emails with obvious questions *that
point out my errors.* This would be of no concern to me, if it were one-to-one emails,
but they keep CC’ing management.
If I didn’t know any better, it would seem like they’re trying to make me look incompetent.
Whenever I see an error in another person’s code, I will directly email them one to one,
for clarification.
It seems to me this is proper etiquette, maybe they are totally oblivious because of a culture
barrier.
What did you do with this situation?
Am I over reacting?
How do I communicate that the emails are not cool without losing my cool?
Thanks for your help.
Your show is great, the life videos too, not just the software videos.”
This is kind of a difficult situation.
My best advice here is to let them continue what they’re doing and respond as graciously
as possible thanking them for pointing out the error, explain to them how you would resolve
it or how you would fix this in the future and how, “Oh yes, that was a silly error
that I made, thank you so much for pointing that out, especially such an obvious error
that I made.”
Don’t try to defend yourself.
Don’t try to justify it.
Just thank them for it.
Thank them for how much they care about the code that you wrote and for bringing this
to your attention.
That’s what you should reply, something like that to all these.
Management is going to get ticked off when they keep on sending these emails because
it’s going to annoy them.
Right now what they’re doing is, you know, you’re going to give them a rope and they’re
going to hang themselves because if they keep doing this it’s not going to look bad on
you.
The only way it’s going to look bad on you is if you retaliate, you lose your cool or
you try to defend yourself in this situation.
It will be very obvious.
See, what you want to do in this situation is you want to make it very obvious what they’re
doing without you doing anything.
This is sort of like being a—harkens back to the days of being a courtesan in a royal
court.
You’ve got to put the—have the iron hand wrapped in the velvet glove.
You can’t come out and directly attack your opponents in this case because it’s going
to make you look back and that’s what they want you to do.
But if they continue doing this, and you do nothing except for thank them and be gracious
to them, what’s going to happen is management is not stupid or as stupid as they may seem.
They’re going to pick up on this.
They’re going to say, “Hey look, it looks like these 2 guys they’re picking on this
guy and trying to make him look incompetent.”
When they pick up on that that’s going to be—they’ll get what they deserve, those
guys probably, right?
They’ll get taken care of.
They’re going to cause more problems for themselves than you.
If you react and you respond and you come back and you attack them and you defend yourself
then you’re going to fall right into their trap.
Don’t fall into their trap.
Give them the rope.
Let them hang themselves.
That’s your counter move in this situation.
The other thing you could do is try and disarm a situation.
I don’t mean to be nasty and say that you need to let them hang themselves.
Definitely respond graciously to their emails, but be sincere about it and actually go over
and talk to them.
Just say, “Hey look, I really appreciate you giving me feedback on the code that I
wrote.
I’m not a perfect person.
I make mistakes.
I’m learning.
I definitely have errors in my code so I really appreciate that.
Hey, could I buy you lunch?
Could I take you out to lunch and we could discuss—maybe you have some ideas since
you’re looking at this code.
I’m always curious to get your feedback, get someone’s feedback on my code, on what
I wrote.
It’s not perfect and you’re a very experienced person.
Obviously, you’ve picked up on a lot of errors.
I would like to know just in general what you think about my coding and where I could
improve.
I would really appreciate it if you’d help me and give me that advice.”
Now you’ll be recruiting them as an ally.
It would be very hard for them to stab you in the back when you are essentially telling
them that you value their opinion.
When they’re doing this stuff they’re trying to prove they’re better than you.
You’ll create this weird dynamic where when they try to send this email and they try to
CC manager on this, your manager, and they want to attack you, they’re going to be
like, “Oh, this guy bought me lunch and he was sincerely interested in my opinion
and he thought I was a valuable developer, valuable enough to give my opinion and to
value that opinion.
Maybe I’ll just go over to his desk and tell him about it.
Or maybe it’s not even really a problem.
I’ll just delete this email.”
That’s a good way to handle that as well.
What you just don’t want to do is fall into the trap, don’t respond by attacking back.
Don’t try and get them.
If you’re going to let them hang themselves, hang themselves that’s fine.
Try to disarm the situation and try to be friends with them.
One of the greatest joys in life is taking an enemy and turning them into a friend.
One of the greatest friends you can ever have is a previous enemy.
I’ll tell you this: love and hate are on 2 sides of the same coin.
If someone is passionately hating you they can also passionately love you and be extremely
loyal to you.
Some of my best friends, some of my best fans here in Simple Programmer or this YouTube
channel are people that just hated my guts.
I reached out and recognized that they were crying out.
No one was paying attention to them and I honestly treated them like a human being and
addressed some of their concerns and now they became great fans.
See if you can do that.
That’s a high road, see if you can take the high road.
If you can’t take the high road, if it’s just not going to work, some people are toxic
and they’re just going to do what they’re going to do, let them hang themselves, just
don’t be part of it.
Don’t get trapped.
Don’t get sucked into that.
Anyway, I hope that helps you.
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Take care.