Hey! this is Overpass Insights my name is Eric and I make apps now today I want to talk about
The Toxic Developer
all right! so it's been a while since I've done a video I have just been off my game lately
I apologize for that I'm trying to get my mojo back and all that kind of stuff you know like you do
today I want to talk a little bit about toxic developers I mean we talk a lot in the past and
when you're in conversations with people you talk about toxic work environments toxic relationships
toxic boyfriends toxic girlfriends all that kind of stuff but sometimes you can have
toxic developers and if you've ever worked in a
development environment work with other developers
or even hired a developer you kind of know what this is like and when I say toxic I don't just
mean bad I don't mean incompetent I don't mean they don't quite know what they're doing I mean
they're just nasty they make life miserable for you
right and you know you probably experienced
this yourself but I want to give you some of my opinions and some things I've experienced
in the past with people with software developers I would consider toxic right and I'm in both as
someone who hires developers and as someone who's
worked with other developers I'm lucky at the
moment because the people I have to say this up front just case anybody's I work with watches is
i'm really lucky with the people i'm working with right now i'm working with a you know
doing a few contracts here and there and working with some really good developers which is just
nice but when I was you know starting to come up you know just you know starting off working
indifferent teams and stuff like that, there's a lot of experiences which weren't great like for me
an excellent developer is someone who will sit there and work with you on the code if they don't
like your code if they don't agree with your code they'll just say hey! you know what you could try
it this way or this is the way I do it this is whatever but never like a this sucks this is bad
that's usually what it is like okay this is one of the things, there is a special kind of arrogance
that is reserved for a senior software developer like more than they're like they're arrogant
to the people that are hiring them they're arrogant to the other developers they're like
they want to build themselves up by knocking everyone down right there's there was a
guy I was okay first let's talk about other developers, it's not necessarily senior software
developers, sometimes it's just somebody who sees
you as a threat like as a contractor especially
you come into some place you're just working on a project you're trying to do the best thing
you know your whole thing was we just want the project to do well right I had this one guy who
like it was this passive-aggressive thing where I didn't realize it at first because it was really
it was okay to me like you know day to day but he was just sort of whispering behind my
back about how my code sucked right and it was really this was like 10 years ago 10 15 years
ago something like that i think it was like 15 years ago it really was the case where he started
leaving sarcastic comments in the code like you should do it this way, yeah you know, and if you
if like actually swearing at me in the code it was like the kind of thing where I just hated going in
right luckily it was just kind of he was just this kind of guy he was a nasty guy he was genuinely
disliked by everybody you know the kind of guy
you won't go to lunch with me because you know that
someone's gonna be spitting in his food in the kitchen because he's just that abrasive right he
was somebody i hated working with and eventually everyone got hated hated working with him and he
ended up having to go right which was good other time you're in situations where you're working
with a developer who's just nasty and awful and you know and people want to get rid of them but
they're trapped right he's the only one who knows the code right I don't know if you guys have ever
experienced this before oh god we really hate this guy but you know if we get rid of him
who's gonna look after the code right and it's like usually and then usually this guy will have
some sort of superiority because he's the only one
who knows how it works you know they need me they
need me here right which goes to the other side when you're hiring somebody right like I said I've
hired a lot of developers a lot of times a lot of times it doesn't work out but usually if it's
something like they're inexperienced like an experience, I could work with arrogant
not so much like like an undeserved arrogance is something that I just can't stand you know
like I do it all the right way there's no bugs in my code right every time somebody brings up
a thing Eric there might be a bug in your code okay let's have a look right as always let's
have a look never like nope nope I am the best software developer that's ever walked the earth
right, the toxic developers that I've worked with are the ones that made me just dread going into
work made me dread the projects I loved working on made me think you know not so much doubt
myself but think god do I really want to work with people like this maybe I just want to work
on myself maybe I just want to be a lone developer and the thing about being a loan developer is
you just don't get better right you don't get like that's not necessarily true you can get better but
you have to like you have to experience other people's code you have to like either work on
open-source projects or work on other projects with other developers review other people's code
that's how we get better otherwise we get into the same pitfalls and everything like that working in
a team like okay so if you're a developer who's never not worked in a team you need to
you know learn to be self-sufficient and work on your own right there's so much you learn when you
have to do everything yourself on the other side if you're somebody who's always worked by yourself
and never worked in the team you need to have that experience too right just working with other
developers how they do things why they do things the way they do do they have a methodology you
know you know why do you know because otherwise
you just get into the trap of I just do the same
thing again and again and again and sometimes it's nice to have that person to challenge you
I know I'm kind of rambling on that's kind of what the channel is rambling on about stuff but that's
kind of what i think about a toxic developer someone who's really arrogant doesn't want to
learn anything and is always right and he's always right because he always puts everybody else down
right somebody comes into a project and the first thing he does is bad mouth everybody else's code
because he's so awesome right well let me let me
know what you guys think have you guys ever worked
with a developer you thought was toxic and if so let me know why because I'd really be interested
to know this right for me it's arrogance like it's the ego, the ego and never wanted to admit
that bug is theirs right so anyway that's it for today I hope you guys having a great
day I hope you have a great week that's stay healthy stay safe I'll talk to you again next time