One of the mid-level managers on my project wanted me to show a new guy what I was doing on a big bug fix. So every morning I would call him up and check up on him. I would give him tasks to do. Then I would check back on him at the end of the day. My first assignment was for him to replicate the problem I was fixing.
You would think that this was an easy task. I did all the heavy lifting, mining the audits, and discovering the root case of the problem. I came up with an ironclad set of steps to recreate the problem. I turned the new guy loose on thse steps. And then ... he got nowhere.
New guy did not have a database schema. What? How the heck was he doing any work. I told him to call the lead DBA and get them to setup a schema. Next he did not have any database tools. So he got a copy of SQL Developer installed and configured. Then he did not have a working version of our application.
Wow. This is tough work. But it is all good. If it was too easy to step in and get settled with our system, they could hire any lackeys to do the job at a cheap price. Today the developer said the IDE was complaining that a C source file was missing. I had him check whether the Pro*C file was generating the C file. Nope.
There was a mismatch between his Pro*C code calls and the stored procedures in his database. Showed him how to get the source code of the stored procedures. He then compiled in the latest stored procs and still had the errors. Turns out he was using the wrong Clearcase view to obtain the Pro*C code. Killer. This guy is going to need to go a long way just to keep up, let alone add any value.
