Question About Responsibility

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Hello everyone. I posted here last year when I was going through some very terrible times. I wound up getting divorced and landing a job in another state. I am a .net developer. At any rate, I started a few months ago and am on my first major project for them. Naturally, I want my code to shine and my work to be pristine.

However, when we deployed to test for our quality assurance folks to check out, there were countless numbers of configuration issues. Most related to a database difference between dev and test. Also, they handle session state differently on test (they use out of proc - SQL server to store session state). in dev, we used InProc. So, I had to mark some of my classes as serializable if they were stored in session.

Quality assurance was able to finally test the application. However, since this is an old school web forms application (with postbacks and the whole shebang), we wanted to modernize it and have it be more client side. All of my calls are async using XMLHttpRequests. I created public static methods decorated with the [WebMethod] attribute to expose them as web service methods (hacky until and if they decide to abstract that out to a WCF service)…

At any rate, not yesterday but the Friday before, my lead made a change to a stored procedure but only applied the change to a Visual Studio SQL project he and the DBAs are using. He alerted me that they might port his proc change over to test. So I made a note in my code to be aware of that possibility.

He was out all last week on vacation. So I was left to fend for myself not knowing a whole lot about things from a lead perspective.

Well, yesterday our testers got around to testing new features I put on the file share to be deployed to test (this has been on the file share since not yesterday but the Friday before). The code did not account for the possibility of his proc change because it wasn’t implemented in dev and he said it was a possibility that it might be ported over. He acted like it wasn’t a for sure thing.

So yesterday they got around to testing my application, and low and behold, it didn’t load. Our testers just reported it as a bug (as they should) but with little to no further information. Earlier in the week I uncovered a bug in which duplicate records may be returned in a certain circumstance. So I assumed (without knowing exactly what went wrong - exceptions and what have you), that it was related to that. So I deployed that code change.

In the meantime, my vp asked me what tweak I made and I explained that I thought it was pertaining to duplicate records. He simply replied that this project is going to give me (not him) nightmares.

I then recalled that there was a distinct possibility they updated that proc, but I can’t see procs on the test database. so I have to ask someone else to check them out for me, if they made that change my lead put in. If that was the case, then the problem would be solved. I sent a couple of emails out but didn’t get a reply.

Because of all the configuration issues from the start, and yesterday’s bug (which I think is essentially a config issue - they didn’t let me know that they ported his stuff over so I didn’t know to update my code to account for that), I feel like I am not making the best first impression.

So, with this long-winded story, I have a question for you guys and gals. How do I best handle this situation? I am expecting to hear back from someone Monday pertaining to whether or not they made an update to that proc, in which case I can just deploy my changes again since I went ahead and updated dev to reflect what I am pretty sure happened.

I already suffer from major depressive disorder, and I have an incessant need to impress and make others happy. When things keep blowing up because of things that may be out of my control, I feel like it is unjust and unfair that the blame seems to fall on me.

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Since it is your first major project, it makes sense you want to impart your skills and capabilities to them. To be honest, I feel like you have! While a few things have gone a little awry, you’ve also seemingly diagnosed the issues and filled in the blanks from the ups & downs communication-wise. And from what I can tell, you’re prepared to roll out anything additional should you need to!

Has there been blame at this point even? It seems more anticipatory from your narrative than something that has actually occurred from my interpretation of events. If it were me (and depending on the people/environment), I would likely mention that going forward certain updates and communications could be implemented to prevent these speed bumps (for everyone’s sake) in the future.

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Thanks for your reply. And you’re a moderator at that! Cool beans!

This has consumed me because I am a very good software developer and I am good at what I do. I have gotten nothing but praise from my team mates (except for the remote dev - she likes to argue with everything I say).

There has been no blame, and, after thinking about it, I don’t anticipate any. I think they view it as a team and not as an individual.

When I was fresh out of college, I started in QA, and I know how frustrating it can be to smoke test something and then it not work. You send it back to dev and they fix it and then you’re able to run your test scripts.

Overall, I’m doing pretty great on this project. I even converted the old school webforms into client-side javascript. so we are doing async calls to web services and bubbling that data up to the UI and populating the screen. All the behavior is client-side as well.

I did not show them I was stressed out, so all of this frustration and everything has just been anonymously through this site and amongst my facebook friends and family members. Tomorrow morning, I’m going to go in there like I usually do. I just need to be more confident, I think.

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More of a management-y/process-y note here but I think it’s a problem that you can’t see the stored procedures. Those should be version-controlled somewhere you can access, read-only at least. My personal opinion anyone in your company or at least project ought to be able to find and view any source code within the company or project at any time, but especially when they are working on other code that’s to interact with it. But anyway it sounds like you’re doing your part well here just don’t blame things too much on yourself when the going gets tough. it’s all just part of the ride.

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Yeah, that’s true. I agree with that. I’m definitely getting a ton of pressure on this project and it has brought out my anxiety and depression full-force. I wound up breaking down twice today. I swear I wouldn’t do that crap again. I went in the break room and cried a bit and an older lady consoled me and then later in the day I went outside and sat down on a bench, just to get some fresh air, and I wound up breaking down again and getting consoled by another chick.

Today, another lead and the other dev on the project came down super hard on me about something. And then there were normal issues - things our testers thought should be there but isn’t, an update to something, etc. Normal stuff.

The other dev is a pain in the butt. She’s always arguing with me (which that’s a dev thing - I understand that), making fun of my approaches to things, or being a smart arse about things. I feel blind-sided and overwhelmed. It’s hard to explain, but right now I’m crying, so yeah…fun times.