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Over the last few weeks, I've containerised the last of our "legacy" stacks, put together a working proof of concept in a mixture of DynamoDB and K8s (i.e. no servers to maintain directly), passing all our integration tests for said stack, and performed a full cost analysis with current & predicted traffic to demonstrate long term server costs can be less than half of what they are now on standard pricing (even less with reserved pricing). Documented all the above, pulled in the relevant higher ups to discuss further resources moving forward, etc. That as well as dealing with the normal day to day crud of batting the support department out the way (no, the reason Bob's API call isn't working is because he's using his password as the API key, that's not a bug, etc. etc.) and telling the sales department that no, we can't bolt a feature on by tomorrow that lets users log in via facial recognition, and that'd be a stupid idea anyway. Oh, and tracking down / fixing a particularly nasty but weird occasional bug we were getting (race hazards, gotta love 'em.)

Pretty pleased with that work, but hey, that's just my normal job - I enjoy it, and I like to think I do good work.

In the same timeframe, the other senior dev & de-facto lead when I'm not around, has... "researched" a single other authentication API we were considering using, and come to the conclusion that he doesn't want to use it, as it's a bit tricky. Meanwhile passed all the support stuff and dev stuff onto others, as he's been very busy with the above.

His full research amounts to a paragraph which, in summary, says "I'm not sure about this OAuth thing they mention."

Ok, fine, he works slowly, but whatever, not my problem. Recently however, I learn that he's paid *more than I am*. I mean... I'm not paid poorly, if anything rather above market rate for the area, so it's not like I could easily find more money elsewhere - but damn, that's galling all the same.

Comments
  • 2
    Feel ya, story of my life. I produce around 350 pages of documentation annually on "how to use shit I wrote," yet it seems like my position is always the most tenuous. Being good at what you do will never get you farther than being good at politics. You're either too essential to promote, or feared because you could personally replace entire teams.

    Weak leadership will only raise up people who can't challenge their position and authority.
  • 1
    @SortOfTested can definitely relate...

    I only add that nobody ever reads the <put number here> pages of documentation I wrote coming to me with silly question/tickets which usually are answered with ‘it is documented on page x’...
  • 1
    People finally need to understand that salary is not based on merit (only).
    Sure, you need to perform, but then you also need to ask for a raise every year. Why would they give you more if you don’t ask for it?
  • 0
    @SortOfTested Oh, absolutely. I'm better at politics than I was, but it's never been something that's interested me, so I've not put much effort into it. Guess that shows...!
  • 0
    @sawmurai I've asked for it and got a raise (nearly) every year. Not a bad one either.

    Somehow though this guy has still ended up with more for doing...sod all.
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