For a couple of days, we were working together. Remember when the organisation asked me to become lead developer for the career advice project? That’s what happened and for the days following, I endeavoured to assess my coworkers abilities.
I knew that they had some deficits, but looking at the total work done by 2-3 people over the course of a year and a half, it’s hard to tell who can or can not do what. To get a better idea of that, I cut out very small tasks and gave them to individual developers.
The results of that experiment were sobering, to say the least. One of the web developers, with a claimed experience of 5+ years, struggled with basic CSS selectors. That’s like a seasoned chef having a hard time telling onions and shallots apart.
After a few days it became apparent that I’d spend more time preparing, explaining and reviewing the others’ work, than it would to take care of it myself.
That discovery, together with an already unhappy board, concluded things. The locals are out of the main project.
I can understand the decision. It makes total sense. After a month and a half the project has progressed further than in a year and a half previously.
Still, it leaves me somewhat gloomy. I wanted to help build up local developers. Not push them out of their contracts.
