A junior developer working in a professional setup learned a valuable corporate lesson after attempting to fix a system bottleneck. In a social media post, the techie claimed that they had turned into the ‘team villain’ after accidentally bruising their senior’s ego by fixing the issue. The techie explained that there was a ‘massive legacy backend issue’ which was causing a delay in work.
To fix the problem, the techie spent a weekend looking into the database and managed to make things right. “I thought the team would be happy, but I accidentally hurt my senior’s ego. Instead of being happy that the issue was solved, his attitude completely changed,” the techie wrote. The senior, alongside others, formed a group against the techie and started questioning their code and its quality, whiclst escalating the issue to the manager. “I didn’t even care about getting credit, I just wanted to fix the broken system. But it feels like if you try to work fast, seniors look at you like a threat and try to trip you so they don’t look bad. Social media users highlighted that it was a common issue in any hierarchical, corporate setup. Some advised the techie to keep a low profile but never change the way they work. “This is very common lol. It still follows the layers and hierarchies from feudal times. If India were a meritocracy, we would have seen so much innovation. A third commented: “Sometimes it is better to show your talent only where it matters. Managers and beyond. So they’ll be insecure in such cases. Do not listen to them. Do not let any imaginary rules define how you should work.”
Because of experience and not due to intelligence, many people sitting at senior levels are just. Because you wanted to; that’s it, end of debate, you fixed that bug. A mid-level guy (5 years’ exp) was supposed to handle that area.
“They hold up all my PRs, nitpick on minor code quality issues in code reviews, and complained to the manager that I am “not a team player. Our manager is weak and just wants zero drama, so he blindly took their side, gave an award to one of them, and told me to ‘improve my communication,'” they said. I also got to learn it the hard way,” said one user, while another added: “India is not a meritocracy. A fourth said: “I know many people are gonna say one or the same thing; it’s how corporate is, don’t act more than your salary and everything.
