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I'm working as an offshore Senior Oracle ERP Developer with a BPO Company and have a Onshore Manager ("MM"). I've been working here for over two years now and one thing I noticed from the beginning was the lack of IT standards in terms of Service Management, coding standards and best practices. This causes us a lot of issues, re-work and conflicts. Even MM, my direct manager, does not adhere to the rules.

During one of our screen-sharing sessions, he even modified and compiled code in directly into production. Usual IT Policies state that only Database Administrators should compile code into Production if there's an approved Change Request. I mentioned this to him but he said he has the Database priviledge and he knows what he's doing.

To cite some more examples:

  1. During another screen-sharing session, he wanted me to put a COMMIT inside my Stored Procedure, but this is considered bad practice. Despite my protests and citing some cases where this can be catastrophoc, he insisted on putting the COMMIT and I was left with no choice but to do it. When the procedure ran the next day, it failed and the updated records couldn't be recovered. We had to get data from a backup and re-create the table.

  2. During yet another screen-sharing session, he wanted me to exclude a certain Payroll ID from a query. I tried putting a Sub-Query to avoid Hard-Coding the ID but he insisted that I should just put "Payroll_ID <> 31" because he knew 31 was the Payroll_ID. Despite my numerous protests, he insisted and I had no choice but to do what he wants once again.

  3. The third scenario is similar to the second scenario above but the only difference is I told him No:

Me: "MM, I'm sorry but i really have to disagree with you here. I will not hard-code the ID as I already mentioned to you that this is not the best practice and may lead to issues. "

MM: "Best practices are not true, its based off books and concepts. I have 30+ years of experience in this field, so don't tell me about best practices."

So yet again, I was left with no choice but to adhere to what he wanted.

  1. He does not create documented specification and changes its requirement literally before the actual deployment of a completely developed and tested code.

I've even given him demonstrations and suggestions on how best practices will positively impact our work but he turns a blind eye on it.

Do I keep trying to push for him to adhere to Standard Practices and IT policies, or should I just report him to Higher Management?

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    He's doing this in such a way that your name is under all the commits/changes? – Erik Mar 21 '18 at 20:54
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    @Erik I believe he's using a super-user account like SYSDBA or DBA, not under his own User. –  Mar 21 '18 at 21:01
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    " are there other ways I can convince him to adhere to Standard Practices not to violate IT policies?" Short answer: no. Long answer: no. – Conor Mancone Mar 21 '18 at 21:05
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    This is the single most common question on this site. "Surprisingly, software development is a shambles." It has been discussed so often there's nothing more to say. – Fattie Mar 21 '18 at 23:18
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    Now would be a good time to start making sure all these requests from "MM" are emailed to you instead of just verbal requests. You're going to want a paper trail if any of these changes ever come back to bite the company in the you-know-where, and thus you by extension. – Diana Tortolini Mar 22 '18 at 00:35
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    Chaos is a ladder. – Pete B. Mar 22 '18 at 16:15
  • Who is ID 31? Could this be some embezzlement going on? – Loren Pechtel Dec 10 '20 at 04:04

2 Answers2

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It is almost impossible to change any boss' behaviour.

It is more impossible to change corporate culture unless you are relatively highly placed and/or have buy-in from others who are relatively highly placed.

Your only real option is to look for another job at a place where their culture fits your own outlook, and keep your head down until you move.

HorusKol
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The only way you are going to convince someone this bull-nosed is to prove your way is better through example. I suggest using high-visible production incidents, or new feature requests that are difficult to implement because of the lack of standards. Throw these in his face (nicely, not with a see-I-told-you-so attitude) and let him argue with cold hard facts.

For example, if he's deploying directly to production, does this ever bring something down and make for angry clients/executives at your company? You need to professionally communicate the lack of standards are causing these problems, and suggest your approach to fix it. If he will have nothing of it, I think you might just want to go over his head on this one, though don't be surprised if that backfires on you.

As a last recourse, you switch jobs, but that wasn't really what you were asking.

Jay
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