5 ms·

If you don't mind me saying this, one thing that gets overlooked often in situations like the one you explained is that the team is part of the system that need

If you don't mind me saying this, one thing that gets overlooked often in situations like the one you explained is that the team is part of the system that needs modernisation. In fact, the team needs to lead the modernisation effort. It needs updating before the rest of the system can be. From your explanation it sounds like you expected to find a modern and skilled team maintaining a legacy project. That is not at all so frequent. If the project is legacy, most often is because the team also is outdated. So, obviously you can just switch jobs. And if you're getting sick from it, then you should by all means leave this job. But then again, if what you actually want is to make this job work, then my suggestion is to: 1. Get the whole team together and evaluate their situation. Make a list of the skills the team is lacking and the knowledge updates needed. Make them participate in this so that, at the same time, you can evaluate their attitude towards the whole thing. 1.a. If the team does not want to update, then there's no successful path and I would suggest leaving. 1.b. If the team is receptive, then go ahead. 2. Meet with whoever needs to authorise it and get them to commit to providing both time and resources for re-training the team. You will need a plan, a timeline, and achievable goals. 3. Start as soon as you can. Focus first on basic infrastructure. Any tools, processes, skills, that are generic and widely applicable. Then go for more specific ones directly related to the project's technologies. The team may need some rearranging too, but try to keep this at minimum so that they can be confident that all of this is strictly related to a technology and skill update, and will not imply any sort of job insecurity or competition. You may have noticed that all of this is mostly people management. If this is not something you'd like to do, then the only option is leaving. The job you're in right now is clearly one of people managing and not so much a technological one -though is still requires knowing and choosing the technological goals to seek, obviously-. If you do follow, then who knows what will happen. But if things go well, you might expect to see some results in around 6 months or so, depending on how large/small the team and project are.

_override 15d ago
I didn't want to get into this in my original post, but this is definitely part of the problem. The development team needs modernization. We have a lot of excellent developers, but these developers have spent many years developing on a tech stack of PowerBuilder, COBOL, and SQL stored procedures. API development, testing, deployment, and maintenance are not anything that they have worked with before. Finally after months of me complaining, the management team has gotten the approval to hire one additional developer who has experience with API development. To be honest though, I am skeptical if one developer is going to change anything, and I can imagine that a lot of skilled developers won't be staying here long when they see that we don't really have the personnel in place to deliver on the vision that the management team has set. I definitely am not a people manager (nor do I want to be again, been there done that), but I can imagine that our engineering manager is in a tough place right now too. A lot of the development team are close to retirement age and he can't really push them too much due to the fear of them leaving and taking their years or decades of domain knowledge with them.
- genezeta 15d ago
  Ah, then I'd say this is definitely not a good job for you. I would suggest just leaving as soon as possible. I know it's hard and I know the current market is difficult, but do make a firm decision to, if not immediately, leave in a fixed time frame, say in two months or before the new year or something else but put a limit on it. Not only will that push you into doing it, but seeing a clear exit will probably help with your peace of mind.
- piva00 15d ago
  One good developer can start a shift but only if there's absolute buy-in from management (and you) to carve out the time the rest of the team needs to get up to speed. Since you say the current developers are also decent but otherwise inexperienced with the kind of work you expect there's a chance that with the right organisational changes and support (i.e.: allowing the experienced new developer to work more as a mentor than being responsible for deliveries right away) and given time those people could become more effective. The issue will land squarely on the engineering management though, they need to accept the current team is not up to par for the deliveries while not making them scared for their jobs (that would just make the current developers cynical, and doing whatever they can to claw back power before retirement). It's a long road ahead that requires a very competent engineering management team to pull off.

_override 15d ago

I didn't want to get into this in my original post, but this is definitely part of the problem. The development team needs modernization. We have a lot of excellent developers, but these developers have spent many years developing on a tech stack of PowerBuilder, COBOL, and SQL stored procedures. API development, testing, deployment, and maintenance are not anything that they have worked with before. Finally after months of me complaining, the management team has gotten the approval to hire one additional developer who has experience with API development. To be honest though, I am skeptical if one developer is going to change anything, and I can imagine that a lot of skilled developers won't be staying here long when they see that we don't really have the personnel in place to deliver on the vision that the management team has set. I definitely am not a people manager (nor do I want to be again, been there done that), but I can imagine that our engineering manager is in a tough place right now too. A lot of the development team are close to retirement age and he can't really push them too much due to the fear of them leaving and taking their years or decades of domain knowledge with them.

genezeta 15d ago
Ah, then I'd say this is definitely not a good job for you. I would suggest just leaving as soon as possible. I know it's hard and I know the current market is difficult, but do make a firm decision to, if not immediately, leave in a fixed time frame, say in two months or before the new year or something else but put a limit on it. Not only will that push you into doing it, but seeing a clear exit will probably help with your peace of mind.
piva00 15d ago
One good developer can start a shift but only if there's absolute buy-in from management (and you) to carve out the time the rest of the team needs to get up to speed. Since you say the current developers are also decent but otherwise inexperienced with the kind of work you expect there's a chance that with the right organisational changes and support (i.e.: allowing the experienced new developer to work more as a mentor than being responsible for deliveries right away) and given time those people could become more effective. The issue will land squarely on the engineering management though, they need to accept the current team is not up to par for the deliveries while not making them scared for their jobs (that would just make the current developers cynical, and doing whatever they can to claw back power before retirement). It's a long road ahead that requires a very competent engineering management team to pull off.