Tell their manager to do their fucking job.
I say this as a tech manager
this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2024
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100% - elevate though not to their manager.
I often open up the discussion to a wider channel if me and a coworker can't compromise on a technical discussion and poll other engineers.
If it's not a technical discussion (I consider naming to be technical if it's "important" like a wide reaching functiona name) then I'll actually elevate to my manager - they'll consider it and vet it before elevating further which might involve talking to the dev or to the dev's manager.
If it's a real pattern and somebody is being an ass consistently you'll really want to go through your manager because it's likely that if you're locking horns that much someone may need to switch projects.
I worked with a high level senior like that. I found it easiest to just let him have his way. Eventually he was let go cause he spent most of his time arguing over trivial bullshit instead of actually working.
Yeah, if you don't really care either way, don't waste your time arguing. Eventually someone will notice he's wasting everyone's time and will be let go (or you'll find a better gig eventually).
Meeting agendas can help with this kind of thing.
If "spend 45 minutes on a variable name argument" isn't on the agenda, interrupt, say "that's not what we are here to discuss" and move to the next topic.
This is common enough to have a name in several industries. In SW Dev it's called 'bikeshedding'. If you have a name for it, it's easier to call out to your seniors and peers - and you should call this out and help the meeting move on to more useful matters.
I'd suggest informally discussing this with people around you - enough people that you (or someone else) can safely say "let's not get trapped in bikeshedding" in the meeting and getting immediate agreement.
Is he right? Naming things is hard, and often has long-term consequences for the maintainability of the code base.
I've been working twenty years on a project and can't count the number of times something has been called one thing everywhere but one place and because it's called something different in that one place, the brain has to reset while working with that one bit of code.
If I've already thoroughly exhausted reasoning and respectful dialogue, then I go to their manager.
@testeronious @cs_career_questions Imagine somebody in a non-tech role. What could you do if someone argued 45 minutes about which typeface to use for a financial report? There’s a job exclusively for dealing with this type of issue, called “management”. There doesn’t need to be a human manager involved for there to be mismanagement (been there myself!). For me, I found if you can get somebody - really, anybody - to do some management it helps a lot. Even just temporarily.
Make sure each of your PRs has one absurd variable name so they will just focus on renaming that one.
you can just end the call. you can say "goodbye" before you do.
however, i hope you're not naming all variables foobar1, foobar2, etc., because then he would be right 😆
Decide how much it matters to you, how much effort you want to invest in doing things your way. If it matters, talk to them and be honest with how you feel.
Either way sounds like an update-your-resume situation to me.
Depends on if you're management or not.
Step 1 is to create a meeting agenda.
Step 2 is when he starts hijacking some shit, enforce the agenda. "It looks like our time on this is up. Moving on..."
Step 3: report time spent to management. If he continues to waste meeting time, discipline until you fire them.
that's why they have style guides...
"Wontfix."