I got "in trouble" at this one company for just doing my job. I walked onto the sales floor and asked a sales person if I can silently watch over their shoulder so I can learn about how the companies CRM was used. The sales manager felt I infringed on her team and complained to the lead programmer who in turn begrudgingly "warned" me not to do that ever again. I think I lasted like another 6 weeks there before putting in notice and leaving to a smaller company. All I wanted to do was identify ways to improve the crm, which was part of my job. But the team who made the software had no access to the team using the software
Once, I had to specify HMI of air traffic controllers for a simulation. The controllers have described their hmi in meetings, then I have sent them the document to review, then I went to an ATC center to watch controllers. I was amazed by the number and importance of differences between my reviewed document and reality. Many details that seem obvious for the final user may cause drastic changes for the developer.
> I walked onto the sales floor and asked a sales person if I can silently watch over their shoulder so I can learn about how the companies CRM was used
This is not how things work in big companies. You should have contacted you boss, discuss with him of the improvement suggestions and your plan, so that he may contact the sales boss, and present it to him, emphasizing the performance improvements that could be brought, and, after two of three long and boring meetings, start to schedule a volunteer program where you would monitor specific parts of someone's job. All of this will require weeks (or months) of political discussions, carefully crafted powerpoints, subtle emails that will attempt to balance political interests of each parties, and, if you are smart enough to put key managers ego on a pedestal, your project may succeed (and of course you're probably never going to be credited for that)
As good as your past intentions sound, if somebody I didn't know from another department just came and sat next to me to watch me work, without me knowing it would happen beforehand, I'd put in a complaint too.
Your behavior in that case will be less than ideal. It will be better to talk to your reportee and the individual and understand what's going on if you weren't in the loop. This could have easily been the birth of a strong partnership between sales and the dev team to understand how people both really use and demo the product.
Assume positive intent. This business of putting in complaints behind someone's back (bear in mind OP asked for permission!!!) is just childish
Something like this has never happened to me but I'll give you a less extreme example.
My manager explained the situation to me but it still doesn't make sense in hindsight.
There exists two companies in the US headquartered in two different cities. Some bankers buy both. Now the reason I bring it up is I wanted some fairly simple information about some configuration on one of the services that a team that came from the other company, based in a different city. First thing I try is message the person on Lync (imagine a shitty msn messenger). No response. I know you're online! I talked to my boss to see who else might be able to answer my question. He tried to get in touch with the other guy and cc'ed his boss. Radio silence.
A week later the other boss sends a forward. The other boss explains he had been on vacation for a week and didn't check his emails. The forward also has the answer from the other developer from a week prior.
We are not talking super secret missile launch codes. It is a fairly boring detail but the developer didn't hit reply all to the email, sending it only to his boss.
Exactly. The sales manager most likely perceived me as a threat. If I come in & automate her job she could be out of work. Like a bank teller afraid of being replaced by an ATM so they get in the engineer's way & cause drama.
Instead she could have politely introduced herself as the sales manager, asked what I was doing & offered to help, like write up a report of what the problems were. I would have thanked her & gone back to coding at my desk while I await her report. I didn't even know she existed, let alone intend to threaten her.
By the way the employee didnt complain. They were happy to have someone fixing their companies app. The sales manager was watching from afar with dissent. Plus I tried asking the programming manager about the app first, so he could follow company hierarchy. He was too busy playing video games on his PC & just shrugged his shoulders. My choices were basically slack off like him, snitch on him to the CEO, or go get the answer elsewhere. The latter seemed most appropriate.
He didn't do that. He asked permission to do it. It takes a particularly shitty mindset to respond to that by sneaking around behind someone's back and complaining to his boss.
The manager's response is the sort of thing that would lead to him "working for a different company", according to the doctrine set out in Musk's email.
