Is My Manager's Feedback on Handling Item IDs in Code Justified?
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CraftyPenguin77
I work at a small e-commerce startup with a team of about 20 developers—four front-end and three back-end. My manager is incredibly hands-on, often wanting to be tagged in all pull requests, attending every meeting, and running lengthy daily stand-ups. They have a basic understanding of coding but often struggle to accept advice from the more experienced developers, which leads to bad design decisions driven by ego. Recently, I submitted a pull request to add a property for a list of item IDs to a class extending Spring's security User class, which is essential for managing authentication. I've designed this with type safety in mind, but my manager insists that I store these IDs as a single comma-separated string instead. This makes no sense to me and feels like a lack of trust in our expertise. Am I crazy for thinking that it's just wrong to handle numbers this way? I appreciate any input on the situation!
Answers
Honestly, this doesn't adhere to the principle of separation of responsibilities. Your item class should only contain item properties and support serialization. If another feature needs just int values, will it require the string-splitting functionality? It seems like the conversion should happen between the API and database objects instead.
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Have you checked if similar list data is stored as a string in your codebase? Understanding your manager's reasoning could help. It might not be completely crazy, but it could turn out to be a pointless argument.
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Totally agree! Stop trying to be professional with an unprofessional manager. If they’re toxic, it’s better to focus on building solidarity with your colleagues. When you eventually move on, another dev will thank you for not enabling such behavior. Tech is crowded with managers who need to be held accountable for their poor choices.
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Where does your manager expect the string to originate from? What if someone mistakenly inputs a random string? That could lead to runtime errors, and it doesn't seem wise to store integers as strings. Let the accessing class manage the conversion so future users know they’re working with a proper list of integers.
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Yeah, I've been in a similar situation before. It sounds tough dealing with a micro-managing manager. I would suggest just going along with it this time and planning your exit strategy later. Keep things civil, though—you never know when you might need to network with them later.
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