Okay, I’ll grant that my first impression might’ve been wrong.
> And there was no constructive way to address the situation where someone simply is not smart enough to learn their required tasks.
I think maybe there’s something constructive in just separating your assessment of someone’s present skills from your assessment of their person. Have you never found yourself in a position where you didn’t know enough to be proficient and faced a longer and harder climb to meet expectations (your own or external)? How much would it help you improve if you were designated not smart enough, full stop, no path forward?
> Beyond that, just because I can recognise that testing is inadequate, does not mean that I can guide how to do it.
> (Just because I can point when a builder puts a hammer through the glass, does not mean that I can fix the window myself.)
I’m sorry but here I have to call bullshit. You have more informed criteria as a dev about testing than a layperson about construction. You probably have enough familiarity with the system under test to do an adequate job testing it even if you’re not well versed in the broader role of dedicated testing. I’m not saying you were in a position to mentor the tester, or that it was your job to do so. But you were definitely in a position to make more constructive recommendations than blurting out that a person is inadequate.
If I might be more constructive myself, it sounds like you might benefit from becoming more familiar with the testing role you’re evaluating individual competency for. If nothing else it’ll make you a better dev. Maybe you and everyone else will be lucky and you’ll be a little more able to help your teammates succeed, and know how to fill in gaps so you can succeed too.
I've never been in a position where I lacked the ability to develop the skills that I needed to be proficient.
If I were ever that inadequate on a team project, I would leave of my own volition.
And you're using this incident as an example of why social skills don't matter....
Of course there is man. Nobody is smart or dumb, they are just curious or incurious. You could have pointed out what was lacking in their knowledge base, pointed to documentation, pointed to inadequacies in the process etc. Just shouting at someone's face that they are good enough was the worst way to tell this truth.
And there was no constructive way to address the situation where someone simply is not smart enough to learn their required tasks.
Beyond that, just because I can recognise that testing is inadequate, does not mean that I can guide how to do it.
(Just because I can point when a builder puts a hammer through the glass, does not mean that I can fix the window myself.)