10 Things I Hate About You
I know there a few people on here that post and I was hoping to get some community input on this. Feel free to post anonymously. In league with this weeks Theme O' the Week (Dilberto™), what is one thing that really makes you despise coming in to work? Try to make it specific as possible. "I hate my boss" seems to general. More like...
More important tasks are ignored by my management in order to get "wins" so that they look good which doesn't help the long term goals of the department.
Drudgery
I don't think I have ever had such a lack of motivation in my entire life. I've reached a new low in my short(read: long) 26 years of life. Our development cycle has moved into a new phase of our Meeting Driven Development. We've now taken a completely reactionary approach at handling situations. We're in Fire Fighting mode. This is the absolute worse place a project can ever be in. What compounds the problem is that some people think this is a good thing, hand out tasks, and consider that they've done a good job.
hrm, back to the task of the hour.
Take it Offline!
So, every week we have this fairly large status meeting for our project. Lots of different people come to this, and sometimes the meeting can last long past an hour. In the beginning we actually discussed issues and got feedback from other people who may have a different piece of the puzzle to resolving a particular issue. It was somewhat useful, but generally extended the meeting way to long and often times long discussions would take place in which not everyone in the room was involved with (and dare I say not care about). Well, people sort of complained about this... rightfully so, and management decided to convert the meeting to very brief run downs on people's status on their current work load. Anything discussions that started to get too "in depth" are now squashed immediately as soon as someone says "Take it offline!" Now... I like keeping things from getting out of hand, but... WHO IN THE FUCK CAME UP WITH THAT STUPID ASS PHRASE?!? Take it offline? Wouldn't that mean that we were currently online? NO! Apparently not because you can be having a face to face discussion and you still need to take it offline? WTF! It makes no sense, and people who use the phrase are stupid. FUCK STUPID PEOPLE! And if you say "take it offline" fuck you too!
Encryption
You've seen the news reports before. Some graduate student takes home a copy of their database from work and leave the HDD in the car while he takes a piss at the gas station. Next you're making headline news that you just exposed 10 million social security IDs. I understand that not everyone has the same security needs. I also understand that data encryption is not the end all answer to what I'm about to complain about. But there are just some pieces of confidential data that you encrypt so that in case something unexpected happens...there's one more step between the important stuff and the abuse of that information.
I assumed that our SSNs were encrypted. Well I happened to be browsing the DB and found out there not. WTF? even in my little school projects I encrypted SSNs. I can't believe this hole hasn't been fixed. Now I'm afraid to change it because so the system is so large. oh man...
On top of that we are indeed physically transporting our DB between sites. It's only a matter of time. Oh my pregnant head.
Public Relations
My current project has taught me so much about programming, software development and... office politics. My general personality can be rough at times especially if your throwing ideas in my face that I don't agree with. I've always viewed a raw version of truth to be important to my own personal growth and similarly important for social change in the world. Knowing the truth allows us to make better decisions on how to act in our lives. When we run across skewed versions of the truth then we risk making bad decisions because we're acting under false pretenses. Therefore, I believe that for as much bullshit which exists in the world the last thing we need is one more bullshitter, so I aim to Reversi™. Once again, I realize I'm stating the obvious, but the percentage of people that are willing to skew truth for personal reasons astonishes me.
Often I find that when people skew the truth, they're not even skewing the truth for their own benefit. They simply can't help themselves because they've grown accustomed to saving face. This is where my post really begins. People will risk just about everything (the project, deadlines, and ethics) to maintain a positive rapport by certain individuals. Concepts like Damage Control start to creep into the notions of the SDLC when instead we should be talking about Scope Creep. On a weekly basis I get wind of what's been going on behind the scenes. Unfortunately, I learn only after proper strategies have been taken to mitigate my response to their actions. The actions seem to be generally the same. Someone wants to put in a hack which will miraculously change everything and give the team enough breathing room to maneuver future problems. I think the fact that bothers me most about the whole PR deal is people do this constantly. They talk and talk...when do they get anything done when they're so busy manipulating people's direction? They ask a plethora of questions, never provide proof for their reasons, and are always "getting ready to move" instead of just moving.
I'm not completely innocent of the problems that I've just ascribed to the wretched, but usually when I work my PR shtick, I do it at lunch. Then I come back to work and get 'r done. Usually my bullshit isn't bullshit at all. My view is prescribed from others actions and how the peruse their tasks. If you screw up your task that's -1 cool point. I keep tally and when I've lost count you're on my black list.
Every once in a while I'll walk by someone's desk and there will be 2 or three people talking to one person. People are pretty agreeable here, because they want to help. So coaxing others to follow along with a certain point of view isn't hard especially when the view is in the vein of "making things better". The problem is that when the people who play PR games all day long come to a decision it has no merit on any technical decisions, but instead relies on cargo cult science. They spend all day group thinking and never step back to evaluate what they're doing or what the effect of their actions will cause in the long run.
Maintaining a perception of who you are throughout an organization is important and certainly has its merits. What bothers me so much is that some people, when the time comes to face the truth of their actions, THEY TURN THEIR BACK. They turn their backs and they pretend like they didn't just see something important or they spin the truth. Either way, they simply can't face up to the fact that their wrong and that's the point. When you're wrong, admit it and learn from it. I find people more admirable when they can take a mistake and turn it into something fruitful. Make the world a better place one less lie at a time.