finally coming up for air...

[tk2kewl]

Due to a complete lack of giving shit and no concept of what goes into building software the powers that be dumped a project on me last Monday (2/23) with a hard deadline of 3/16/2015 00:00. And of course this project is on top of my other work which includes 24/7 support to babysit an app that management won't allocate resources for fix (but that's a tale for another post).

Back of the napkin requirements.

Now this is a webapp and it must work on desktop and mobile devices (responsive design as they call it). We are talking about testing requirements involving over 40 different configurations when you do the math:

"number of desktop OSs" X "number of broswers per OS" +
"number of iphone iOSs" X "2 orientaions (landscape portrait)" +
"number of ipad iOSs" X "2 orientaions" +
"number of android phone OSs" X "number of broswers per OS" X "2 orientaions" +
"number of android tablet OSs" X "number of broswers per OS" X "2 orientaions"

... you get the picture

My boss mostly gets it, but the big boss just likes to yes everyone. Big boss tells us sometimes really important projects come along and we just have to step up.

So, after stamping my feet a lot, big boss finally set up a meeting with the business owner on 2/26 to at least get some clarification on the requirements. Nothing on the agenda about trimming the requirements in light of the absurd deadline of course.

So, project is so important that by the time 2/26 rolled around I had already put in 60 hrs in 4 days. Not important enough for big boss not to take a nap during the meeting though - yep he fell asleep - I guess he felt relaxed and comfortable since the meeting was held in his big cushy office.

I ended up putting in over 90 hrs from 2/23 - 3/1 so that I could get in front of the work, have time for QA and plan an orderly deployment.

Maybe if I'm lucky next time they'll replace me with an H1B developer.

I took a few minutes out on Monday to go through a box I had never unpacked from an office move a couple two three years ago. I knew I had some old Dilbert cartoons in there that would make me feel better. They're back up on my cubicle walls and I share them here with DU...







And a few other pictures I have hanging in my cubicle...







Thanks for listening.

[peacebird]

1. Believe me, I feel your pain.....

Software qa by trade, my previous 3 companies all had big boss like your. Mind you, he went home every day at 5pm to be with his family. But WE had to meet impossible deadlines time and again..... Oh, and we were all workers who were salaried, same pay for 40 hr week as for 90 hour week, they didn't even give comp time.

[tk2kewl]

5. yep... no overtime pay for me

salaried

[alcibiades_mystery]

2. "I'd like to change my job title to something with 'architect' in it."

That one had me dying!!!!

[Scuba]

3. "But it's critical," the boss told me. "Throw more resources at it."

"It doesn't work like that," I replied, "Nine women can't have a baby in one month."


Damn I love being retired.

[tk2kewl]

6. i use that line a lot, but in the case i would have welcomed some more people, but no

[tk2kewl]

7. and did i mention i turn 50 this year

too old for this shit

[tridim]

4. I have nightmares about "responsive design". Ugh.

I don't do overtime though, because about 15 years ago I realized that overtime is complete bullshit and borderline abuse.

Life's too short.

[tk2kewl]

8. i don't even get paid for the extra time

no comp time policy either, but believe me i will get at least some of that time back

i actually enjoy responsive design given the time to do it right, but it can be a bitch under pressure

[tridim]

11. It's certainly nifty tech, and much better than the old way

But it's complex (at least compared to standard CSS), and time consuming as I'm sure you know.

All the overtime I worked in the past is just lost time. I have nothing to show for it except added stress. Such a waste.

[sendero]

9. I know this won't help...

.... but I worked in software development for 40 years for several different companies. Once in a while, I'd wind up working for an idiot like your boss's boss.

Now, there is a difference to be noted between a tough deadline and an impossible one. I've worked on teams that delivered tough deadlines many times, it's part of the business from time to time.

But I REFUSED EVER to sign up for suicide missions where the possibility of success was 0.001%. And I never have worked more than 50 hours a week more than 2 weeks in a row. Why? Because working long hours will NOT make you get more work done. It makes a great show of effort, but few people have the mental ability to actually do efficient and effective work for 12 hours a day, day after day after day. Sprinting is fine, but you can only do it for a limited time. Managers that don't get that should be working at 7-11.

So, you are in an impossible position seemingly. You can tell your boss's boss that his demands cannot be met, not by you, not by anyone else, and you can suggest the time-honored way of dealing with this, throwing babies overboard i.e. recognizing that you will not have every one of these platforms done on schedule and making a sane attempt at choosing the highest priorities. But what most folks do is just soldier on through the deadline , moving the delivery date over and over again, and delivering dubious quality, very late, a process that does absolutely no one, not the developer and not the manager, not the company, any good at all.

I wish you luck and success, you will have earned it!

[tk2kewl]

10. I hear you.

I've been doing this for a long time. Part of the problem is I work well under pressure and churn out good work even in the absence of good management, so they keep coming back to the well.

What they don't realize (or more likely, don't care about) is that it saps so much of my energy and enthusiasm that I'll spend the following month reading DU and doing the minimum.

I will also be throwing a few monkey wrenches into things around QA bug reports and security scans to get management panicked about meeting the deadline while knowing I can resolve them easily.

[TexasProgresive]

12. Been where you are but now I am newly retired

When I was cleaning out my desk and work area this Dilbert strip fell to the floor. Managers -Paaahh!!


That was fun- I had to add jpg to get it to show. Good luck to you on your impossible project. A saying around my former workplace was, "Winners do what losers want." The only problem is those losers end up taking credit for the winners hard work.

[tk2kewl]

13. Yes...

the back-stabbers always win

I might have to add your strip to my wall

[hootinholler]

14. The funny thing is heroics seldom pay

Once in a long while they do, but mostly they just become expected.

Been there, done that, feel your pain.

[jeff47]

15. Yeah, we need better software development management concepts.

I think a big part of it is we have extremely poor technical management at most companies. They've taken a kind of "salesman" model to management - that people who were good at the lower levels of the job should be promoted to "manager", and that job should include technical as well as HR-issue leadership. Works in sales and finance, so we applied it to software development. It's an office job, after all!

Not gonna work well. There's very, very few people who have both skill sets. So you'll either get a boss who's great at technology, but sucks at human interaction, or you'll get a boss who's great at human interaction, but clueless on technology.

We need more like the management structure we have for tradesmen. There's the guy running the business side of things, and then there's the guy running the technical side of things. A large plumbing contractor is going to have one person who's good at keeping books, dealing with people, doing the administrative details that keeps a business going. And there's going to be a grizzled old plumber who really knows how to connect pipes, that the first guy desperately keeps away from the customer because his "people skills" are awful.

We need a similar split in software development - technical management that only knows good ways to architect and write software, and business management that deals with HR issues, "the vision", and similar non-technical issues. With the technical manager having the authority to say "no" when asked to do the impossible (or the stupid).

[2naSalit]

16. Love the RFS!!!

First laugh of the day!