finally coming up for air... [View all]

[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.