Changed jobs at work.
So I have moved teams at work since I was getting kinda bored on my old one. Its not that the work wasn’t challenging, its just that it wasn’t challenging in the way I wanted it to be. Instead of being “Here’s a technical problem to work through” it was becoming “Here’s a project management headache to fix while dealing with other’s egos” type of work.
Both are problems that are in my day to day job. The second one is the one I deal with so I can have fun with the first. It amazes me watching how some people are able to interact with others and magically come out with what they need from the other person without having to get frustrated. I feel like those kinds of situations would be easier if I had a giant pugel stick and could demand trial by combat. That would be freakin sweet.
“Uh Joe, you were supposed to have that server online today.”
“Well I had some stuff come up and its going to be a few days.”
“That does it! We are taking this to the Octagon.”
And by the way, all trials by combat should be done in octagon fighting arenas.
But enough kvetching. Good news is the stuff I am now doing is new enough to me that it’ll be a while before I am up to par where I can relax. Kinda sucks that the area where I sit is so warm that it makes me sleepy in the afternoon. All I need is to fall asleep face first into my keyboard. Qwerty face is a hard thing to hide.
So the technical problem I am facing right now is the common dilemma to all fields. How much effort do you put into something? Enough to meet the requirements? Enough to give the customer a heart attack when they see all the new bells and whistles? Its the age old question. When does done arrive? The report I am fixing is a report that has been broken for some time and people have lived with it. The fix was pretty much already designed and just needed some tweaks to finish it. But how it integrates into the overall flow is still horrible broken. Its the same story you always see. One time process gets written, becomes a bit more permanent, gets some new features bolted on, grows and morphs into this ungainly piece of junk. Looking back at the history of the program I could easily spend some time redesigning the whole thing and have a better solution. But if the report is so easily ignored that a whole country just made do with not getting the report does it really warrant a rewrite?
So I sit at work tweaking it more and more but at some point I just need to let it go. (Could have probably declared victory over it about 3 weeks ago.) Even while I know I could do a better job on this report the long term payback isn’t there. There are other projects that I need to move on to that have a greater ROI. But it is so hard to let it go since I know I can deliver an amazing report given the time. At least this is the biggest complaint about my job. I really do understand and acknowledge that things could be much, much worse. So many of my classmates don’t have jobs right now and sometimes I wonder how have I been so lucky. Sure if you are a hard worker you lessen the odds of being laid off but that is not a guarantee that you won’t get laid off. Far from it as has been demonstrated in my field.