Forums: Waiting for Godot:

feel free to ignore this....

so anyway, my work has what i think are unreasonable deadlines. we just launched a site (friday actually) that we started on june 5th. it's nothing super crazy but it has a totally custom cms, photo galleries, video galleries, articles etc., a complete administration section where they can update the entire site and all that. so it's not a simple site. we had from june 5th until june 26th to build the entire thing. there were only two of us working on it, a designer who did well.. the design, and myself who did everything else. during that time we also had another site we had to finish up as well. so it kind of sucked but we got it done but obviously there wasn't a lot of time to debug everything. i forgot to mention it also has a little form thing people fill out to register for a contest they are having. it's basically just an email form though.

so flash forward to today... i get a frantic message that the contest form is not working. the editor lady is not receiving the emails. so i look to see what is going on and sure enough, shit's broke. it uses a template for the emails and somehow during the frenzy of getting everything online that template had been over written (wrote?) somehow with the wrong file. no biggie i had it fixed in a few minutes but now they are blowing a gasket about it like it's the end of the world. editor lady comes to me frantic, "we have to get those lost emails" i say, "well, i'm sorry that happened but there are no emails. they were never sent" at which point she turns and storms off without saying a word. then here comes my supervisor or whatever, "why is the site broken? what happened?"

so of course it should not have happened but it did. i take full responsibility for it but come on.... let's be realistic here. first of all, on that tight of a deadline with 0 time for any testing shit is going to happen once in a while. and no one even noticed for 4 or 5 days?? it's not like they were missing out on sales or something. it's just for people to enter for free shit. they aren't even using the info for marketing or anything... i understand that sometimes things have to be rushed but i think they should understand that sometimes when things are rushed there will be a few bugs. so am i being naive in thinking they are over reacting or did i really fuck up big time?

// end rant

summary:
always test, i hate work.

You had too tell them it was lost in the SPAMfilter because it's a generated mail. And that you will change some headers in it and it will arrive after that.

i knew i should have consulted here before giving an explanation....

Oh. Good idea.

you know that actually brings up another good point. i think i'm too honest with them. not one person here is even slightly technical. i could tell them "oh yeah, that's normal. the rss feeder with css sometimes filters analog addresses on the .net side to /dev/null on the proxy side. if that's not what you want though i can stay late tonight and pull some heroic shit to fix it." they would have no idea...

You should tell them that they didn't give enough time for debugging and it shouldn't have gone live. Tell them to check with you before they accept a deadline next time.
Then shit on their desks.

that sort of thing attitude (your employers) seems to be getting worse. i blame it on the economy the people getting work are so desperate to have some, or afraid they'll lose the work they have they promise insane deadlines. i've been reduced to a comp-whore, but so many in such short spaces of time i'm just a stylist.

i used to love sitting down with the client at a whiteboard, hashing out the business goals, defining users, thinking through interactions and features, building out site maps and wireframes - but now i just have to pumping out "cool" looking stuff and because our market niche is populated with some of the worst design around (seriously think netscape 2.0 grey backgrounds on some of the worst) even my shittiest work looks stellar by comparison.

good for my bank account, bad for my soul.

In tough times talent suffers while oversellign wins, and the rinkydinks don't feel the heat as much as the big players. OK, that's true all the time but especially when people don't want to spend less money than usual.

@trm

No you didn't fuck up, your boss/manager did. Accountability must always go to the top of the chain not the bottom. Even if the issue was the result of incompetent staff (not suggesting you are) then it is still the managers responsibility as it is their role to ensure that all staff are capable. Failure to provide appropriate resources due to budget (account management) or time (client management) is by no means the fault of the developers.

You should always be honest with your employer... The General has made an interesting suggestion but it is dishonest. Honesty and integrity are two way streets and compromise of either makes for a poor employer/employee relationship. Be honest to yourself AND your employer and expect it to be reciprocated.... if it's not then....

Quit your job. The fact that you are ready to accept some level of accountability suggests a willingness to accept failure from above. There is no long term benefit in this. Persisting with a job that involves naive brute force methodologies will only inhibit your own ability to evolve as a developer and may eventually force you to assimilate to poor practices. You need to find a new job for the sake of your own career and abilities. Find a new role first if you have to. Take time planning your exit if you have to.... but plan an exit, set a date and move towards finding a better place to work. No excuses.

*edit for spelinks*

Originally posted by: FlamingoJeff
You should tell them that they didn't give enough time for debugging and it shouldn't have gone live. Tell them to check with you before they accept a deadline next time.
Then shit on their desks.

And butter their floors.

Originally posted by: Arsis
@trm

No you didn't fuck up, your boss/manager did. Accountablity must always go to the top of the chain not the bottom. Even if the issue was the result of incompetant staff (not suggesting you are) then it is still the managers responsibility as it is their role to ensure that all staff are capable. Failure to provide approrpriate resources due to budget (account management) or time (client management) is by no means the fault of the developers.

You should always be honest to your employer... The General has made an interesting suggestion but it is dishonest. Honesty and integrity are two way streets and comprimise of ether makes for a poor employer/employee relationship. Be onest to yourself AND your employer and expect it to be reciprocated.... if it's not then....

Quit your job. The fact that you are ready to accept some level of accountability suggests a willingness to accept failure from above. There is no long term benefit in this. By persistng with a job that involves naive brute force methodolgies will only inhibit your own ability to evolve as a developer and may eventually force you to assimilate to poor practices. You need to find a new job for the sake of your own career and abilities. Find a new role first of you have to. Take time planning your exit if you have to.... but plan an exit, set a date and move towards finding a better place t work. No excuses.

Damn you and you rational good advice, I say it's time for a p-block made of poop!

What he said.. I'm dealing with the same shit..everybody seems more demanding and less patient... So things go out untested.. I have a client who has an online booking system/web site i built that uses a custom in house booking system and api..not to mention Filemaker db/api and some shit in Mysql and some shit wherever..
I recently worked on adding an entire second stage to it that users fill out based on which cruises they take that creates a passenger manifest,etc.. and updates said in house custom booking system, said MySQL , and the admin cms i built , they can get a couple hundred bookings a day easy for multiple tours ..so after a couple weeks on this , I finish on a Fri..they say they want to go live with it ASAP, like today ..
I say "well maybe you want to test it first since we made changes to three different data bases, several api calls from two pieces of software and oh yeah about 15 files.. " They say ..Oh shit yeah we should... how about Monday then!"
but yeah always test..with emails I usually use my address to make sure it's all good , then forget to change it , and start getting orders, but at least i can forward those, and not look to stupid

When I did QA, I got stuff like that all the time.

"OMG, we have no budget to put in testing hours for this massive project, so we're only giving you 2 hours to do it. [time passes] OMG something broke on the site I thought you said you tested it!"

"OMG we need you to overhaul our QA process but we can't afford to hire you to do that, so we'll try paying you peanuts to test this project using that broken process. [time passes] OMG something broke on the site, I thought you said you could fix our QA process!"

And, the Arse is wise. Listen to the Arse.

I'm all for laying a cable to make a point but it does tend to reduce your options somewhat.

I'm amazed at how easy it is to be up front with your staff and mange projects according to their requirements. It makes work life so much better and when management does fuck up the staff are prepared t share the load and do whatever they can to assist. I don't understand how all these agencies manage to survive without this philosphy.... or is it that they all have shitty, stressed overworked lives?

When there's no budget for testing (always), I usually put the onus on the client, internal (boss) or external (paying customer).

Upon launch, just tell the client to try out the site's features to see if they like the look'n'feel, information flow, navigation, the way the forms are formatted... you get the idea.

That situation sucks TRM, but Arse is right. Assess your options and start looking around for a better job today. Your manager is copping heat from the client and simply passing it on to you - if they aren't prepared to allow for testing time or implement QA and realistic deadlines then you're better off elsewhere.

On the other hand, now is a good time to get a testing program in place...you should be proactive. Call a meeting with your manager and demand time for testing, even if at worst case scenario it happens after a site goes live. It's up to them to make sure it's budgeted for. The cost is insignificant compared to the damage a busted site could do to client relationships and future work.

Originally posted by: Nat
On the other hand, now is a good time to get a testing program in place...you should be proactive. Call a meeting with your manager and demand time for testing, even if at worst case scenario it happens after a site goes live. It's up to them to make sure it's budgeted for. The cost is insignificant compared to the damage a busted site could do to client relationships and future work.

This is a great point. If you feel that management would be open to improving processes then you may want to consider sticking around and trying to make things better. Just don't fall into the trap of thinking that you have invested so much time with them already that you should invest more in trying to rectify things. What is in the past should stay in the past and you should base decisions on the present.

I have nothing to add....Arse and Nat are bang on.

The big thing in life is that people are retarded chicken shits who have no brains. So, if you have an actual brain, you can stand up for yourself and also hold on to your beliefs on what is necessary.

"No. This site with all the features cannot be built and tested within that time frame. We either drop some of the features or we add one more week to that deadline for testing only because we do not want to put out an unfinished product. It's on us to make sure we put out the product they want and in a proper way that helps us gain return projects and new projects."

Most will go, "that makes sense....what he said. We can't look bad! Let's do it."

seriously, they're retards and were never given real brains. Stand up for yourself and you designer and set them straight. Have a reason for WHY testing is NOT AN OPTION and you'll make your life a lot easier.

You never launch without testing and most times the testing and revising phases can be 60-80% of the entire production phase.

Originally posted by: Arsis
@trm

No you didn't fuck up, your boss/manager did. Accountability must always go to the top of the chain not the bottom. Even if the issue was the result of incompetent staff (not suggesting you are) then it is still the managers responsibility as it is their role to ensure that all staff are capable. Failure to provide appropriate resources due to budget (account management) or time (client management) is by no means the fault of the developers.

You should always be honest with your employer... The General has made an interesting suggestion but it is dishonest. Honesty and integrity are two way streets and compromise of either makes for a poor employer/employee relationship. Be honest to yourself AND your employer and expect it to be reciprocated.... if it's not then....

Quit your job. The fact that you are ready to accept some level of accountability suggests a willingness to accept failure from above. There is no long term benefit in this. Persisting with a job that involves naive brute force methodologies will only inhibit your own ability to evolve as a developer and may eventually force you to assimilate to poor practices. You need to find a new job for the sake of your own career and abilities. Find a new role first if you have to. Take time planning your exit if you have to.... but plan an exit, set a date and move towards finding a better place to work. No excuses.

*edit for spelinks*

TRM - I wouldn't beat yourself up over missing the problem, or not taking the couple minutes it would have taken to test the live form. You've learned your lesson, and one of the great things about having a manager is that they tend to serve as a buffer for client frustration. Let them deal with their own melodrama while you continue busting out good work, ultimately what you contribute to the job speaks for itself.

I used to get down on myself all the time when I fucked something up with the ad agency, one of the worst was missing something that cost us $4k in reprinting costs. To my credit, both the creative manager and the client had carefully reviewed and signed off on the final proof from the printers, but we all missed an omission in the company address that just simply couldn't go out like that.

It feels shitty messing something up, particularly under all the stress of impending deadlines, but if it doesn't get you fired then just dig in and move on. Your boss / client might bitch and moan some, but hey you got a great deal of work done in an incredibly short period of time, and even if they don't tell you in person (and they should, bastards) I'm sure they still appreciate what you've managed to do. Just make sure that your manager doesn't continue to promise quick deadlines on complicated projects without consulting you first - setting their expectations for that kind of turn around will make you quite miserable, quite rapidly.