Nilo's Blog

Band-Aid solutions, why am I always forced into coming up with with low cost, near sighted, knee jerk, “this is only temporary” (but later becomes permanent) solutions.

Low Cost: Lots of ideas are thrown out, no real solution is thought of. It’s like going to the grocery store and just putting a bunch of random stuff in the cart. Then when you get to check out you realize it costs to much. So you leave the cart sitting there and tell the clerk i’m sorry this all costs to much I’m going to wal-mart, bye.

Near sighted: One idea is chosen and arguably its not a bad idea. But you are told ok just implement this idea, and you are left hanging with no direction on the details. You implement it as best as you see fit then on implementation day you get someone at your desk saying: Well it should be done this way and this way, and why are you doing that, just change those things and still implement by noon ok?

Knee Jerk: Customer X is having this problem. We need to fix this NOW. No questions are asked about how many people this effects or how the fix is going to effect the 99% that are working. And you spend 99% of your time fixing the 1% problems. Forget the 80/20 rule, this is much worse, then you wonder why is that I am working again?

This is only Temporary: A collection of ideas are decided upon, but one idea is considered the best so that idea has to be implemented by the end of the day. Get that in place and then we will have you do the rest of the ideas. You get the one idea implemented then you get taken off the project or it changes, but now you have this idea that turns into a business rule and then you have to code around it, and deal with it every time you needs to make changes, spending more time tring to figure out how to get what you need to get done with this Pink elephant sitting in your desk. And the best part is when two years later management says things like “why are we doing this?”

Oh the struggles of working at a small company.