My day job, lately...

A friend asked the age-old question in email today: "Working hard, or hardly working?"



"
today seems to be a "working hard" kind of day. It's the time of year that retail places are very very busy, getting ready and getting stuff out there for the Holiday season.

Here at my currently place of employment, there is very little "process" at the moment. This would be great if there was some alpha-dude or -chick who was dictator, and organizing everything; then things would run very smoothly. Or if we only had three people who had any input at all on designing, building, implementing, analyzing and reporting on something.

Of course, there's no real leader, and there are tons of people involved with every step of things... so projects are a nightmare.

None of them are done in anything approaching the right way. Getting them done by a certain time is more important than doing them right. There are many going on at once that have complimentary or conflicting requirements, across multiple teams.

We are doing normal, key, business-critical work here in much the same way you'd take care of things as you were leaving a house that was on fire... in the dark, confused, yelling to whomever was out there, and knowing you had precious little time to do anything.

Loads of fun : )

I'm just venting... no worries. Part of all this is because I'm being asked to come up with solutions to problems that I have no information on, no background on how we have answered these questions before, and no awareness of who should be involved. And it's all time sensitive.

So it's a little frustrating.
"


Heh. Hardly something to lose sleep over, but still...