Thursday, October 01, 2009

The invisible man

I just got to the end of a really long and involved technical problem.

Project Manager to the tester: "Thanks Bob - great job."

Umm... hello? The tester did a great job? Well, yes, he did. He did exactly what I told him to do. And when it failed, he sent me the results of the failure, and I analysed them, worked out where it went wrong, specified the changes and whether the tests also needed changing, in long and annoying detail. He reran the test. When it failed, he sent me the logs, and so we carried on.

I'm dealing with something whose syntax is arcane, whose documentation is non-existent, in an area of the system I'm unfamiliar with, and against the background of a "red status" project whose lateness is exasperating the customer. I'm learning as I go along. I'm sticking with it, day after long bloody, tiresome day, peeling back the layers of this particular onion until I get it just right.

And now... after weeks of wrangling, head-banging, reading technical forums trying to glean the least HINT of how it should work... now... it works. Finally.

And who gets the praise? The fucking TESTER, that's who.

Sometimes. Just sometimes. I'd like some small crumb of evidence that I'm not the invisible man around here.

3 comments:

Tvor said...

Aggghh! That sucks! Let me just say.... Great Job, John!

Don said...

We are going through a similar thing.
GM has a plan whereby the sales dept. can order a car or truck with certain accessories which are sent to the dealership ready to be installed at the time of the pre-delivery inspection.
The sales department makes money off these things with the sale of the vehicle, the service department makes money on the installation of them, and the parts department (who are supposed to receive the parts, store and identify them with order numbers, stock numbers and VIN numbers, make absolutely nothing).
I actually had a salesman come in today to complain that a part was wrong, when my department had nothing to do with the ordering of it!

Digger said...

Aww thanks Di!

And Don: Great job! Well, you know, not THAT bit, but generally :o)