O-kay.
Our Ukraine team just straight up didn't show up the entire week. What the fuck is that? I spoke to another who had to deal with an outsourcing team and their team was so incompetent that they reduced their portion from working on coding between the application-to-database to creating stored procedures.
Yeah, I understand that their time is cheap. But ours isn't. If they produce bad code, they don't respond, there's communication barriers, and they stop me from doing my work. The price frankly isn't worth it. Then again I'm not a manager who can look at raw numbers.
I'm honestly waiting until my boss is telling me to take this project all the way to the end. I swear just me one of the two of their salaries and I'll complete this project all the way until the end. I'll write manuals, I'll write comments, I'll do progress reports or whatever. It may seem like what I can do is seperate but I have no idea what the other person is doing. At a whim he can take away all my unit testing. He can force me to rewrite half my code. We have no source control yet. My manager suspects that asking them to send code that is able to be checked-in is what caused this hiatus. They said they were near done. I told my boss that unless they were sending me tarballs that were a few weeks back then I have no idea how they plan to achieve such a feat.
Saturday, October 21, 2006
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Performance
I'm so brain dead.
I'm starting and stopping my LISP exercises because my brain is refusing to process the information. I'm working through these exercises quite slowly. I think I need to start scheduling time properly. You know? Properly devote an alotted time to LISP and an alotted time to something else and commit myself.
Anyways, to performance.
I'm starting and stopping my LISP exercises because my brain is refusing to process the information. I'm working through these exercises quite slowly. I think I need to start scheduling time properly. You know? Properly devote an alotted time to LISP and an alotted time to something else and commit myself.
Anyways, to performance.
Monday, October 16, 2006
Monkey Without A Heart
As coop students we look at work and school as four month intervals. There is always a light at the end of the tunnel. Normally, during those four months you're able to determine a few things. Whether you enjoy development at the company. Whether you like the town. Whether it's worth coming back to (and if it's a promise of more responsibility, you are mistaken). Even if you hate the position and you just flushed four months of experience into QA or something. It's only four months and you get to try your luck at the next round.
So ... I'm all out of tunnels.
I'm actually at a different position than my taller, whiter, smarter counterpart. I'm still fairly excited about the work I do at this co-op job. However, our reasons for the way we feel may not differ. This is Ian's second term at this job and he seems to be uninterested in his current project. I'm at my first term and using Java for the first time commercially. I say I'm excited now but around four months is where I'm usually about the boundary. I'm starting to wonder if I will find a good development job that I'll like and feel productive after coop.
A lot of people subscribe to the notion that your work is what pays the bills. Your work is exactly that, work. I think there's an advantage to that. I'd probably never put in more hours than I'm supposed to for a project (unless I'm being handsomely rewarded). But, I, personally am still going to hold onto the ideal that I'll love my job. I need to ... Otherwise all these years I spent in school was for basically nothing.
I'm hoping that what I'm speaking of, and what Ian is experiencing is just a down. Development cycles and projects themselves have ups and downs. Just as any other profession. I guess I'm still young and idealistic but I believe that if I keep doing what I'm doing that I'll find a job that'll reward me for it.
So ... I'm all out of tunnels.
I'm actually at a different position than my taller, whiter, smarter counterpart. I'm still fairly excited about the work I do at this co-op job. However, our reasons for the way we feel may not differ. This is Ian's second term at this job and he seems to be uninterested in his current project. I'm at my first term and using Java for the first time commercially. I say I'm excited now but around four months is where I'm usually about the boundary. I'm starting to wonder if I will find a good development job that I'll like and feel productive after coop.
A lot of people subscribe to the notion that your work is what pays the bills. Your work is exactly that, work. I think there's an advantage to that. I'd probably never put in more hours than I'm supposed to for a project (unless I'm being handsomely rewarded). But, I, personally am still going to hold onto the ideal that I'll love my job. I need to ... Otherwise all these years I spent in school was for basically nothing.
I'm hoping that what I'm speaking of, and what Ian is experiencing is just a down. Development cycles and projects themselves have ups and downs. Just as any other profession. I guess I'm still young and idealistic but I believe that if I keep doing what I'm doing that I'll find a job that'll reward me for it.
Friday, October 13, 2006
Outsource
Let me be the first to pretend that I have no problem with development being outsourced.
Usually the types of jobs that you hear about being outsourced are usually ones that are on the lower end of the spectrum (I mean no offense, but tech support, QA, perhaps). That's why working at this company is a bit strange. I see that a majority of the full-time development jobs are outsourced. I must admit that I find myself in a bit of a conundrum being a voice application developer for a company that seems to outsource most of its development; but we develop applications whose major purpose is to get rid of the jobs (directory assistance, secretary) that would most likely be outsourced.
My product right now is the OpenSpeech Dialog Modules. My team consists of a manager, two outsourced devs, and myself. My program manager does little programming. He does know the code though. Which makes me wonder about what Microsoft PM interns do .... (damned if I know) .... Anyways, my PM does look over the code and take care of bugs, issues, and all these other technical issues. He does no real programming himself however.
When I say I am at ends with outsourcing, it isn't because I feel I'm losing my job to them. But when half your team is outsourced, there's a communication barrier you must break. That means a language barrier, a technical barrier, and the fact that you're no longer close to one another (being able to draw stuff on whiteboards). Also, the fact that they're in Ukraine means that I must get into work at 8 to carve a decent conversation/explanation. There's also the cryptic e-Mails that they send. I think I've had to tell them not to subvert the platform four times. I think they did it in again in the most recent build but the code is so convoluted that it's going to take me a while to see if they did (I'd ask but I think it'd take me longer to decode the messages).
From a business perspective though I can think of two good reasons for outsourcing off the top of my head. One of which being the fact that it's cheaper labour. I have no problem with that. I'm a co-op student. I essentially AM cheap labour. Secondly, is the advantage of having those types of workers in another time zone. Supposedly my company has a continuous work cycle where when one person leaves and the other picks it up. The code is constantly being worked on and I think you squeeze more out of a day.
Right now, I haven't met someone who has worked at a company where they found outsourcing (in a development setting) advantageous. So far, I've only heard complaints. I am, so far, unimpressed.
I've had a coworker claim that he worked in a company where his team was completely outsourced and that the product worked swimmingly. Besides the fact that they guy isn't really someone I would consider an expert at ... 'anything'. But, his team was 5-6 people spreading across to parts of Europe, the States, and Canada. I don't know how you can easily coordinate such a project amongst that many people and this is something that I'm not opposed to believing but will only really believe if I see it first hand.
I hope outsourcing gets better in my company. I really do. I have to deal with it. I'd prefer to see the code coming out not being ass. So yes, I hope it gets better. However, there are certain principles that I see that come with the code you produce. Basic programming principles and familiarity with the language and all that other stuff. Which such a pitfall in these areas it's making me wonder if these people care about software development or if they just want to get the job done.
Usually the types of jobs that you hear about being outsourced are usually ones that are on the lower end of the spectrum (I mean no offense, but tech support, QA, perhaps). That's why working at this company is a bit strange. I see that a majority of the full-time development jobs are outsourced. I must admit that I find myself in a bit of a conundrum being a voice application developer for a company that seems to outsource most of its development; but we develop applications whose major purpose is to get rid of the jobs (directory assistance, secretary) that would most likely be outsourced.
My product right now is the OpenSpeech Dialog Modules. My team consists of a manager, two outsourced devs, and myself. My program manager does little programming. He does know the code though. Which makes me wonder about what Microsoft PM interns do .... (damned if I know) .... Anyways, my PM does look over the code and take care of bugs, issues, and all these other technical issues. He does no real programming himself however.
When I say I am at ends with outsourcing, it isn't because I feel I'm losing my job to them. But when half your team is outsourced, there's a communication barrier you must break. That means a language barrier, a technical barrier, and the fact that you're no longer close to one another (being able to draw stuff on whiteboards). Also, the fact that they're in Ukraine means that I must get into work at 8 to carve a decent conversation/explanation. There's also the cryptic e-Mails that they send. I think I've had to tell them not to subvert the platform four times. I think they did it in again in the most recent build but the code is so convoluted that it's going to take me a while to see if they did (I'd ask but I think it'd take me longer to decode the messages).
From a business perspective though I can think of two good reasons for outsourcing off the top of my head. One of which being the fact that it's cheaper labour. I have no problem with that. I'm a co-op student. I essentially AM cheap labour. Secondly, is the advantage of having those types of workers in another time zone. Supposedly my company has a continuous work cycle where when one person leaves and the other picks it up. The code is constantly being worked on and I think you squeeze more out of a day.
Right now, I haven't met someone who has worked at a company where they found outsourcing (in a development setting) advantageous. So far, I've only heard complaints. I am, so far, unimpressed.
I've had a coworker claim that he worked in a company where his team was completely outsourced and that the product worked swimmingly. Besides the fact that they guy isn't really someone I would consider an expert at ... 'anything'. But, his team was 5-6 people spreading across to parts of Europe, the States, and Canada. I don't know how you can easily coordinate such a project amongst that many people and this is something that I'm not opposed to believing but will only really believe if I see it first hand.
I hope outsourcing gets better in my company. I really do. I have to deal with it. I'd prefer to see the code coming out not being ass. So yes, I hope it gets better. However, there are certain principles that I see that come with the code you produce. Basic programming principles and familiarity with the language and all that other stuff. Which such a pitfall in these areas it's making me wonder if these people care about software development or if they just want to get the job done.
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
To Itch
At first I chose not to do this blog.
It wasn't because I already have a Xanga blog. There are many advantageous things that Blogspot so easily provides.
It's because Pritesh did it first and he'll take some pride in being the first. THERE I SAID IT. =P
This first blog should symbolize a whole new beginning. Instead, however, I'm going to use it to mock Ian WJ Halliday. http://ianwjhalliday.blogspot.com/
I'm planning to use this blog to mainly gripe about programming woes. It certainly feels that way. It's going to be weird since I'm not a good programmer (in my own eyes) by any stretch of the imagination, but that certainly isn't going to stop me. Before I do, I'm going to go to work tomorrow and make sure I read over my disclosure forms very carefully.
Anyways, toodles.
Robert.
It wasn't because I already have a Xanga blog. There are many advantageous things that Blogspot so easily provides.
It's because Pritesh did it first and he'll take some pride in being the first. THERE I SAID IT. =P
This first blog should symbolize a whole new beginning. Instead, however, I'm going to use it to mock Ian WJ Halliday. http://ianwjhalliday.blogspot.com/
I'm planning to use this blog to mainly gripe about programming woes. It certainly feels that way. It's going to be weird since I'm not a good programmer (in my own eyes) by any stretch of the imagination, but that certainly isn't going to stop me. Before I do, I'm going to go to work tomorrow and make sure I read over my disclosure forms very carefully.
Anyways, toodles.
Robert.
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