IT/Software career thread: Invert binary trees for dollars.

TJT

Mr. Poopybutthole
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I'm the testing lead/manager/whatever at a small company. 15-20 engineers on the relevant team. So, lots of wearing different hats.

Let's say development work on a feature is going to require downstream changes to testing and documentation. Who's responsibility is it to ensure those downstream changes are properly planned and tasked? The feature owner? The project manager? Those two might be the same person in some orgs. Or are testing and documentation responsible?

I'd say it's ultimately a collaborative process once you get down to the design and planning phase, but the initiative should be taken by the feature owner.

I have a project manager trying to tell me it's other way. And all I keep thinking this is his explicit reason for existing.

What am I getting wrong here? I'll fully admit, due to small company itis, we do a lot of shit backwards or just plain wrong. Especially when it comes to processes and organization. So maybe I've just gotten to used to "how we do it" and it's actually wrong.
That sounds like Project Manager to me. They need to be coordinating that changes for this project will work how it needs to especially if several teams are involved.

If I develop something that works according to your requirements but your end isn't capable of handling it for whatever reason. That sounds like a you problem. I am currently dealing with a similar situation and some executives are involved now so it's just a massive shitshow.

I mentioned it a few pages back but early June I developed an application that does a subtask of our primary invoicing system (a custom made ancient piece of shit from the 80s). This application reconciles the client's (8 figure client) custom requirements for receiving this trash. They have like hundreds of conditional alterations so they can process things internally better. My shit works. In this case I am the feature owner as I developed it yes but I have very little knowledge of the downstream business processes that will consume it.

The finance team that generates the source data has tons of mistakes ignoring their own requirements in their formal invoice stuff. Still it has fallen on me somehow to do endless hours of analysis to prove this to them as they immediately claimed I was wrong. Then it takes them another 2 weeks to correct whatever they need to so it all works out how it should with the client. As this is critical in getting them to pay us and taking forever execs are now taking the helm.

Luckily the director is cool enough to fight back some. Some people just absolutely cower if VPs and other executives are involved. Which I hate. Grow a spine.
 
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Nirgon

YOU HAVE NO POWER HERE
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You read things like this and realize you ain't alone

Oh yeah and more non technical people with even bigger titles making even bigger threats, that'll do it!
 
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TJT

Mr. Poopybutthole
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You read things like this and realize you ain't alone

Oh yeah and more non technical people with even bigger titles making even bigger threats, that'll do it!

Yesterday in this adventure:

Context:
My code output produces their secret squirrel invoicing bullshit and I have X line items per thing generated. The internal finance dudes make dozens of changes independently and outside of any system. So it only exists on hand modified PDF shit and whatever. This has 2X line items.

VP:
Your output is clearly wrong as we are going by the official PDF as the source of truth. You need to make this application result true to the official output. This needed to be done weeks ago! (Calling me incompetent essentially).

Me:
Spend the next hour trying to show this guy that there is not a single thing I can do to produce output that does not exist in the system your finance people are supposed to be using. Not until the finance people do whatever bullshit they do to populate said system with what you expect. I don't think I succeeded.
 
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Nirgon

YOU HAVE NO POWER HERE
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Yesterday in this adventure:

Context:
My code output produces their secret squirrel invoicing bullshit and I have X line items per thing generated. The internal finance dudes make dozens of changes independently and outside of any system. So it only exists on hand modified PDF shit and whatever. This has 2X line items.

VP:
Your output is clearly wrong as we are going by the official PDF as the source of truth. You need to make this application result true to the official output. This needed to be done weeks ago! (Calling me incompetent essentially).

Me:
Spend the next hour trying to show this guy that there is not a single thing I can do to produce output that does not exist in the system your finance people are supposed to be using. Not until the finance people do whatever bullshit they do to populate said system with what you expect. I don't think I succeeded.

Ya its so ridiculous I'd put a worf on there but it aint funny cuz its your career and livelihood at stake.

Or I guess its someone else's (whoever documented that existing system, the product knowledge person, tech lead if it isnt you) if they dont dump that blame on you.

I've got a major zinger coming up in 30mins and, like you proving things, I can't wait to hear the excuse making for the inconsistency / giving them exactly whats been asked for then minds being changed. Maybe I'll write the whole story up at some point for your "amusement".
 

Palum

what Suineg set it to
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Microsoft is just impossible to deal with.

Me: What is licensing required for this integration?
Sales: Let's jump on a call and talk about our product. Oh yea sorry, it sounds like you need our architect to figure out the technical details then we can look at necessary licenses.

Later that day.

Arch: Yes give us some requirements and we can put together a demo.
Me: I've already given you guys the requirements, I just need to know what the costs are so we can choose an affordable integration with these two Microsoft services.
Arch: We don't recommend choosing architecture based on money, but I can show you a POC about how you could do it.
Me: I know it can be done, I'm asking what and how many we need to implement your POC so I can determine if it's even a reasonable option to pursue. If it's not I need to know the pricing of the alternatives.
Arch: Oh yea I really don't know anything about licensing so I'll have the sales people jump in a call with you.
Me: OK is there any person on your team that knows both the architecture AND the licensing required to implement it?
Arch: oh uhhh like I said we don't really recommend making those decisions based on price.
Me: YOU ARE THE ONES THAT MADE YOUR LICENSING INEXTRICABLY LINKED TO THE ARCHITECTURE BY CHARGING US DIFFERENTLY FOR EVERY POSSIBLE WAY TO INTEGRATE TWO OF YOUR OWN PRODUCTS.

holy shit
 

Nirgon

YOU HAVE NO POWER HERE
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Ng is an Angular tool, right? Maybe check your package.json or angular.json for any auth discrepancies.

Ya I tried :

npm run ng add @cypress/schematics

To try and shoe horn that fucker, NADA

I think it's some kind of custom security thing. Mega annoying. Dunno a way to run the scripts that would have run automatically yet, but I'm sure it has gotta be possible after you ng install the damn thing.
 

Voyce

Shit Lord Supreme
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Microsoft is just impossible to deal with.

Me: What is licensing required for this integration?
Sales: Let's jump on a call and talk about our product. Oh yea sorry, it sounds like you need our architect to figure out the technical details then we can look at necessary licenses.

Later that day.

Arch: Yes give us some requirements and we can put together a demo.
Me: I've already given you guys the requirements, I just need to know what the costs are so we can choose an affordable integration with these two Microsoft services.
Arch: We don't recommend choosing architecture based on money, but I can show you a POC about how you could do it.
Me: I know it can be done, I'm asking what and how many we need to implement your POC so I can determine if it's even a reasonable option to pursue. If it's not I need to know the pricing of the alternatives.
Arch: Oh yea I really don't know anything about licensing so I'll have the sales people jump in a call with you.
Me: OK is there any person on your team that knows both the architecture AND the licensing required to implement it?
Arch: oh uhhh like I said we don't really recommend making those decisions based on price.
Me: YOU ARE THE ONES THAT MADE YOUR LICENSING INEXTRICABLY LINKED TO THE ARCHITECTURE BY CHARGING US DIFFERENTLY FOR EVERY POSSIBLE WAY TO INTEGRATE TWO OF YOUR OWN PRODUCTS.

holy shit
Can’t expect their software to be any better with that level of incompetence. Of course I imagine everyone here curses and bemoans the trash software put out regularly by big tech

Microsoft always manages to piss me off some how on the daily
 

TJT

Mr. Poopybutthole
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Also I didn't know this was a thing.

I had to get a new work PC after mine started shitting the bed. Battery was giving out mostly. But I had other problems with it. I had abused it so much that I couldn't even run packages well so I just VENV everything for scripting. I was able to do Java work still though and was otherwise getting by.

While setting stuff up I grab the Java SDK off of the Oracle site as that is where I usually get it over the years. Week later an IT manager contacts me and asks if I installed Oracle Java SDK, and if I needed that specific one. I never really thought about this. Apparently if you do this and your company doesn't have an agreement with Oracle they can flag your install and then immediately invoice your company for it. So I tore that out and used the Amazon one where they don't do that.

Yet another reason to hate Oracle.
 
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ShakyJake

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Ya I tried :

npm run ng add @cypress/schematics

To try and shoe horn that fucker, NADA

I think it's some kind of custom security thing. Mega annoying. Dunno a way to run the scripts that would have run automatically yet, but I'm sure it has gotta be possible after you ng install the damn thing.
What's the difference between using 'ng add' and simply doing the usual 'npm install @cypress/schematics'?
 

ShakyJake

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Also I didn't know this was a thing.

I had to get a new work PC after mine started shitting the bed. Battery was giving out mostly. But I had other problems with it. I had abused it so much that I couldn't even run packages well so I just VENV everything for scripting. I was able to do Java work still though and was otherwise getting by.

While setting stuff up I grab the Java SDK off of the Oracle site as that is where I usually get it over the years. Week later an IT manager contacts me and asks if I installed Oracle Java SDK, and if I needed that specific one. I never really thought about this. Apparently if you do this and your company doesn't have an agreement with Oracle they can flag your install and then immediately invoice your company for it. So I tore that out and used the Amazon one where they don't do that.

Yet another reason to hate Oracle.
I'm not sure if this would work for you, but what I typically do for development is create a virtual machine on the host work computer. Then, I install all the necessary development tools, SDKs, etc. within that virtual machine. If something goes wrong with the host computer, all you need to do is copy your VM drive file to another PC. Just like that, you're back up and running.

Additionally, I'm not sure if the IT department can "see" the VM operating system. I usually set the VM to use NAT networking so it doesn't receive an IP from anywhere else. I briefly worked at a company that was a contractor for the federal government, which has stringent security measures, and they never said a word about it.
 

TJT

Mr. Poopybutthole
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It isn't an issue but I could totally just setup a VM for everything on one of our AWS accounts and IT would never have any idea. Not worth the effort though.
 

Nirgon

YOU HAVE NO POWER HERE
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What's the difference between using 'ng add' and simply doing the usual 'npm install @cypress/schematics'?

Ng add will do some extra work like scripts it runs for you to convert things

If only I knew where or what those were
 

ShakyJake

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Ng add will do some extra work like scripts it runs for you to convert things

If only I knew where or what those were
I'm reading ng add looks in the schematics directory of the package:


From within there I see an 'ng add' directory. I am assuming it must execute that index.ts that's there...?
 
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Nirgon

YOU HAVE NO POWER HERE
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Haus

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Microsoft is just impossible to deal with.

Me: What is licensing required for this integration?
Sales: Let's jump on a call and talk about our product. Oh yea sorry, it sounds like you need our architect to figure out the technical details then we can look at necessary licenses.

Later that day.

Arch: Yes give us some requirements and we can put together a demo.
Me: I've already given you guys the requirements, I just need to know what the costs are so we can choose an affordable integration with these two Microsoft services.
Arch: We don't recommend choosing architecture based on money, but I can show you a POC about how you could do it.
Me: I know it can be done, I'm asking what and how many we need to implement your POC so I can determine if it's even a reasonable option to pursue. If it's not I need to know the pricing of the alternatives.
Arch: Oh yea I really don't know anything about licensing so I'll have the sales people jump in a call with you.
Me: OK is there any person on your team that knows both the architecture AND the licensing required to implement it?
Arch: oh uhhh like I said we don't really recommend making those decisions based on price.
Me: YOU ARE THE ONES THAT MADE YOUR LICENSING INEXTRICABLY LINKED TO THE ARCHITECTURE BY CHARGING US DIFFERENTLY FOR EVERY POSSIBLE WAY TO INTEGRATE TWO OF YOUR OWN PRODUCTS.

holy shit

This is absolute music to my ears.... Then again it's because my company sells things which compete against MS and literally their failures in getting their own products to work with one another have handed me multiple opportunities in the last year.

And don't forget kiddos... Microsoft is getting into the security space, they've decided they're a "security" company now... ENJOY!
 

alavaz

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I'm sure it's directly related to the amount of spend an org does on MS, but I've always had good luck. Their architects have been pretty great and our TAM (or whatever they are calling them these days) is always on top of quotes - even looking for ways to "save" money. Some of their more esoteric products (i.e. Dynamics 🤢) have been hard to wrangle, but the core of Azure, Windows and O365 we've gotten great service for.
 

Palum

what Suineg set it to
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I'm sure it's directly related to the amount of spend an org does on MS, but I've always had good luck. Their architects have been pretty great and our TAM (or whatever they are calling them these days) is always on top of quotes - even looking for ways to "save" money. Some of their more esoteric products (i.e. Dynamics 🤢) have been hard to wrangle, but the core of Azure, Windows and O365 we've gotten great service for.
I'm convinced Azure is secretly a different company.

Basically 9/10 times, we fiddle fuck around trying to get something to work in the M365 layer, and then just do it in Azure for 1/3rd the price or less labor included. They are always like "muh technical debt" but can't explain to me why dozens of hours a year to micromanage licenses and config changes in M365 is not technical debt, when their power platform is completely unmanageable by non technical people. They will laugh at "the old days" with Access, then in the same sentence say we should have thousands of workflows independently managed by hundreds of users to build efficiency.
 
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