My favorite verse in the Bible is Mark 9:24, which ends with the phrase, "Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!" That pretty well sums up my spiritual journey. This blog is for recording my thoughts, ideas, insights, struggles, battles, blessings, stumblings, hopes and victories on my road to salvation. Oh, and just random life stuff, too.
[Cross-posted from my tech blog.]
Some scenes from my past life as a software consultant. While they did not all happen in one place, and while some of it is a LITTLE exaggerated, I swear most of it is true! Or true enough. :)
9 comments:
Ha! This is great.
I feel your pain.
CH,
Glad you liked it! :)
Yes, it's an exaggeration but it's frightening how many elements of it I too have seen in "real life."
Lynn,
I think anyone who has dealt with customers as a "face turned outward" in the software industry has seen at least parts of this in real life.
I know others here are reading this thinking: "That is an exaggeration! Things aren't that hard for consultants!"
... and that, my friend, is how you spot the salespeople in this thread. ;-)
I am curious about your experience with xtranormal. Was this fairly straight-forward to get done?
If it isn't terribly time consuming, I have a few tales of my own to add.
Thank you for the combined laughs and flop-sweat flashbacks!
Russell,
I love the comment about the salespeople! Spot on! :)
Oh, and I forgot to answer your question about xtranormal. It was easy enough to use. Have your script done ahead of time, obviously. And when it comes to transcoding it to video it takes a WHILE, so be patient.
They have a PC-based client that does more than the web interface, but I didn't try that.
Thanks for the heads-up on xtranormal's facilities. I may give it a go now that I have seen the success you have had with it.
As for the sales people comment... well, I remember actually bursting into tears once when I was told what the sales people promised. Please remember I am 6'4" and weigh 300 pounds. Picture an offensive lineman off your local football team weeping openly at your expectations.
That was my last day on that job. I learned that self employed is best if at all possible, and have never looked back.
I suppose I owe the salespeople a great debt for opening my eyes to the insanity that awaited me if I stuck around there anymore.
In my case, the sales people promised technology off the starship Enterprise. Seriously, stuff that doesn't exist yet. Put it in writing too! With my name in big bold print as the lead installer for said non-existant technology.
Why do they DO this?!
Russell,
They do it because they can. Because no one punishes them for it, and in fact they get REWARDED for it. They closed the deal, after all. It's YOUR fault you can't implement it. :)
Reminds me of a joke (and thankfully it was a joke) that a software architect at Sybase used to tell developers when I worked there: "I DREW the boxes and arrows! I can't help it if you aren't smart enough to code the solution!"
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