Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Today is one of those days that makes me seriously question the company for which I work.

When it rains, it pours. It's been literally doing that all day outside, and while I love it on the natural front, on the metaphorical equivalent front ... not so much.

The last two days have been filled with people who have responsibilities not doing their jobs, and them being OK with saying, "Yeah, that should be me, but I'm not going to do it."

They've been filled with character disorder, lack of accountability, lack of foresight, like of backbone, and lack of integrity.

I do not understand how some people get promoted.

While I plan and scratch and pull and earn everything I have position-wise, other people just put in time, and are promoted to be better paid bumps on logs. I seriously don't get their value add, other people don't get their value add, and they can't tell me what they do, or how it benefits the company.

And the process!

I'm a process guy, but stupid process and human screw-ups make me crazy.

Here's one brief example. today, I've gone through like 12 re-submissions of a form for installing software in a data center. The form and process are supposed to be controls to keep bad software from going into Production, and is supposed to instill checks and balances so that any qualified person can do the installation. Here's an abbreviated version of how this played out:

THEM: Your request is rejected because you haven't included the reason for the request.

ME: That's "Reason Code" equals "CUST", which is short for "Customer requested change to system". You told me to put that.

THEM: Your request is rejected because in Section 8.1 you haven't included the service for which you're requesting the change.

ME: I list the service name on line 2 of Section 8.1.

THEM: Your request is rejected because in Section 8.1 you haven't included the impact for the change you're requesting.

ME: I list the impact (service, Customer, Environment, Application and Database) on lines 3-5 of Section 8.1.

THEM: Your request is rejected because in Section 8.2 you haven't included the server name for the change you're requesting.

ME: I list the server name on line 3 of Section 8.2. It's also on line 3 of Section 8.1.

THEM: Your request is rejected because you don't list the name of the person who tested the change you're requesting.

ME: I've include the name of the person who tested the change in the "Tested by" field.

(Ad Nauseam ...)

Seriously. Stuff like this.

All. Freaking. Day.

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