I wrote a lot of unhappy posts about my jobs, because usually somehow being unhappy about something does motivate me to write. And I also know at least on my previous job, my boss was reading my blog, so it’s kinda an indirect way of letting him know what I wasn’t happy about (I realized that this actually a bad communication process). I don’t think anyone from my current work is following my blog at the moment, but it might happen in the future..

Alright to break the habit once in a while, I will post on what make me happy at fforesite:
– Great people.
– Weekly soccer game. DA mentioned that IBM has a basketball team that practice regularly and involve in comps, this is probably my main motivation to apply for IBM job, however I didn’t get the job so.. This is the next best thing I guess, weekly soccer. We play on Wednesdays about an hour or so at Centennial Park.
– Dual screens, it really a performance booster for me, gosh I am actually start to think that I can really make use of another monitor.. One screen for my Dreamweaver/Eclipse, and then the other two for testing in Firefox/IE or I can use them for any remote desktop-ing that I need to do occasionally.
– There’s a little outdoor basketball court near the office, I have been taking out 20 mins a day for the past 2 weeks just shooting around and so simple drills. Love it!
– Flexible work hours, we are expected to do 6 billable hours every day, which is pretty easy since I am always have enough work anyway, I clock in about 6.5-7 hrs a day. On the day when we don’t have much to do we can go early, sweet..
– Large desk, my own drawers, good chair, a semi-cubicle.. I’m so vain.. 🙂
– Good variety of projects so I get to learn new technologies for example I’ve been using AJAX quite heavily for my current project (Prototype and Scriptaculous combo). I’ve also learning a lot from the CF guru in the office, better learn as much as we can out of him before him leaving us in few weeks time.

And I think it’s only proper that I give thanks to God for the fact that I can find work in IT area, that I can provide to my family, instead of focusing on what’s wrong with my job.

For one of the projects which I am the lead tech developer, we built a content editor system for a client. The system was structured in such a way that it is tightly integrated with the design that was designed by our in house designer. So once we shown the system to the client, he was happy about it, and I thought that he would be excited to start using it to put in his content.

But it didn’t go as I thought I would be. I didn’t know where or when the plot was lost. The client kept coming back to us about putting content and tweaking the design. I thought to myself why on earth we spent weeks building him a content editor system in the first place. And also because the system was purposedly built to be tightly integrated with the design, so when the design is changing, we also need to rebuild the back end system.

I know this is really not my problem, after all I am just a programmer. But I do feel frustated because this will add more work to my already heavy workload and I fear that we are losing money unnecessarily by extending the work.

I know the management must have good reasons to keep on meeting this client’s demands for putting content and design changes, it would be good if I know the reasons so I won’t feel so upset. Anyhow if there are lessons for me to learn from this, that would be:
1. Educate and involve client early. Get client involved in the early iteration of the project (beta or alpha testing?).
2. When a project specification and design have been signed off and significant work has been done, abide by them. Significant changes are allowed at client’s cost. (Getting an agreement on what thing and when to be delivered seem to be a major issue for some of our projects lately).
3. Make sure your developers happy 🙂