Comment On Not For All The Money In The World

What a nightmare....

 

with the ability to turn work around ahead of proposed deadlines

We require someone who is better than someone that we would  require.

They must really pay a SH*T LOAD of money for that position to attract anybody.

    -dZ.

The fun jobs don't pay as well.

Maybe so, but I'll bet there's a lot of jobs like this out there in the
world. At least these people are up front and honest about what they
want.

But they think that this description is an attractive prospect?

As odd as it sounds, I know plenty of people who would love jobs like
these.  They're good programmers but for some reason they don't
want to upgrade their skills from vba and access.  Go to any large
corporation and there will always be at least a few people just like
them. 

Alex Papadimoulis:

5) ...presenting resulting information in a useable format (charts, databases, etc.)

My favorite part is that after describing the nightmare that is
their database, they still consider a database to be a "useable
format."  I'd love to give that presentation to the CEO: "As you
can see in database 1, . . . ."

What a cluster fuck!

I like this espcially:

6) Must have excellent consulting/listening skills and ability to turn user requests (most of which are on an ad hoc basis) into executable solutions and capabilities. There is a high expectation of zero-mistake execution of a proposed solution with the ability to turn work around ahead of proposed deadlines.

Ok, but whatever you do, don't give me the tools or the environment to succeed.  Use the tools, environment and methodology (or lack thereof) that will be most likely to cause the most errors and take the most amount of time.  Sorry, Access, Excel and "Ad Hoc basis" don't cut it.

 

 

The job is not for me, but I have to agree with Scott.

Scott:

As odd as it sounds, I know plenty of people who would love jobs like
these.  They're good programmers but for some reason they don't
want to upgrade their skills from vba and access.  Go to any large
corporation and there will always be at least a few people just like
them. 

Alex Papadimoulis:

My favorite part is that after describing the nightmare that is
their database, they still consider a database to be a "useable
format."  I'd love to give that presentation to the CEO: "As you
can see in database 1, . . . ."

Don't forget "The candidate will be working
in mature and complex databases"; as in "that will break apart from
everywhere just by looking at it" :)

Sounds like a prime candidate for recommendation with Visual Studio Tools for Microsoft Office System 2003.

They brought me this .mdb on a CD because it was a multi-megabyte
nightmare.  First thing I did was use Tools | Database Utilities |
Compact and Repair database, and this 800lb gorilla-pig was suddenly
80k.

But that's not as interesting as the time I was handed a bug report
database that they were emailing around for a testing event (a WTF in
its own right).  For every event they had separate tables,
queries, and reports, for an absolutely sick total object count. 
WTF, indeed.

I'm sure there will be other interesting "you mean this ain't just a fancy spreadsheet, Jethro?" stories posted for this topic.

Rick:

The job is not for me, but I have to agree with Scott.

Scott:

As odd as it sounds, I know plenty of people who would love jobs like these.  They're good programmers but for some reason they don't want to upgrade their skills from vba and access.  Go to any large corporation and there will always be at least a few people just like them. 

"Good programmers"? I get the impression you don't know what a good programmer is. Good programmers very rarely have an interest in working in a pile of WTFs, they want to work on good stuff.

I'm not saying that only useless pieces of #$@ like Access and VBA, but most people working with it are doing so for the money, not because because it is condusive to good programming.

Manager is looking for a consultant with a BS/BA degree and five years
programming experience.



Having graduated in computer science, the last
thing I would want to do is to code basic (interpreted language for Beginners) and to
work with an Access Database (wanabe database)...



But, let admit someone got the ubber
will to do it, when you read the requirement, it's almost impossible to feel
confortable with them

I have a good friend who is actually an IT recruiter right now. 
He told me there are a dickload of jobs right now wanting Visual Basic,
so he was recommending that I brush up on VB just in case.  
I replied that as I am currently programming in C++ and C#, programming
in Visual Basic would be a step down no matter how much more they pay
me.  I pity the fool who gets this pile of crap.



Seriously, why don't they just hire somebody who's good with SQL to
rewrite the whole damn thing?  Oh wait, it's a payroll system and
it was due last tuesday.

Please tell me Im not the only one who has heard of MSDE?

Actually I kinda like working on WTF type projects, as long as the company involved is sincerely interested in Un-WTF'ing it. I would take on this database for the purpose of turning around the situation as opposed to working with the situation.  For example, porting the Database to SQL Server or another Enterprise grade DB, normalizing the DB, writing a full application to get to all of it rather than a bunch of dinky access stuff, etc.  However this job would be a no-way for me.

Alex Papadimoulis:

with the ability to turn work around ahead of proposed deadlines.

1) Wouldn't that mean that the deadline wasn't really the deadline?

2) And just WHO is "proposing" these deadlines?

Now let's combine these two into....

3) "Here's a month's worth of work.  I expect it will take you at least a week to complete.  If you aren't done earlier than that I still get to give you a bad review..."

It's all part of our Morale Reduction Program which, if I do say so myself, is really starting to show some tangible results...

Anyone sent this to Scott Adams yet?

The phrase '1500 objects' is rather ambigous, but it certainly leads to
some horrific mental images. Does it means a single table with 1500 fields?
(Finagle's festering testicles, I hope not... but I wouldn't be
surprised.) Or perhaps they mean 1500 tables, queries, etc? (In Access?
They're nuts!) Even it means 1500 fields broken into tables (adequate
normalization is probably too much to ask for), using Access for it is unwise.



Of course, they could just mean a single table with only 1500 records.
Wouldn't that be a pleasant surprise? Sure, until you find out what
they need you to do with them, and what a mess the existing code is...



I'd take this job only if the goal was to refactor the damn thing, and
could migrate it to a larger engine if needed. otherwise, no way. Then
again, maybe not; I've done databases (mostly smallish ones in Access),
but I'm not really a DB guy, so I might not be the best person for the
job, anyway. But given the requirements, they should take what they can
get.

Free:

"Good programmers"? I get the impression you don't know what a good
programmer is. Good programmers very rarely have an interest in working
in a pile of WTFs, they want to work on good stuff.

I'm not saying that only useless pieces of #$@ like Access and VBA, but most people working with it are doing so for the money, not because because it is condusive to good programming.

I'm talking about people who've had the hope of seeing good code driven
out of them and have actually become afraid of it.  These people
have only done maintenance work their whole life and can look at wtf's
worse than these, quickly see what's going on and add their code
without breaking anything.  I've seen people able do maintence
work (without flinching) on a single web app made up of a careful mix
of compiled executables, classic asp, perl scripts, and shell
scripts.  Few people could go in and write new stuff while keeping
the old stuff working without rewriting code.

Free:

Rick:

The job is not for me, but I have to agree with Scott.

Scott:

As odd as it sounds, I know plenty of people who would
love jobs like these.  They're good programmers but for some
reason they don't want to upgrade their skills from vba and
access.  Go to any large corporation and there will always be at
least a few people just like them. 

"Good programmers"? I get the impression you don't know what a good
programmer is. Good programmers very rarely have an interest in working
in a pile of WTFs, they want to work on good stuff.

I've worked with some excellent coders who were like that,
but not many good programmers. The best VBA/Access coder I've ever met
was also one of the worst programmers I've ever known. Since he could
write code very fast, he wouldn't bother writing a single function to
handle common cases, but instead would simply code it out each time
(this was especially true for event handlers, something which the
design of Access 97 forms rather encouraged; the event code was 'behind the
form', rather than in a separate file, so you could only access the
code through the forms). This was on a project in which there were six
similar projects maintained as six separate codebases, meaning there
was a lot of repeated code; many times, a change would have to be
performed in several places in each of them, meaning something that
should have been done once had to be done thirty times or more.

Sadly,
he was the Project Lead and one of the two owners of the company. He
not only
refused to refactor the code or create a library for the common parts
(he told me it couldn't be done in Access 97, which I later found was
untrue; when I suggested that we could do it in VB as a DLL, he
insisted that it wasn't feasible because the existing code relied on
features only found in Access), he often replaced working code that
called a common function with his specially tweaked functions,
insisting that they were special cases (they were, but the function
handled them correctly). This just added to the already surreal quality
of working for a company where, for example, the president set a 'no
testing' policy for production code - we were to ship the product (as
CD-Rs with paper labels) regardless of whether it worked or not.
Insane...

I have friends that work at BIG corporations that have setups like this. 

Everything is scattered in poorly designed Access databases.



the problem is that people are afraid of change, they like sticking
with what works.  So instead of re-thinking a solution, they just
keep adding to a poorly thoughtout solution that might of been ok in
1993.

And thats how you get an Access database with 1500 objects.



I have nightmares about getting stuck in a job like this.

Um, there's a big picture issue here I've not seen mentioned...



Entire company's compensation system.  Completely untraceable and unauditable.  Under your hands and yours only.



   "One show:  gooodbyyyyye." - Steve Martin.  

Anonymous:

Um, there's a big picture issue here I've not seen mentioned...

Entire company's compensation system.  Completely untraceable and unauditable.  Under your hands and yours only.

   "One show:  gooodbyyyyye." - Steve Martin.  

Of course the first thing to do is to change your own salary to at least three times what you were hired for. If and when someone gets wind of it, change all the passwords and head for the border.

Despite the fact that my language of preference right now is C#, I
strongly believe that MS-Access has a legitimate place in the scheme of
things, and can be used for credible applications that do important
stuff.



The principal weakness of MS-Access is that it is so accessible to the
average user, that this leads to the creation of heart-rendingly
average databases, often without any prospect of refactoring into a
useful form. This gives it a bit of a bad name amongst the programmer
community, many of whom think it is fashionable and good for their
image to call these systems and the people who work with them stupid.8o



This shows you up for the fools that you are, people who are content to
blow a company's budget producing the perfect system, in the perfect
language, using the perfect IDE. Information Systems is about creating
business value, and business relationships, using the tools available
to the business. It is about getting the best from the people in the
business, not about using the best process at the expense of all the
rest.

Anonymous:

I
strongly believe that MS-Access has a legitimate place in the scheme of
things

While you may be right, not even Microsoft is behind Access any more.

While you may be right, not even Microsoft is behind Access any more.



Care to elaborate?

Anonymous:

Despite the fact that my language of preference right now is C#, I
strongly believe that MS-Access has a legitimate place in the scheme of
things, and can be used for credible applications that do important
stuff.



The principal weakness of MS-Access is that it is so accessible to the
average user, that this leads to the creation of heart-rendingly
average databases, often without any prospect of refactoring into a
useful form. This gives it a bit of a bad name amongst the programmer
community, many of whom think it is fashionable and good for their
image to call these systems and the people who work with them stupid.8o



This shows you up for the fools that you are, people who are content to
blow a company's budget producing the perfect system, in the perfect
language, using the perfect IDE. Information Systems is about creating
business value, and business relationships, using the tools available
to the business. It is about getting the best from the people in the
business, not about using the best process at the expense of all the
rest.

I tend to agree. Largely because i work for those companies and use
access (a cheap and very very fast development option). for a system
with less than 50 users access is a cake walk. Cheap development, easy
portability, simple licensing and best of all the database is usually
natively supported on windows machines.



Of course, i have seen some abhorent access databases, some almost as
bad as some of the Oracle or MS SQL databases, who's only saving grace
was that no-one else in the company could SEE how bad the database
structure was.



as for this job offer, bah, i'd go in just for the laugh

I believe that even with vba and access and javascript and visual basic people can create great applications. It's not the tool that is used that counts, it is the understanding of the person using it. I can program great crap in MSVC++ because I never ever used those MFC things and only ever learnt C on a dos machine at school, yet (if I may say do myself) I can do some really great thing with Javascript.

And I do not look down upon those using a more limited (in the eyes of some) languages like VB. I think they do the best they can with what the language offers. I myself am at a job using VB.Net, and I enjoy working with it. I've had a go at C#, but I've become so used to VB.Net over the last 3 years that to mee, C# looks like a step down in readability.

Drak

Care to elaborate?



Let me tell a story...  A
while back, maybe 1997 or so, I worked for a company here in Canberra,
Australia, that developed some Windows software.  A few of my
cow-orkers went along to a presentation by Microsoft Australia, where a
panel of Microsoft execs and senior techies took questions from the
audience.  People kept asking this question or that about MS
Access, and whoever they asked kept hand-waving and trying to
dodge.  After a while it was painfully obvious that something
needed to be said, so the Big Boss, whoever he was at the time, stood
up, cap in hand, and explained:  MS Access was created so that Mom
& Pop could keep track of recipes, Christmas card lists, stuff like
that.  It was never meant to be a serious database; it never could be
a serious database, and deep down in their black, Satanic hearts,
Microsoft really wished all the people who thought otherwise would just
quietly switch to FoxPro and stop hurting themselves.



It makes sense.  Access is a toy database, friendly and usable and
utterly, utterly unscaleable.  The fact that people have, on
occasion, made it work beyond its origins is a tribute to their skill
-- or a damning indictment of their ignorance and naivety; who can
say?  But it's wrong to build careers around it, in the same way
it would be wrong to build careers around BrainF**k or INTERCAL or any
other toy.

smitty_one_each:

They brought me this .mdb on a CD because it was a multi-megabyte nightmare.  First thing I did was use Tools | Database Utilities | Compact and Repair database, and this 800lb gorilla-pig was suddenly 80k.
But that's not as interesting as the time I was handed a bug report database that they were emailing around for a testing event (a WTF in its own right).  For every event they had separate tables, queries, and reports, for an absolutely sick total object count.  WTF, indeed.

Sounds like you know where I work ? Sending out an Access DB with a large number of tables, queries, forms and reports to some 200 towns, expecting them to enter data and send it back. After which we have to merge those 200 into 1 (Hey, we need to make a budget!)

PS: Why can't I use the 'Delete' button in this editor ?

What is it about HR departments that makes them do this?



Two other companies I've worked for have had nightmare Access databases
and hideous, slow, nasty VB interfaces (or bizarre spreadsheet
export/update/import arrangements) - despite in house IT departments
who could have whipped up something much prettier, faster, and more
secure in a week (in  PHP/MySQL,  Java/Oracle or anything in
between).



It's almost as though they don't trust the IT department (6)

Huh.. OK - assume that (6) was the little devil emoticon....

Buff:

Huh.. OK - assume that (6) was the little devil emoticon....

Oh, I think its more appropriate as a footnote:

Buff:

It's almost as though they don't trust the IT department (6)

See? :)



-dZ.

Heheh.. maybe it's a security thing actually - We all recoil in horror
the moment we hear about it - keeping us away from all the secret
salary stuff :P

3) Excel. Expert capability including use of pivot tables, macros
and charting. The candidate will need to be able to create and modify
macros.



I normally don't post, but had when I read this. "Expert" - LMAO!

Anonymous:

Please tell me Im not the only one who has heard of MSDE?

never heard of it before, but a google-search revealed it (apart from
Maryland State Department of Education) was some kind of microsoft
SQL-thing. I'm wondering.. is that wise? :)

It's SQL Server, with a trivial limit on a feature or two, free of
charge.  For all practical purposes, it is SQL Server.  Most
businesses will not run into the limitations.  When I learned
about it, I had to wonder why more people don't take advantage of
it.  I think the reason is, most people have never heard of it.



I don't care what anyone says to the contrary, Access SUCKS and BLOWS simultaneously.

Woohoo!  We have a new slogan:

A couple of questions which I feel need asked

Which versions of the products, did they pre-date msde/mde

How much was offered for the post

I know lots of people who would relish a challenge like this but most would have the proviso that it was to stabilise and then move to a better solution.

Lots of recruiters mention metrics like 100000s of lines of code, and objects etc.. to draw people in.

smitty_one_each:

Care to elaborate?

Their focus is now their new tools that work with SQL Server. I can't recall the product names at the moment, though Visual was part of it.

Of course they aren't going to stop making Access just yet, so Access devs don't have to worry yet.


(And why do I get all that HTML in my posts??)

>How much was offered for the post

 

Second this. I'd love to fix it at my hourly rates- as long as we do it right, from specifications and treat it as a real SW dev project.

And no, Access/Excel are not acceptable.

Somehow, I can't fit into the same clothing I wore when I was 10. They were fine for +- a year or so but I've outgrown them, and SW is just the same.

Buff:

What is it about HR departments that makes them do this?

Two other companies I've worked for have had nightmare Access databases and hideous, slow, nasty VB interfaces (or bizarre spreadsheet export/update/import arrangements) - despite in house IT departments who could have whipped up something much prettier, faster, and more secure in a week (in  PHP/MySQL,  Java/Oracle or anything in between).

It's almost as though they don't trust the IT department (6)

I think the end product has little or nothing to do with the technology that was used.  If they made a mess in Access/Excel they will make a mess in any product/technology, they are incompetent and will continue to be incompetent.  The real WTF is the company, their policies and their attitude towards the job.  You cannot make statements like "High expectations for zero mistakes" or "Must deliver before proposed deadlines".  That is pure BS and it is certainly not a company I wish to work for.  I bet the majority of the "business" "logic" built into this system is designed so that the company comes out on top and the employee gets sweet nothing, a very good sign of a f$cked company.

 

Surfed to Microsoft, after clicking on several "Page Not  Found" results, found the FAQ at

http://www.microsoft.com/sql/msde/howtobuy/msdeuse.asp

Limits seem to be 2gb size and 25 users, and must own some other
development products or full blown SQLServer before deploying on a
machine on which Access2000 is not installed.

bat:

Access is a toy database, friendly and usable and utterly, utterly unscaleable

I was one of those people who built my career around Access. Then I discovered Java and went to considerable trouble to make the move, career-wise.

This organisation I was at was moving from a mainframe onto HP-UX/Oracle. Huge redevelopment. Someone noticed that the new system did not include a way for the customers to get reports, a serious shortcoming (as in "business-wrecking") for the kind of business it was. Customers need their FBT reports for taxation purposes.

The boss called me into the office. I was an access programmer who did little ad-hoc things for various people in the business. I told him that the right way to do it was in PL/SQL integrated with the rest of the development, but I could definitely do in Access and get some sort of result.

Jesus.

I built this sprawling thingy to generate the reports. We discovered that Access did not execute quickly enough to do the monthy reports for all the customers, so I built a system whereby multiple copies could run simultaneously and share the workload. At monthly report time, after hours, we would log onto every PC in the building and run this dog.

I worked, well, as long as I was there to nurse it (I'm so ashamed). They sold the business and got a new boss in. Meanwhile I had decided not to renew my contract on account of I was starting to recognise specific customer account codes. I tried to explain to the new boss that someone would need to take over from me. They hired an access programmer. I understand he quit after three weeks.

Anyway. The business collapsed (although not on account of this alone). They broke it up and sold it. Somewhere, Gordon Gecko is counting his money. Now I do J2EE and am much happier.

Oh yeah. The company was here in Canberra, Australia. Cheers mate.

That's the most frightening sentence in that entire post.  (OK, OK, I'm an anti-Java bigot.  I admit it.)



Thank the gods I've never gotten into anything that bad.  I
usually just dig my feet in and keep reciting my mantras until the
bosses give in: "If you don't have time to do it right, when will you
have time to do it over?" "Good. Fast. Cheap. Choose any two." "No
battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy."



Mind you, there are times when no amount of stubbornness or mantras
will make up for the fact that management are clueless.  That's
why I'm glad the IT market is so strong at the moment.

Anonymous:

bat:

Access is a toy database, friendly and usable and utterly, utterly unscaleable

I was one of those people who built my career around Access. Then I discovered Java and went to considerable trouble to make the move, career-wise.

This organisation I was at was moving from a mainframe onto HP-UX/Oracle. Huge redevelopment. Someone noticed that the new system did not include a way for the customers to get reports, a serious shortcoming (as in "business-wrecking") for the kind of business it was. Customers need their FBT reports for taxation purposes.

The boss called me into the office. I was an access programmer who did little ad-hoc things for various people in the business. I told him that the right way to do it was in PL/SQL integrated with the rest of the development, but I could definitely do in Access and get some sort of result.

Jesus.

I built this sprawling thingy to generate the reports. We discovered that Access did not execute quickly enough to do the monthy reports for all the customers, so I built a system whereby multiple copies could run simultaneously and share the workload. At monthly report time, after hours, we would log onto every PC in the building and run this dog.

I worked, well, as long as I was there to nurse it (I'm so ashamed). They sold the business and got a new boss in. Meanwhile I had decided not to renew my contract on account of I was starting to recognise specific customer account codes. I tried to explain to the new boss that someone would need to take over from me. They hired an access programmer. I understand he quit after three weeks.

Anyway. The business collapsed (although not on account of this alone). They broke it up and sold it. Somewhere, Gordon Gecko is counting his money. Now I do J2EE and am much happier.

Oh yeah. The company was here in Canberra, Australia. Cheers mate.

jeez ever hear of Crystal Reports or Oracle Reports???

 

 

You have a point Rick - as the newest programmer in a dept. I have observed that all the "fun" legacy WTF jobs go to the top guy in the dept!  How lucky is he?!

Seems like TPTB (the ones with the authority), are always the ones without the knowledge required to authorized anything (like upgrades and migrations).  It's the money people.