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Admin
I worked at Circuit City from mid 2006 until the chain closed. For the entire time I worked there, a new point of sale system was "just around the corner." Then they scrapped that new system and started making a NEW new system. It's also, uh, just around the corner. I don't think it's ever going to show up now...
Admin
Admin
There was a way to deploy this without making his boss look bad; this wasn't it.
Making your boss look good is a bonus, not a requirement. A boss's job is to make his team productive, not to look good.
Admin
Admin
Admin
Because they can point to the box and show that they "relate to the employees" (or whatever the buzz phrase this year is). But any given suggestion necessarily is a criticism of some manager's policy or idea - and some managers aren't open to being told they've made a mistake. (Alternatively, I've seen places where this sort of thing becomes ammunition in senior meetings, a la "you can't complain about my department, because wave page obviously you have problems in your own")
Admin
It did show up - after all, Circuit City re-opened, online and I think they even reopened a store or two. Thus the POS system in use has to be that new one, or maybe it's the new new new one...
(Mind you, other than the name and logo, the two are not the same - the old one wound up operations, and some company bought out the name).
Admin
Christian is an idiot. He could have sold his system to other companies and quit his crappy job.
Admin
Did you read the article at all?
The guy wrote an script that generated bar codes out of email content - hardly a change in the ordering system. Unless of course you consider using a printed email on a wooden table part of a "ordering system".
There is just no reason whatsoever to call improving the process "sitting around and bad mouthing" - Your attitude is precisely that of a corporate drone: Don't questing the Process, lick up to your bosses regardless of how stupid they are, and maybe one day you'll get promoted to that administrative position with a "Manager" in the title and no real productive work required.
I'll take being an engineer any day over being a "Manager", thank you very much.
Admin
Admin
Of course it is great when employees think of ways to improve processes. But in my opinion, the behaviour of Christian was not very professional.
After building the application (or possibly even before) he should have sat down with the management to explain them the solution. That way the management could have implemented it in the whole branch (or not if they don't think it is worthwile).
You don't improve processes by keeping the solution to yourself or sharing it with other people without the knowledge and approval of management.
This has nothing to do with being a manager drone but simply showing some respect for management and being open for criticism, even if the management decides against your idea for some reason.
Admin
Three years later and the new system is still "just around the corner". In that time they managed to open 4 more branches, all using the same ancient system, and screw up their webshop even more.
The chain is in Europe only, actually only in a small country in Europe, so chances are low you get to ever meet them.
I loved the comments about "why not keep it for yourself". It's a bit though when the whole setup is one large counter with the people (like me) having each their own place along it and the place where all the orders are dropped off after printing, is right next to you. So keeping anything private is pretty much out of the question.
Also I couldn't just do it. I got the printed versions only. I told my branch manager initially what I had in mind and he forwarded me a couple of orders so I could work on it. But to make it work, he would have to forward the mails to a special address which then would convert the mail and send it back to the original sender (so other shops would also have been able to use it). Without access to the mails, I was unable to just to it on my own.
Still makes me think large WTF's when I think back on this.
Admin
Enjoy engineering that intermittent error in the system (what? some cowboy has been scanning in order numbers with hyphens in them? how did that get into the system?) Remember that no matter how awesome your code is, it's the sales and customer support teams that get the bills paid. Your group is what we manangers like to refer to as a 'cost center.'
Admin
I would tend to agree that this was really a possibly good interim solution but pursued in entirely the wrong direction.
The larger any business gets the more you have to use integrated teams to examine business processes and then employ the right people and communicate out long or short term solutions.
Building something yourself, putting it into production and most grievously not letting your boss know is a career limiting move. It's not even clever. Yes, perhaps he/she would nix it, or take credit for it - but guess what, your an employee, not an entity to yourself! Let alone the fact this long wolf behavior cannot benefit the other stores..
Admin
The real WTF is asking about a raise in what apparently is a wage-labor position. Wage employees (in the US) don't look for "raises." They look for promotion into a salaried position.
Admin
"creation center"
Although I am responding to a troll, without people actually creating things, there would be nothing to deliver. Fast, responsive service is even strangely kind of a "product".
The salespeople at my company sell things all the time that don't actually physically exist at the time of sale. Which is crazy, but then it's a mad rush to try and actually make it and deliver it by their made-up calendar date.
Think of the quadrillions of dollars salespeople could make if they would only ship boxes filled with air back and forth to each other. The next cost-saving improvement would be to eliminate the efficiencies of the boxes altogether.
Admin
Oh, Larry, PUH-LEEEEEEEEEEEEEEZE
Admin
These days all kinds of electronic systems exists, presumably to make your life happier and easier, it's just they don't work within your environment, so I was wondering to whom do they sell in the end ? Paperwork is utterly boring, I feel sorry for the guy from the story - being a manager requires more than one brain cell ....
Admin
you're an idiot.
Admin
Deammmmnn! So true!
Admin
Shiiit... You are missin the point. In some of corporate America... One point of failure in a production system that can't afford down time == hemmoraging money out your ass.
Granted, this guy would never get that far in our systems.. But the point was made about people doing stuff that they aren't suppposed to in a domain that certainly isn't theirs. It's fun to think you are just that awesome, it is. But it SUCKS when someone's awesomeness is the cause of a billing system gone haywire and millions of dollars in fines.
Admin
And then all the scripts I gotta write to clean up that shit. Damn... I like job security, but I'd rather be writing code that doesn't deal with cleaning up projectile vomit off of production for the next day.
Admin
I really want to be That Guy and point out that this in no way modified the system. It was an external application that could be used, or not used, to reduce the amount of time it took to hand-enter orders, it didn't eliminate the need for hand-entering orders.
If a barcode didn't properly scan, or contained invalid characters, all the employee had to do was either retype the invalid barcode or correct it. It said right there in the WTF that he still had to go back and verify the order to ensure it was correct.
If the program vanished from existence weeks later, they'd go back to typing in the items.
Yes, employees should avoid modifying existing systems in ways that might break them, but this was merely a more expedient method for hand-entering orders, not a wild modification of the back-end.
Admin
You don't "show respect for management". You show them all the contempt you can possibly give'em without losing your job.