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Admin
Some comment.
Admin
Didn't you get an estimate for that first?
Admin
First (after the estimate)
Admin
Admin
So is part 2 tomorrow or what? It was just starting to get good, what happened next?
Admin
It's like IT Mad Libs.
Admin
Something something something, dark side.
Admin
Surely since they are charging 250$ an hour they must be serious and competent. Right? RIGHT?????
Admin
There is something weird about his email.
Admin
Surely since they are charging $250 an hour they must be "something."
Admin
Admin
You never get something for nothing.
Admin
Actually, at a high level, I was hoping you knew what happened next.
Admin
I estimate that poor Zach's name changed to Jeff at some point.
Admin
The user will navigate to the Billing tab and as the page loads, OMG PONIES will EPIC FAIL to determine if the invoice is available for viewing. If it is available for viewing, then ROFLCOPTER will be available for the user to click on to display the invoice.
Admin
Admin
In a place I worked, we had an outside firm from the subcontinent that had some "interface with the client" incentive. Without fail, every developer would call us once with some question. Usually it was something stupid, like asking for confirmation that something written was actually correct (e.g. please confirm that line endings in Windows must be "\x0d\x0a"). Sometimes they just waited for me to say something, anything, and then hung up, no "thank you" or "good bye", I guess task accomplished!
Admin
I'm guessing that Jeff is his director, who forwarded the email to Zach...
Admin
I can guess - missed deadlines, requests for more money, compromises, skipped features, sub-standard product, final payment denied, ongoing lawsuit, no champion because Zack is no longer working for them, product forgotten, time elapses, repeat with new features...
It's not even 10:00 and I need a drink, this industry is so depressing.
Admin
No, the email went to his boss, who I'm assuming is named Jeff.
Admin
I would personally add a MegaQuit() to the Billing tab.
Admin
I mean:
I would, personally, add a MegaQuit() to the Billing tab.
Slightly differend emphasis. I'm obviously not going to go over there and add it myself. I just have a personal preference toward that function (good times).
captcha: nibh - Not Intentionally Being Honest
Admin
You will get something with a button and if you click it, it will do something. And it only costs $250 per hour to build it! Who could refuse such an offer?
Admin
WTF is a "presentment"?
Admin
Hell; that looks like the first cut at a "requirements doc" for 90% of the projects I work on.
Admin
well well, isn't this just Brillant. Kevin has determined that the the reason it was missing was beecause of FILE_NOT_FOUND as this was an embedded system. No wonder people called him a quibus
Admin
Sorry, this WTF lost all credibility at that point. In The Real WTF World, Zach would have been named "Internal Project Lead", designated as sole point of contact for the contract dev team (and therefore answering the phone at 2 PM Indian Subcontinent time), and made completely responsible for both the continuous debacle and the ultimate utter failure of the project.
Admin
Believe it or not, copied verbatim from the submission.
Admin
Admin
No TV and no beer make Homer something something...
Admin
Like a treatment only more of a surprise.
Admin
Hi, this is the submitter. Embarrassingly, Mark is correct. I did make this type.
My exact submission was:
Admin
Actually, I've seen it work that way, where the contractor is a close, personal friend of the director (or worse, a nephew). The director introduces the contractor to the team, tells the team to give the contractor all support possible, and cuts him a nice, fat check. After the contractor leaves, usually what happens is the poor developers get stuck fixing whatever garbage the contractor introduced.
Admin
Go crazy?
Admin
Where is the WTF exactly?
Oh I see - the vendor is quite moronically actually asking the customer for their requirements, rather than making them up.
That must be it... right?
Admin
Don't mind if I do!!!
Admin
I believe it's Buzzwordian for "presentation".
Admin
You see it's situations like this where I pop a few aspirin, and start updating my resume. It not only gets my mind off of the impending #%@storm I'm going to be required to clean up, but helps me focus on the good things I've done in the past year or so.
Also, when the inevitable happens, I'm ready to get the heck out of dodge. A useful exercise all around.
Admin
Having been on both sides of the fence here is the mindsets.
3rd Party: The customer never knows what they need and usually want something they don't need. We will build it the way they think they want it and then we can hit them with change orders when they realize what they want is not what they need but they will need something else to make the system work for them.
In-House: We don't want know stinking 3rd party developers coming in here and building something for us. Pay me $250/hr and I can build exactly what we need. We know our systems way better then they ever will and they will only give us about 80% of what we need.
I got your something right here!!!!
Admin
Profit!
Admin
Admin
For $250 an hour, the vendor should tell me what my requirements are.
Admin
In finance, "presentment" is when something like a bill or a check is officially offered for approval, payment or redemption. In this case, presumable on 4/6 the contractor was going to give the company an official, 100% final, pay-this-up-front invoice.
Admin
Yeah. I've always blamed my professional stagnation on the fact that none of my uncles/aunts is a director in a position to steer lucrative contracts my way.
Fate sux.
Admin
Sure.
[image]Admin
Put the bat down, Margie. Margie? Give me the bat...
Admin
Admin
I immediately remmembered how Don LaFontaine ("that announcer guy from the movies") said "Payback!" in one commercial...
Admin
Admin
Brillig! Seriously though, that vendor situation was pretty awful.
I think the whole mess could have been avoided if Zach had cooked the virtual books a little. He could have probably gotten the cost of in-house down to $0/hr by pointing out the in-house team was going to get paid without regard to what project they were on. Of course, it could be argued the company might lose money because they couldn't sell IT's services externally, but that's when you include those $250/hr estimates. Make them for coordinating with the vendor and the estimated months of getting their product to do what it was supposed to do in the first place.
The advantage he has here is that the in-house team has been estimated to be used for the product in both scenarios. As such, the temporary loss of IT resources can be reasonably argued to be a non-cost. If you bet the "making the vendor's product work" time will be higher, then it costs more to go with the vendor. An estimate of negative cost (more accurately, loss prevention) would have been a better sale for management.
This estimation would only be dishonest if Zach failed to include his reasoning in regards to how he came up with a less-than-zero in-house cost of development. It would be even easier to make that argument if the company had had past troubles with a vendor failing to live up to all their sweet talk. Management might be a little more pliable upon being reminded of the last time IT was left cleaning up the mission-critical "something," missing the "some such" vital to aligning paradigms, instead of being available for making the company money.