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Admin
This is where I work except it's with any and all emails.
Admin
When my software tells me there is an update available, I always carefully read the release notes.
Usually it leads to the conclusion there is no reason to update because they always fix the bugs I don't encounter
Admin
How come the frist comment is held for moderation? Didn't the poster red the release notes
Admin
@DQ: of course. Any sufficiently complex software has lots of bugs, but the most visible bugs are fixed before the first release, so the bugs fixed by updates are very rare, often so obscure that no one would ever think of a test case causing the bug. Still, it's nice that even those obscure bugs are getting fixed.
Admin
Release notes are for reference. You shouldn't ever expect people to actually read them, as 99%+ of the contents will be utterly irrelevant.
Admin
"Two hours later, Janine, the product manager, stopped by his cube. ... Half an hour later, ... constant interruptions."
Oh come on. You've got vast swathes of time to yourself here.
Admin
The WTF here is simply human nature and 21st Century organizational behavior. Everybody is short sighted, everybody is underqualified, everybody is snowed under by a firehose of email and other message formats, and everybody is task saturated. As a result they're situationally stupid and situationally borderline or fully insane.
It's a wonder business as a whole hasn't ground to an absolute halt under the onslaught.
See also: Thrashing, virtual memory.
Admin
So, will there be an article today?
Admin
Reading is FUNdamental
Admin
It's right here: https://thedailywtf.com/articles/sweet-release
Admin
Oh thank God for a Jane Bailey post! Like fresh air, it is!
It was looking like remyporter.com was having an aneurism...
Admin
It's the Pareto's law of nature: 20% of writers posts 80% of the articles
Admin
Thanks for your support! I had to reduce my article frequency for a bit because my dayjob has me working super long hours, but I should be able to submit more regularly once I finish changing jobs.
Admin
The product manager is unaware of the changes going into the product? I'm not even talking about the release notes, it seems she's clueless about what her team is even working on. That's a solid sign of dysfunction right there - either she's got a bunch of rogue developers doing whatever they want, or she's got a bunch of rogue managers and/or customers dropping requirements directly on the devs. Either way, she's obviously not keeping herself up to date on the team's status.
Admin
TRWTF is organizations which accept "some executive-type wants a change, let's rush it through," as these guys were clearly ready to do.
Admin
TRWTF is dumping crap unasked in the user's Documents folder when it belongs in AppData.
Admin
I think I'd sort of like the stakeholders who are responsible for releases to read the release notes.
Just my theory, here. You would obviously disagree with me.
Admin
The Cdr is describing what is. The Sole is describing what is desired. There is no conflict, only a wide chasm.
Admin
Yep, always love it when I send out an e-mail about a new feature, explaining step by step how to use it, and I immediately get a ton of calls saying "Hey, could you show me how to use that cool new feature you mentioned in your e-mail?" and I'm like.... If you keep reading the e-mail there are step by step instructions further down. "oh! I got too excited and didn't see those."
And of course my favorite. "Hey, program X just popped up an error." Ok, let me remote in and take a look. "Oh, it's already gone." Did it go away on it's own or did you click something? "I'm not sure. I think I might have clicked something. Do you think I'm OK to just keep working?" Do you at least remember what the message said? "No, I didn't really look at it. I just clicked on it." Well, what were you trying to do when it popped up? "I was trying to work." Doing what? "Trying to finish project X before the customer gets here in 10 minutes." Yes, but what program? "Microsoft." mute invents new curse words, pounds head on desk a few times. unmute Well, if everything seems to be working fine now, just let me know if it happens again, but make sure it's still on the screen. I can't really diagnose a problem if I can't see the error.
Admin
You start dumping user data into Documents once you find out users take their computer to fix at tech shops who will happily format their hard drives, backing up only two folders: "Documents" and "Desktop"...
Admin
Here's some topical news regarding interruptions at work: https://www.sciencealert.com/getting-interrupted-at-work-raises-stress-levels-in-weird-ways-we-don-t-even-realise
Quick TL,DR: Getting repeatedly interrupted raises the body's stress levels. But also, getting interrupted in-person creates MUCH more stress than getting interrupted by email/text/Slack/etc.
Admin
Developers and support shouldn't be the same team.
Admin
The release notes would be read - and paid attention to - if Mark used more bold and italics.
Admin
Wait, this took place on a Monday?
October 31, 2019 was a Thursday...
Admin
We have the exact problem with our in house software. Even though we have added a 'report a bug on this page' functionality (so users can report an issue on the exact page they encounter it including as much metadata as possible for ease of reproduction), they still email with 'hi I god an error on the system can you fix it?' with no context or indication which part and/or page they was on or what they were trying to do...
Yazeran
Admin
Welcome back Jane!
Well, that was a sweet reminder of my former work. It was quite awful. On top, the boss who saw that I wrote an email, but did not care to read it but directly came to my workplace to talk about it: "I saw you wrote me an email. What is it about?"
Why did I bother write it then, ey?
Admin
The real WTF here is putting autosaves into the user specific folder. Yes, I know bloody everyone does it these days but it's extremely annoying. Not only does it burry my user folder with useless crap folders from every program and game I have but backing up or removing the bloody thing takes extra steps as well. Who ever thought that up first should be taken behind the shed and shot.
Admin
"It's about how frequently I get interrupted when I'm trying to focus on work, and how badly it impacts my productivity."
There's a serious underlying problem here that isn't entirely the manager's fault: different people have legitimately different preferences about communications. Some people have trouble extracting emotional cues from text; they need the markers you get from body language and tone-of-voice to feel like they really got to grips with the content. Others, like me, hate the way that spoken conversation tends to produce the appearance of consensus... which evaporates five minutes after the group breaks up, because it turns out everyone heard the conclusion differently.
The conclusion I've come to is that, with some people, I just need to budget some additional time to talk them through it. Conversely, they need to accept that they're going to receive an encyclopaedic email describing exactly what is going on, that this will act as the terms of reference for my subsequent work, and that if they don't bother to proofread it then I won't be held responsible for any later confusion.
Admin
Who told you that the only way to get diagnostic information is via the end user? Any development team that can't figure out the error without asking the user probably has fifty times as many defects as they're aware of.
At a previous job, we installed a global error handler that recorded all the error details we would ever need, plus a screenshot of the app. People would still report errors to us... and we would notice that a significant number of them were quite wrong about the specifics of what they encountered.
Admin
I liked this story. They don't all have to have code blocks.
Admin
Why isn't Mark more happy? He got feedback like "Good work", "Good man", "Thanks Mark, you're the best". Sounds like he should get some steak for his bear.
Admin
Then use the Quantuas reply:
"Yes, we have fixed an error."
Admin
*Sorry I meant to say he should have some steak with his beer. Well deserved, anyway