Earlier, I had a very long week which I gave comment on (see "That was the week that was...") And I keep coming back to that, and wonder what lessons did I learn then. Or re-learn, for that matter.
Several things really:
Among other things, it pays to work smart, not work hard.
When the going gets tough, your team has to pull together.
There are days when even your best effort will not bear fruit.
Give your best effort, and it will be appreciated.
You have to enjoy what you're doing to even be doing it in the first place.
When I joined this company, I was promised that we will have fun. And that we will work hard, but we will also work smart. We don't need to put in so much overtime and that we don't have overtime pay. Because we were trying to beat a deadline, I've forgotten those things he said. At that point, he has also forgotten about them. We did a recap afterwards, and we promised to stick to that premise.
That week, even members of the team not directly involved with the project pushed and pulled and helped in every way possible to get it done. We dropped everything to get that project out the door. And in the end, we still didn't have a workable program. It took about two weeks more of work by two people to make it workable and presentable. And even then, there's still a big hole in the program (or a series of small holes) which conservative estimates put as additional two to three weeks work by a single programmer. We gave our best, and it was not good enough. We were not able to get it out the door.
However, the effort was appreciated by the company owner. He tested the live site personally, and it stank, but we didn't hear any bad words about it. He gave us time to finish it and get over and done with. Hell, we even went out bowling that Friday evening. The whole company (about 60-70 people) went bowling and we had catered buffet and open bar at the Rockwell bowling alley.
One reason we were adamant about sticking with that project and pulling together as a team is because we are IT people who don't like loose ends. And, besides, we enjoy what we do. For all the gripes about our "failure" we truly enjoyed that week. And given the circumstances, we'd do it all over again, even if we know we're going to fall short of the delivery. Even if the project did not come to fruition, we tried to blow that sucker off, for all we were worth. And we enjoyed it. And the owner saw the effort and he enjoyed himself that he saw we were working our butts off.
It does not make sense. It frustrates me, but at least we enjoyed ourselves, and we were greatly appreciated.
Someday, the program might even be bug-free.
--andoy
23 May 2005
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