Nope. Never said that. I think the stress of your job is affecting your comprehension skills. 
Brush up your resume = update it.
Get the hell out of there = as soon as you possibly can without screwing yourself financially and professionally.
May? Honey, life isn’t a dress rehearsal. This is it. There is a job out there where you will be appreciated. Go find it.
You know, any time I feel like writing a rant about my boss and how he continually comments on my tea-drinking (he’s a Mormon and caffeine really wigs him out…even the watching of other people consume it) or the irritating outside attorneys on the transactions I structure…I always remember this place and the fact that some of you have it so much worse.
I read your post and it was almost like being back at work (though I don’t code, I fix stuff). The motto of the support department, until recently, was ‘Well, just figure it out!’.
Need to know how the software is supposed to work? Just figure it out! Nope, there is no documentation, your smart, you can figure it out!
Need to know which DBs hold that data? Well, just figure it out! (This is usually possible but it is a pain. Occasionally you have to guess, which is time consuming and some of the time the data spans multiple DBs*)
Need to know how the data transfer works between systems at different sites? Just figure it out!
The customer wants documentation on how that module works? Just tell them how it works. If you don’t know how it works, just figure it out and tell the customer! We ain’t got no sticking documentation!
Our software rocks. It is pretty damned good. Our documentation, on the other hand, leaves a LOT to be desired. Our training? Well it is basically non-existant. For example, out of the eight products we support I have recieved training on one. And that one piece of software has 21 modules. I recieved training on about half of those. One of the modules is very heavy on some very specialized accounting. Two people have recieved training on this module and no one else has a clue.
The thing that kills me about this is that if they took the time to make some decent documentation we would have way more time to work on really hard problems instead of wasting large amounts of time chasing down information that should be trivial to find.
On the bright side my old boss retired. She was cool but I came to the conclusion that her boss was pushing her extremely hard without giving her the resources she needed to get stuff done. Our new boss is cool, isn’t scared to page a senior developer after hours to ask questions and is working to get a lot of these issues resolved.
The fun thing is that we are releasing an SQL product pretty soon and we are not going to get SQL training. I’ll get past this w/o much of a problem but most of my co-workers have never dealt with SQL.
I agree with the others, look for another gig if you can.
I was looking but the new boss has gotten stuff done and shit has improved quite a bit. I’ll still keep an eye out but for the time being things are cool.
I feel for ya man.
Slee
*Want a really fun problem to troubleshoot? Try troubleshooting a report that puts out bad numbers when there is absolutely NO information on how the report is compiling the data and what equations it is using.
BTDT from the user end… I couldn’t look at the code, wouldn’t have understood it anyway, had to figure out how to get the program to do exactly what I needed with no documentation (or worse, mistaken documentation) and of course best by yesterday.
Was fun but only because I already had the lowest possible job and the only possible penalty was firing me 
Not much to be scared of.
It’s how I became a SAP consultant… by being the end user who told consultants how the system worked.
I wish they would give me some troubleshooting work. That is where I absolutely shine! Unfortunately this is mostly grunt development work. In any case, the problem isn’t the work, it’s the attitude, the impossible expectations, and the miscommunication.
Different style, but damn the OP is in spirit with mine. How did I miss this one?!?
Anyway, cerberus, ever hear of PeopleSoft, ServiceWare or SharePoint? That’s what we’re dealing with. In software support they seem to be a greater hinderance to support than the end-user usually is.
The best situation is where you get a dozen e-mails a day stating new policies that can be found by using the search function of the main app. Then you use the search function of said app with the keywords stated in the update, only to find that it doesn’t match “search criteria”. Get some clarification? HAH! You can’t get a response because they’re updating the new policies/procedures. :smack:
Can I get an Amen! on this? “Modules” are one of the most aggravating words in use among managers and supervisors that have no idea what the actual job entails. It’s right up there with “moving forward”, “win-win-win situation” and “optimizing personnel productivity”. In our company a module can be either a unix script run on a system, or the piss-poor documentation written about the script.
Or it can mean the one-page trouble-shooting steps that almost always require a second-page made up on the spot to resolve the problem. Will they think about updating the template for resolution and steps needed? Hell no. THat would actually require them to so something that pertains to the job at hand. If it doesn’t involve dreaming up new corporate-speak and worthless “motivational” e-mails, they can’t be arsed to deal with it.
Oh, and Og help you if you get creative to solve a problem that doesn’t follow established steps. In my company, you won’t be diciplined for it, but it’s frowned upon. I had one store that was facing shelling out $5000 for a new system because the previous tech (one that was given the promotion I was denied) missed an incredibly simple step.
About 5 minutes into the call, I figured out what the problem was and told the owner what to do to correct it. Saved the guy 5 grand and was given a light rebuke for making a “Senior Tech” look bad.
Can’t win sometimes. And sorry for any seeming hijack. Good luck to ya.
Oh boy can I identify with that. In my last job I was known, and praised, for my creative solutions to otherwise insoluble problems. That’s probably because we were developing and supporting solutions for outside customers. If they wanted it a certain way then they got it that way come hell or high water and procedures be damned. I used hacks that would receive looks of disbelief (or laughs and eye rolls) if I even suggested them in this job.
In this job, I’m simply part of internal IT for a company with a non-IT product. Following procedures is the important thing - whether those procedures have been made clear or not.
Today a problem occurred because I misinterpreted an ambiguous and poorly worded e-mail from Mr. manager. I know intellectually that my thought processes were perfectly reasonable given the circumstances. I also know that it’s unlikely that I’ll ever convince him of that since it would involve his admitting he was at fault. 