The rats are leaving!

I don't get it. I had to grab Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir and pour my heart out. I mean Henry has an amazing vision, we are pulling in large and small customers, despite the economy and we are executing against the plan.

So why are some many people leaving us? It makes no sense. I understand that the layoffs were tough and we all lost somebody we knew or saw when we were making our latte's in the morning. But its a constant stream and they are some of the top of the tree engineers, people I hope to become one day.

I hear the same excuses, been here 3 years and burnt out, need stability, need a new challenge etc. It cuts me to the bone that they could turn their backs on the team but mostly turning their backs on Henry. He's amazing and does not deserve that and needs our support!

I think the company line is that they are all pissed at the pay cut and could not be bought off with a little more stock. I mean, I got stock as well, but they don't start vesting for 18 months, Henry said that the board would not approve a faster vesting schedule. But I mean, when we go IPO as Henry is still talking about, stock is going to be better than cash!

So let them leave, it means my stock gets to vest and there's does not and when we go IPO I will be laughing all the way to PF Changs baby!

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more drinking!)
Shots : 0 (no more drinking!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 180 lbs

Mega Enterprise!

After the disappointment of the Shopping Cart being canned I was switched to the "Mega Enterprise" initiative. Basically what we are doing is slim down the product to focus on the Mega Enterprises, you know the Morgan Stanley, GE, Countrywide Financial etc. Its a bit like Salesforce, not everybody needs all that complexity and customization. We slim down what we have to appeal to parts of their business and then grow from within. Trojan horse on steroids. Makes sense, lets sell what we have rather than build what we don't need.

So I'm actually working for the platform team and for Euro-Fool. Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir is super suspicious since he is the enemy, but a few weeks here and I have found they are a decent bunch. They have a social every Friday, bread, cheese, roasted garlic etc. They used to do wine before prohibition started.

Not a single American in the team, but will not hold that against them.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more drinking!)
Shots : 0 (no more drinking!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 181 lbs

The shopping cart has been canned!

What a crap week. For months I have been working on this son-of-a-gun feature. Late nights, then without dinner and now without drinks. Dealing with the changes from the HaHa, two weeks to deploy and then the QA bugs right up to the day before the release lockdown.

But i made it.

Too f**king late for me. Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir came back from a meeting with Constantine. Apparently American City Bank are going with their existing vendor for the shopping store and since there is little or no IP in shopping we are switching to Google. That's what I f**king said to Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir before I started! There was never any IP in this and the Applications teams were way behind schedule (no change there). Why was I killing myself? Oh because Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir insisted that the architecture changes get done now and pushed into production ASAP. F**king moron.

Next week I'm going to the store to get a can of tartan paint...

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more drinking!)
Shots : 0 (no more drinking!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 182 lbs

Beam me up scotty!

Its been an exciting week. I finally got my code out of development and into the hands of QA. The HaHa gave me some serious re-work to make sure that Ops would sign off on the design. I was also super lucky that Dave did not make me go through the new HoMo process, but I'm looking forward to my first one of those.

So basic sanity testing is done, mocked up all the backend external interfaces so that QA can inject the bad and the good. Provided a front end mock for the Applications teams so they can build without the need for having the whole software stack. All looking sweet. All very test driven development, all very agile.

Next step was to get Engineering Services to deploy to a QA environment in the lab. Mother-of-Jesus what an episode that turned out to be and we are still not finished.

Here's what I had to do. A few months ago I had to submit an email which Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir approved. This then got translated onto a cocktail napkin (I'm not joking). This was then pinned to the wall in some sort of timeline sequence, an agile planning wall so to speak. I'm not sure what happens when they reach the end of the wall, they must wrap around or go back to the beginning or something.

Then, I had to attend another daily standup with what's left of PMO. Each day I had to say the following, "Yes, I'm on track and still need the environment". It would have been easier to tell them when I was not on track, but they guy who runs the team wants to "look you in the eye".

Then it came to the day-of-deployment. This basically meant hanging around all day with the services guys. The head guy, known as Beam-Me-Up banged away at his ASUS all day, swearing a lot and then shouting for another Diet Dr. Pepper. I did not like to ask what was going on, but basically if I attempted to get up he said "Leave and I fucking nuke this environment". I mean dude, chill out!

That was three days ago. I'm still at his desk, Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir is pissed, he thinks he could have deployed in seconds. I mean that guys is the bomb, I'm sure he could have done it in at least 30 minutes. Its been whack-a-mole, fix one thing and it breaks another. Beam-Me-Up says this is normal.

If I don't get the environment I may loose my QA team and miss the release window. If that happens, then I may not get to deliver this side of Memorial Day, the schedule is backed up with American City Bank work. F**k me, this shit is hard!

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more drinking!)
Shots : 0 (no more drinking!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 184 lbs