this has not been a good day

I have decided that there is no project on earth, professional, open-source, or non-profit, that is at all professional, ever.

As of today, I have written no less than sixty and no more than seventy and change tests for the massive redesign that I have been working on off and on since December. We started system tests (pre-tests) in january. We start primary testing Monday.

As of Tuesday, they 1.) randomly changed the driver flow in a very key place, 2.) randomly changed up the titles and text and 3.) pdfs stopped working for no reason and tasks arent' being created. All of my tests--that took me months to write and rewrite and polish--have to be rewritten.

For the record, I have owned archives, worked on archives, worked on projects, both in fandom and professionally and as a side thing when I got bored. Today when they told me of the horror that is my life, I asked "were they drunk?" and meant it. There is no godmod in fandom who can hit this level of loss of sense.

Then I said, "They are doing it worse than LJ." I have never, ever felt such existential horror as realizing that livejournal's ongoing breaks with reality are less utterly insane than the vendors writing our code. My four spent half the day talking me down, and I have spent the day writing up epic fucking level novel-length defects for this, I am so not kidding, and testing hasn't even started yet.

And they are still better than the previous vendor, so I just--here is what I have learned. Privatization sucks. I have yet to see any benefit at all whatsoever from paying someone to fuck up or letting us hire in house and fucking it up ourselves. At least if it was in-house, there would be a shitload of accountability both professional and also, us showing up to hate them. Accountability as far as state contracts go is more "Did Perry think you were really cool?" which is so fucked up this hurts me.

I have literally spent quality time trying to get my other BFF's husband to take a job with them and take over the project.

There is no excuse and no reason and no possible justification. The tests we write are to protect and help the most fucking vulnerable populations in Texas, people who cannot and do not have the power or even the chance to fight for themselves, and this is tiny, it's such a tiny part of it and not just in the scheme of things but in anything, but it's huge when it works because it's one of the few things that does and let's not lie to ourselves, we are living a Randian utopia and the only thing I am getting satisfaction from is the fact they hit seventy and medicaid is gleaming on the horizon, they have a goddamn religious experience with the value of the safety net. Our net is not a great one, and honestly none of them are all that sturdy, but a whole bunch of shitty safety nets means there's a better than average chance you can get a fingerhold in one of them before you hit the ground, or at least break your fall enough so you can stand up again. It makes all of so much less than we are that this is the best we can hope for. Rome pulled off this shit better.

It does not help that it takes them facing vulnerability to admit it exists; I do not forgive that it is not and never will be about others but always about themselves. I do not on a fundamental level of my existence get how anyone can decide that another person's pain is just not worth even the pretext of caring on the basic survival level of food, clothing, shelter, medical care; I am not even rarified enough at this point to imagine they would understand feelings here, I'm asking remedial level ability to work with the human experience of living; I don't forgive that lack within them either. I have this horrible, uncomfortable feeling that these kinds of breaks is how you get fanatics, and people, I am happy being lazy, but a fire could motivate me to move, and the metaphorical equivalent seems to be getting a lot larger these days and inertia is goddamn dangerous when motion is involved.

So my week, not good. There is the possibility that I will be taking cities in the name of a working social safety net program, so I'm taking applications for followers. Must have a working empathy, a strong desire to do good, and a fanatical desire to burn every copy of Atlas Shrugs you come across. I'm open to further suggestions on method, but I think I got the goal down cold.

Comments

[hazel]

1. People are shits. (The Why Don't They Just Get A Job, Why Should I Pay For Them To Bludge Off The State bullshit is getting nasty here at the moment.) I guess it's good when people can at least see benefit to themselves in having public services and therefore will support it in their own self-interest - I mean, as compared to people not realising that they might conceivably themselves want to use the service.

2. It has taken, no lie, about seven years for the relationship between my office and our major IT supplier to approach congenial; and it's taken that long for them to really get what it is we do. That contract expires in 18 months and we're starting to seriously look at alternatives; it is so so so fucking tempting to push HARD to bring everything in-house because like you said it makes everyone involved so much more accountable.

3. I cannot imagine how shitty it is to have to rewrite all your test scripts at a point you should be freaking doing the testing, what the hell.

[seperis]

People are shits. (The Why Don't They Just Get A Job, Why Should I Pay For Them To Bludge Off The State bullshit is getting nasty here at the moment.) I guess it's good when people can at least see benefit to themselves in having public services and therefore will support it in their own self-interest - I mean, as compared to people not realising that they might conceivably themselves want to use the service.

Sometimes, I wonder if social services broke something in me; I cannot conceive of people who don't want to help other people. It's like I have no context for how to approach.

2.) Hell yes. In-house has so many advantages; the vendor system is literally so private corporations can make money and politicians get campaign contributions.

3.) While w're also doing cross-testing with the vendor's test team. It's like, I keep thinking it will make sense eventually, but no. basicaly all our tests we did to ths point had no reason to happen. could have spent that drinking and accomplished just as much.

Thank you. *hugs*

[hazel]

I really like using the language of economics to point out the flaws in classic economic theory - at least those bits of theory that get banded about in public policy discussions. Like externalities - the costs of stuff happening that aren't bourne by the people who made the stuff happen (or who are having the stuff happen to them) - you can use concepts like that to explain why, even if you personally totally believe that Personal Responsibility Cures All Woes *eyeroll*, it may well be More Economically Efficient overall for society to give some unemployed people an income so they don't, like, die destitute in a gutter than... let people die destitute in a gutter.

2. The problem for us is that our entire budget comes from the national Budget, and it's easier to explain to politicians that you've spent some massive amount of money on your outsourced IT contract than it is to explain that you've recently hired a bunch of in-house IT guys. GOD KNOWS WHY, like, we are apparently currently paying for ~35 FTE staff at Vendor (and our in-house total staff is ~90); there is NO WAY bringing it in-house would require that many staff members or cost as much, but klajdfklasjdf apparently it's okay to spend heaps of money on computer systems but not okay to spend heaps on staff? Which is kind of ridiculous, because computer systems? Come almost entirely out of REAL PEOPLE'S HEADS. [We do have fairly robust campaign finance laws at least, though.]

3. I don't get how they could even be allowed to make such massive changes at such a late stage without notifying you.

Good luck, I guess?

[nagasvoice]

Our union, SEIU, recently put out an interesting flier regarding how huge the $$ are in outsourcing state contracts, and how extremely, extremely concentrated those vendors are. Like, there's basically ten of them getting ALL THE CONTRACTS FOR EVERYTHING. (Not just computers. Everything. Including prisons supplies, you name it.)
The one doing our database/financials etc. is one of roughly three computer programming vendors who Get All The Contracts. Mind, they're not doing so well with a lot of agencies, who are having to hire in-house to customize and clean up after their big muddy boots.
OH, yes, and our new system is roundly and soundly hated, too. Let me just say it isn't that they did it badly--they didn't care enough to check with people on the work required. We had ten years of in-house mapping of process and business case efforts and specs up the wazoo and basically that all got tossed. "This is how you're doing it now, forget those parts of your job that are mandated in state law." Even if they had wanted to do it right, those folks assigned to actually WRITING CODE weren't enough hands to get it done right plus on time--they claimed the contract didn't giv them enough $$ to hire any more. They knew that from the get-go, because they wanted to NOT DO the things required in the specs. The idea was they'd sneak around getting it done, business case would require it, and we'd cough up for the job to get done.
Yeah, the word you'd use in court is FRAUD.
And yeah, cluster-effs (such as you describe) were happening the whole time.
The Governator at the time was very very big on out-sourcing, ignore all those inconvenient actual data about how fulltime regular in-house employees with the proper skills are much cheaper all round.

[yoiyami]

Gaaaaaah. This kind of stuff makes me rage and that level of incompetence is why I'm job hunting right now. Just can not handle it anymore after I'd told them repeatedly how to fix things. It's like our entire economy is built on scams started by the bigger businesses and the smaller one just hopping on board.

Also, I mean I was a follower before, but you had me on burning Atlas Shrugged.

[lilacsigil]

It is such a fucking relief to be living in a country that actually does have a moderately functional safety net, and working in an industry (pharmacy) that has one of the better systems. And we still have to fight the drug companies to keep it working. If you need foreign cheerleaders encouraging you from afar, sign me up for that!

[parhelion]

I moved to where I did in part to get away from some of this "I've got mine so get off my property (subcategory governmental)" thinking. Then, a few days ago, I saw someone earnestly explaining how they'd lately come to this state to convert us to that kind of thinking and save us all.

Yeah. Save me like the latest European budgets have saved them except with more police tanks and meddling with my domestic arrangements. I think I'll say no while I wait for your minion application to arrive in the mail. If we still have public mail, that is.

[vae]

It sounds like you've got some seriously frustrated developers out there as well. Late changes in a project are immensely frustrating - and immensely expensive, but even that doesn't seem to stop them happening or switch the focus back where it needs to go, on nailed down signed off properly defined requirements (which, in the case of outsourcing, become part of the contract).

It's reassuring, in a very weird way, to know that there are other projects out there being managed just as badly as they are here. (We have a split in-house/off-shore third party development and test team and the pain, ohgod, the pain. I was in a meeting this morning where a designer admitted that he'd pre-agreed with the system tester how many defects should be raised against the project.)

So if you need any developers among your followers, count me in, because I am fed up of being part of the problem instead of the solution.

[akacat]

nailed down signed off properly defined requirements

What I wouldn't give for that, I don't even know.

Last project I worked on, the users finally signed off on the specs as the project was going into user acceptance testing. I don't know how management thought that was ok, but there you are.

And even that set of specs was missing some critical requirements. Way too much of that code was written with me just making my best guess. I figure in about two years the users will be opening defects on every guess I made, asking to know how it slipped through the cracks in the requirements. (Because you ignored the 400 emails I sent you on the subject, that's how.)

[akacat]

You had me at burning Atlas Shrugged. Where do I sign up? And can my official job description be "minion"? I've always wanted to be a minion.

[grammarwoman]

I work in the IT, in-house software development department in my company. I'm a total introvert, but I still make a concerted effort to reach out to my users, the people I'm writing this software for. But so many of my co-workers have a poisonous disregard for the users, like "they'll take what we've developed and they'll like it" or "I know there's this huge flaw in the application, but I won't bother fixing it until someone complains", and that's with the people in the same building.

I can't imagine how smugly insulated and unaccountable your outside vendors feel, to act like such utter jerkwads - the fact that you haven't nuked them from orbit speaks to your considerable restraint.

Sign me up for your minions list.

[annaalamode]

I'm willing to join if we can also take in a baseball game or two.

[out_there]

Then I said, "They are doing it worse than LJ." I have never, ever felt such existential horror as realizing that livejournal's ongoing breaks with reality are less utterly insane than the vendors writing our code.

Oh, god, that is a bad standard.

I have this horrible, uncomfortable feeling that these kinds of breaks is how you get fanatics, and people, I am happy being lazy, but a fire could motivate me to move, and the metaphorical equivalent seems to be getting a lot larger these days and inertia is goddamn dangerous when motion is involved.

Oh, Jenn. I'm torn between snickering and understanding completely. When you're talking basic necessities of living, a little compassion isn't a bad thing.

Must have a working empathy, a strong desire to do good, and a fanatical desire to burn every copy of Atlas Shrugs you come across.

I'm good for the first, so-so on the second (intention, yes, but ultimately lazy and easily distracted by new shiny) and... I fail the third. I don't think I could justify book burning unless it's while huddling for warmth.

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

I live in a country that used to have a working safety net, but it is being dismantled and iI'm so angry I could--yeah, I'll follow you.

[inu-spockya.livejournal.com]

I agree re privatization; it *never* saves money and it *always* screws the pooch. it's big round here cos our county is so damn poor, and we just get ripped off every damned time.

pox rot the conservatives' rank, festering arses; may the fleas of a thousand camels forever infest their bedrolls, may all their relatives suck semen for money, and may their miserable excuses for dicks rot off and follow their nonexistent brains into the dustbin of history.
*so mote this be*

on a lighter note, it's ever so fun watching Raunch Limpdick's advertisers run for the hills and radio stations dropping his show. couldna happen to a nicer lad, eh?

[inu-spockya.livejournal.com]

ps, me an' my mate might be up for this followers schtick. I definitely think Atlas Shrugs is execrable, horribly-written, self-serving dreck. Ayn Rand never worked a day in her useless life, she sponged off her followers till the day she kacked.

California has a pretty good online interface now, called c4yourself. I've only known about it a few months, but it does the things you're talking about, and does them clean and quick, and it's *secure* and does not belong to a 3rd party vendor.

Texas sounds like a seriously not-fun place to be anything other than straight white christian and male. well that leaves me out!

[rissabby.livejournal.com]

Sorry you had a bad week.

Viva la revolution!

[calligrafiti.livejournal.com]

Sorry about your crappy week. Let me know when you activate your application process. After months of listening to would-be leaders saying that the problem is giving too many poor people a shot at surviving, I'm really interested in joining.

[beadattitude.livejournal.com]

I'm in. I'm so in. The world just doesnt make sense to people with an ounce of empathy right now, with a gram of empathy, and it seems like there are a lot of sociopaths running things. Or malicious aliens, im not sure which.

And I am sorry about your week, darling heart.

[bkwyrm.livejournal.com]

I'll be on the front lines with you.
This weekend, my best friend from birth visited. She's a child welfare social worker downstate and spent most of the weekend decompressing on my couch and telling me about her clients. I'd thought a few years ago about going into social work, but I"m better off in the occult community, where I can punch people in the head if they piss me off and the only thing that happens is I lose a sale.

[jackycomelately.livejournal.com]

I think Clark needs to look big-eyed at Lex and have him take over. Or Lex decide on his own that although he might be evil, he can't stand stupidity, and re-vamp the whole system. With horrible punishments for those that don't understand that this shit is important. I'm mean I'm all for you taking over developing the world's safety nets, but I'm not sure you would have time to write, and I'm against that as a general principle.

[mustangsally78.livejournal.com]

Count me in.

I'll man the barricades. I have kids classified as homeless and ones who ought to be placed in care but they lie so they don't leave their parents.

We are judges by how we treat those less fortunate.

[rainbow-unicorn.livejournal.com]

I'm in, I'll help organize people, get them where they need to go and be very, very annoyingly polite to rude people until they burst a blood vessel. I just ask that we don't forget Puerto Rico during the revolution.

[raveninthewind.livejournal.com]

I have yet to see any benefit at all whatsoever from paying someone to fuck up or letting us hire in house and fucking it up ourselves. At least if it was in-house, there would be a shitload of accountability both professional and also, us showing up to hate them.

So, so true.

And sign me up for the revolution. I think much of the ills of legislature can be put down to people making laws that will never affect them personally (whether true or just what they think). May they all truly live in the world they create..