+1 to the day, and it hadn't been going too long.
Yesterday was... inconsistent.
Everything was mostly quiet until just before a regularly scheduled meeting was set to kick off.
And then I got messaged by a customer.
They were having an issue, and after I asked around the shop for some help on the issue, initial theories was that it was just a superficial glitch.
So we tasked one of the developers in charge of the project with looking into it.
The meeting kicked off, and I discovered a new keyword to avoid in future meetings: MVP.
MVP in this case, meaning minimum viable product.
And also, in this case, it seems there's been some misuse of the term.
Because boss man absolutely zoned in to the conversation every time it was brought up, and he very heavily scrutinized exactly what was involved in any given project's MVP.
...Which is his right, of course.
And it was this laser focus that actually gave me some vindication.
As I've mentioned in recent history more than once, I've been feeling like I've been losing my mind.
I'd take notes on things, and then when it came time to revisit those notes, they'd be questioned.
But in this case... I was correct.
One of the projects I'm responsible for is a proprietary drop box tool; the main purpose of which is to smartly transfer files to the place they're supposed to go.
My understanding of the MVP for this was that we'd start small: basic upload functionality with a tiny number of hard-coded document types.
But when we revisited this project last week, I was wrong.
Initial release was a dumb uploader where you drop the file and it goes to just... a pile.
I didn't see the value in this since the options for that are myriad, up to and including DOTS, which has been around for... a while.
But, I don't like to rock the boat. So, I shut up, put my head down, and colored.
When the project came up in yesterday's meeting and the dumb uploader MVP was revealed, the boss man's reception... wasn't great.
And he actually brought up DOTS as an alternative to what we were working on, which... well, that made me feel a spark of happiness.
Still, nothing changed other than a refactoring of the project to go and explain away what we were doing.
Meh.
It's fine.
From that session, we rolled nearly seamlessly into the next meeting.
It kicked off at 1138. I think it was about half an hour or so into the thing before I heard something that immediately sapped my mood.
"This is gonna be a long ass meeting."
And it was true.
An hour after it'd kicked off, another participant—a stakeholder—came over and joined the meeting.
...Which more or less led to the meeting starting over again.
And I had nothing to offer to the group, so I just... noped out.
I've no major problems with the vast majority of folks in the shop.
...Not for a couple months now.
But one thing I absolutely cannot tolerate is socialization during meetings.
Which I realize makes me the odd man out.
Since if we don't throw some social elements into the mix, meetings become boring.
Unpleasant.
But maybe that's the point?
Humans (generally) don't like doing unpleasant things. We avoid them where we can, and minimize them where we can't.
So my suggestion? Stick to the business—as shitty as it may be—and power through it until you're done.
Rip off the band-aid, as it were.
Things move too slowly here.
Much too slowly.
And as I typed that, I heard her voice reminding me that "we save PDFs—not lives—here".
Which as I've said before: fair.
But that doesn't mean we have to save the PDFs slowly.
Which is another argument against hours-based work: whether I get it done now or tomorrow (or next year), I still get the same paycheck.
...Which is quite possibly the shittiest carrot on a stick.
Anyway.
After I left the meeting, I went back to ask the developer if he'd managed to figure out what was causing the issue the customer complained about.
"Uh, no, actually. I had something else I needed to focus on."
I can hear his voice in my head saying that.
And the cadence at which he speaks is so slow, it's exhausting.
But there's nothing I can do to push him forward, so I nodded in understanding and went back to work.
...While he walked past and went to socialize with another coworker.
And to be clear: this isn't me chalking up all the time someone spends away from their desk to be socializing.
Because this is an office setting.
With cubicles.
And I can hear you.
I can hear you talking about the yard work you're doing.
What you did for the weekend.
What you're going to do for the upcoming weekend.
And that's your option.
But when there's an outstanding issue that you need to work on...
Finish it!
Wrap it up!
Man.
Having typed all that out, I feel like a supreme asshole.
But you know what?
I am an asshole.
I own that shit.
But I'm also driven to complete my work. As quickly as possible, as correctly as possible.
And the bonus to being quick?
Even if you do make mistakes, they're corrected just as quickly.
And it's become increasingly clear to me why boss man is the way he is.
I'd taken his wild timelines of projects to be nothing more than angry hyperbole.
But... no.
Super low hanging proof of that would be another project that I'm involved with.
It's an incredibly basic application that should've taken maybe a month.
Maybe.
But per the code repository as history, we're coming up on the year mark since it was started.
And I'm very quick to get things posted in the project, be they bugs or tasks.
And these are very tiny items.
And it could be days before I see them implemented.
Weeks.
And yet every day I go to the project and refresh it, nothing's changed.
This morning was different, though: saw a change in there.
But, to keep the universe balanced, once I started digging deeper, a relic from a past version of the project had resurfaced.
Like.
Why?
How?
I'm about to say something completely batshit crazy.
I'm kinda starting to miss the Navy.
Yeah, it was stressful. To the point of more than a handful of suicidal ideations each year.
But by merit of the costume I wore/paygrade I occupied, if there was something I needed done, I could do it.
Now granted: as a supervisor, I should've delegated things.
And I did.
But if those things weren't getting done by the delegates, by fucking god, I did it myself.
Kinda like The Little Red Hen.
Here, though, I'm crippled in my capabilities.
I write the narrative, and it's up to the others to execute on it.
Which would be fine, except the others are also shielded from boss man's attitude when things are taking too long.
I don't think I've ever heard him come down on the dev team.
Which is...
Meh.
In other news, it looks like the DoD is sending more military to support the ICE Capades. Though calm down, everyone, it's in a limited role.
Allegedly.
These service members, drawn from all components and operating in a Title 10 duty status, will provide logistical support, and conduct administrative and clerical functions associated with the processing of illegal aliens at ICE detention facilities. They will not directly participate in law enforcement activities.
Hopefully, then, they'll only be sending every branch's version of YNs/PSs/LSs, since... y'know... those are actually administrative types.
Bah, who am I kidding?
The DoD is absolute shit when it comes to sending the right people for the job, and I can already picture the individual augmentee requests trickling into folks' inboxes.
While I was at my last command, I remember seeing around half a dozen or so (minimum) of those over the years. Earlier ones were a bit more ambiguous as to the nature of the IA, but towards the end of my time there they became more obvious.
They were looking for bodies to send down to Texas in support of border control.
And though we never ended up having to send one of our own bodies down there, it started becoming challenging to figure out the right excuse reason to get them out of it.
Thankfully, my team was small.
Which lent itself to being the best reasoning not to send them.
Especially when other commands on the list had dozens of bodies to throw at the problem.
And having come from one of the commands on the list, boy howdy let me tell you: there were a lot of bodies that were absolutely unnecessary.
lol.
Yeah, I'm an asshole.