Yeah, what the user "signs off on" without REALLY finding out
what they REALLY wanted/needed... *sigh* - nothing's changed.
I worked for a Big Pharma in the late 90s/early 00's. I was
their "Excel guru" and somehow cobbled together a system within
Excel and VBA which ended up making the company real money.
Well, I was just a little temp worker. They *had* to hire me
and, after a show of getting hundreds of resumes from people who
sadly didn't realize that the job was for only one guy (me) who
also wrote up the job description, and who also got a new boss
who had to play the game and pretend all of these more qualified
people might get it than me.... I got in at exactly my asking
price. [which I also knew was the going rate for my area for
that type of position because, well, "I had an Internet" and
knew how to use it - and I also didn't care about getting hired
by them,, as I was already ready to quit and go to school to
become a school teacher (gifted/special ed - I always tested
well for that career option)
Anyway, short story long, at one point after a few years of
being dependent on me and my monsterous masterpiece, they
decided it needed to be more "I.T." in nature and they hired M
ic ros trat egy to turn my system into 'cubes' and 'slices' and
whatever the buzz words for newer databases were.
Complex business operations dependent upon... EXCEL? and a
single person!? Can't have that.
So, for a year, my bosses would play the game with me, asking
for my help here and there in tiny ways to help them that I knew
(and didn't care) that would put me out of a job. I helped, but
I kept most of my focus on the other stuff i felt was more
important - serving the needs of the business analysts. That's
how I started in the first place, and saw no reason to stop.
Now in my processes, I had automated the transforming thousands
of little text files from mainframes, CD ROMs, the web, and
cobbling it all together with business metrics to produce
interactively self-graphic reports that were automatically send
(from Excel) to 4,200 laptops in the field for the sales reps to
use on a weekly basis. It tied up my computer for hours to run
but it worked. They all got something unique and VERY VERY
specific for their needs, drillable down to the level of an
individual doctor with the insurance plans of their patients and
what drugs they were prescribing. The only thing missing were
the patient names.
So, two million dollars and 16 months later, their presentation
comes. They successfully managed to to incorporate a number of
the business metrics and figured out how everything combines to
end up with the right numbers.
But ... their interface was web based and you had to click
"browse..." and could input five input files at a time.
Here's I'm processing thousands and thousands of diverse text
files and other sources of data on a click of a button, and they
wanted each one inserted individually? BY HAND!? _ by hand!? _
Well, they got the big boot. Total waste of time and money.
Several people [not me] were suddenly not around anymore.
When I finally left to go to Florida with family 13 yrs ago, I
had to train a team on using my monstrosity. I let them document
it. I never documented it. I just wrote it and made it work...
and it all started from a little temp job where I was hired to
copy and paste numbers down a sheet. Got bored with that, found
this little thing called "Macros" and taught myself. I'm
dangerous when I get enthusiastic about something new tongue
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