What Are Your Ethical Pet Peeves? 17

[BJCooperIT]

I am basically a tree person. I get lost in the details, which is to say, I am busy tending the leaves while others are looking out for the forest. There is a another thread regarding the most serious ethical issues faced by IT professionals and my question is not as lofty. I am asking for your ethical pet peeves. Not the earthshaking moral dilemmas but the little rights and wrongs that drive you crazy.

One of my high ranking personal gripes is DOCUMENTATION. Yes, I agree, it sometimes is a PITA to write. I know some coders perceive it as a waste of time. It is however an important legacy to leave good quality documentation. Sometimes I am called back to do some additional enhancements or bug fixes (yes...I do make mistakes) for a previous client. I go back into code I barely remember writing let alone remember the business rules the code is supporting. I am usually shocked to learn I would be lost without the liberal comments I left sprinkled around. Without the system documentation I wrote would I be able to tell the user how to achieve that complicated procedure run once in a blue moon? Definitely not. If I need the documentation for my own code, then user needs it even more.

My position is that I am a paid professional and when I code an application, the documentation is an integral part of the whole and it is ethically required. Is it acceptable that the documentation is of a poor quality and thus useless? IMHO, absolutely not. How is it that so many professionals deem it appropriate to leave unintelligible bits of information scribbled on napkin scraps, jumbled instructions typed at 3:00am that make no sense, or worse yet nothing at all? I am not just referring to a programmer documenting a program here. I am including most IT deliverables - networks, applications, security, and ________ (you fill in the blank).

Assuming I posess the necessary intellect and skills, if I read a manual and cannot figure out how the system functions then time and money were squandered on useless typing. If a technical person cannot glean information from it, how did the author expect the users to use it as a resource?

Case in point. My users bought a software package. The documentation is sub-standard. No, that is too kind, quite frankly it is crap. Even the project manager from the vendor admits their documentation is absolutely awful. My observation is that the person who wrote it was a detailed technical person who has no concept of how to present information to non-techs. Reminds me of the line from the movie Beetlejuice: "It reads like stereo instructions". Even that is giving it too much credit.

If documentation is not provided or is sub-standard then my feeling is that an ethical boundary has been violated.

OK, what drives you up a wall? Rants acceptable.

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[sha76]

Well, the electrician was coming to see me (a follow up to a phone conversation), had been previously told by my boss to speak to me in his absence, my colleague called me over as soon as possible & I was the one asking him the technical questions. Had it have been another woman he was speaking to then yes, it may have been a mistake, but my colleague really doesn't look like a Sharon!
To be honest this is pretty much par for the course when dealing with many of the managers from estates where I work, on another occasion, in a meeting with a different electrician (who actually literally turned his back on me) & my boss, I was only getting response to my points when my boss was re-stating "As Sharon said..."
Thankfully the blokes who come in to do the work, rather than the ones who just talk about it, never seem to have this problem.

Kimber:
Thanks for the reminder about the Red Flag, can't believe I'd forgotten something right under my nose!

Sharon

 

[sleipnir214]

sha76:
My sister once asked me to do some carpentry work at her house. When I inspected what needed to be done, I discovered a bigger problem that was beyond my skills, so my sister called in a professional carpenter. She made the appointment, she met him at the door, she walked him through what needed to be done. As soon as I entered the room, he began ignoring my sister and directing his questions to me. I answered them -- after all I was the one who originally discovered the problem.

When he went back to his truck to get his tools, my sister tried to jump-start me over the fact that I had not directed the carpenter's questions back to her. I told her it was her problem and that she needed to deal with, because (a) I quit being her defender when we were still in elementary school and (b) if she really wanted to be taken seriously by the guy, she needed for him to see her as an active defender of her own rights.

As it turns out, after my sister politely but pointedly asked the carpenter why he ignored her, he said it was because my sister, herself, had told him that I knew more about carpentry in general and this problem in specific than she did.


I agree that the electrician who turned his back on you was being sexist. But I hope that your male colleague was the one who corrected the electrician in your office only because he beat you to the punch.



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TANSTAAFL!

 

[quell]

ehehhe lmao This has to be the best post ever. After reading this thread my stomach hurts. Thanx everyone for the laughs and helping me realize that I'm not the only one who feels this way.

 

[quell]

oops forgot to add one of my pet peeves:
people who e-mail you problems that are a couple cubes away and don't use the phone. (havnt seen this one yet)
and peeps who add another post that forgot something hehe

 

[sleipnir214]

Actually, I'd rather have the email -- it give me a record of the problem report.

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TANSTAAFL!

 

[greyted]

sliepnir214,
Wow, have I had a great weekend, I've been casting imprecations everywhere. Down the pub was brilliant because nobody knew the meaning of the word, some even thanked me.
As Kimber points out the Red Flag feature is available for all to use but please and thank you cost nothing as does the help these people require.
Better stop now or there will be more imprecations.

Ted

 

[BJCooperIT]

Vile ones....

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[greyted]

No vile imprecations from me, will leave that to sliepnir214 as he is vastly more experienced than me.
I'm just a learner.


Ted

 

[sleipnir214]

greyted:
Keep at it. Sooner or later you will progress from merely uttering vile imprecations to the high art of vituperation (BJCooperIT, FYI:

http://www.yourdictionary.com/ahd/v/v0130400.html).

But you'll have to build up your stamina first -- the real difference between the two is sustainability.

Want the best answers? Ask the best questions:

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TANSTAAFL!

 

[greyted]

sleipnir214,
Now that is funny, thanks for the link. As you say I'm sure BJCooperIT will enjoy that as did I.
Need to build up my stamina to normal levels to counteract the energy loss from laughing.

Was attending a training session one day when the instructor picked on a non-IT manager who thought he was an IT genius (know-all) and asked him to do a soft reboot.
Where upon the said manager turned the monitor off then on to much sniggering from the assembled tech's.
What a great lesson this was as it kept the manager away from the rest of the training and all tech's instantly respected the instructors man management skills.
He was very good at the IT related things and was used by that company for a long time.


Ted

 

[BJCooperIT]

I once worked with a fellow (Dave you know who you are!) who took great joy in making people look foolish. I went to re-train our sales office in Brooklyn, New York, after he had done the initial training some months before. The system response time was abysmal and I watched, amazed, as the user picked up the keyboard and lifted the left side high in the air. After a minute he then lifted the right side up. "Mario," I asked, "what are you doing?". To which he responded "Dave told us that tilting the keyboard will cause the positive ions to flow faster and we will get better response time!".

I just about fell out of the chair! Add this to my peevish list: Having to clean up somebody else's mess!

select * from Life where Brain is not null

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[sleipnir214]

Having to clean up someone else's mess is simply an application of a lack craftsmanship. Professionals clean up after themselves.

Want the best answers? Ask the best questions:

http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

TANSTAAFL!

 

[iza]

i love you all ! i just don't feel so alone, now !
but how come you forgot about the "user" problem ?! both the user who doesn't read the doc, and calls you to ask about obvious stuff that are written in bold on the 1st page of the doc ... and the user/client/marketing office that asks you to change that graphic/text (for a new one he'll send you right away) for tomorrow morning but never sends you the new graphic/text ...
(but yes, the worst of the worst of the worst are Tarwn's managers who make proposals on projects that they haven't even bothered to inspect and Mudskipper's people skipping troubleshooting steps to properly diagnose the issue! ... ok you won, now i'm upset for the rest of the day !!

 

[BJCooperIT]

Now that we have all vented a bit, I would like to invite you to the flipside of this therapy and visit thread654-530254 to share what gives you job satisfaction.

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[ttmac]

Hi all,

I’ve enjoyed reading this post thus far and what stick’s out in my mind is how common to us all these pet peeves really are. We all see and experience them every day and never think anything of them, yet they are needlessly contributing to our stress levels (like we need that).

Some of my pet peeves are: -

Office Politics: - you know you can fix it but have to wait for several hours/days for the arrival of the appropriate fixer who will do exactly what you would have done initially and all because it “isn’t our job”.

The Witch Hunt: - Which is more important? Getting it fixed or finding someone to blame? Fix it first I say and blame someone later!

Posters who want you to do their Job: - Think of the poster who posts their problem and when a viable solution is proposed they want further modifications, they don’t even try to do it for themselves. I know that I have posted in the past when I have met a brick wall (Head, meet Wall!) but if I implement a solution I like to know what is going on so that perhaps I will be able to fix it if it crashes. I don’t mind solving someone else’s problems as I look at it as a learning experience for me, but some don’t even try.

That’s just my tuppence Ha’penny worth!

Tom

 

[DonQuichote]

As this is an awfully long thread, you'll have to scroll a long way up to the posts I'm responding to. The start of this thread states documentation. Another "changing requirements".

For those who feel this as a pain, I'd like to point to "eXtreme Programming", which is a way to deal with these (and other) things. For more info, see

http://www.extremeprogramming.org/

or the book "eXtreme Programming Explained".

Although I'm feeling a bit like an evangelist, I don't want to push anyone. But I think the ideas are too interesting to be left unread. The nice thing of the methodology is that a direct link is made between what the developers make and what the client wants. Not what they separately think the other wants, but what they decided together. Communication is vital. Especially the book opened my eyes, explaining why I am programming.

No unnecessary documentation is made, but rather the source code is pushed to be self-documenting. The reason for this is that the source code is up-to date and external documentation usually isn't.

To copy with changing requirements, the software is delivered in short releases, giving the customer the opportunity to react before the complete application has to be re-written. The main problems between customers and programmers is that they don't understand each other. Customers know little about software possibilities and programmers know little about the customer's business process that needs to be automated. So both parties need to build a solution together.

Best regards

 

[manarth]

<aside to Tarwn>
re mind if you re-use &quot;Head - meet brick wall. Repeat.&quot;
help yourself - it's posting stuff like this that gets me through the day
that, and the thought that it's Friday, and nothing on this world is going to drag me into work over the weekend!
</aside>
Cheers, Marc.

 

[Tarwn]

Speaking of fridays...

Another pet peeve from Tarwns Pet Peeve Hall Of Fame,

People who insist on updating systems on Fridays...

There should be a law, only maintenance and documentation should occur on fridays...program updates and software updates should be done on Tuesdays (Mondays are already bad enough) so that I have enough time to go figure out why that critical machine will no longer function...

-Tarwn

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[garwain]

7) not having enough time to really read through these great threads on the message boards that I subscribe to (tek-tips, and other sites)

6) the certified idiot being placed higher on the scale than the experienced techie. I may only have a generic comp-sci deploma, but I take great pleasure in seeing the MSCE who managed to pass the tests on the 10th try struggle to apply his memorized answers to a real world problem. I have nothing agains certifications to prove yourself, but I really do hate these cerfifications that you can pretty much buy now.

5) The guy who stands there watching as I try to shift the full sized tower I'm carrying around enough to be able to open the door, then after I've manged to get through, ask if I need help...

4) Clients that don't have a clue, but expect you to explain their most complex computer problems in a way that they'll be able to understand. You called me, I fixed the problem, you go back to work. Simple as that, no need for you to understand why your computer could not simply have a generic memory chip added, or why your computer was taking 10 minutes to boot after you loaded your drive up with every piece of spyware/addware/garbage you could find.

3) The person who wants to debate every item on the bill. If you think I charge too much, it's your right to go elsewhere. I'm not holding a gun to your head forcing you to renew our contract...

2) desks that make it impossible to access the computer easily. I don't exactally like contorting myself to unplug your computer so I can pull it out the it's cabinet. Also, could you at least send a blast of compressed air into that cabinet every couple months, and maybe vaccume around your desk once in a blue moon? I don't like needing to change after EVERY service call I make... On a related note, I also hate servicing shop computers that are packed full of dust, grease, or other less pleasant substances.

And my number 1 annoyance:

Finding that someone took the last cup of coffee, and didn't brew another pot! Late in the afternoon, I have no problem with it, I usually just go to get the last cup anyway, but if the coffee pot is empty and the coffee maker is just turned off at 10AM, you can bet I'll be annoyed

 

[ANFPS26]

Excellent, garwain!

Jim