Friday, July 9, 2010
Mr. Salt and Ms. Pepper discover a crashed UFO
This is my brain after 8 hours of software testing...
why we'll never win a war here
I've been thinking this week that my project is a microcosm example of why Westerners will never succeed here.
I didn't want to come back to do this project. But the customer begged me. They even put in the statement of work that I had to be the consultant. I made demands for the project to ensure it would be a success, such as getting to pick the team that would work for me, having a proper work area (conference room, projector, white board), and having customer commitment. Oh sure, they said, you'll get everything you want.
Then I get here and it's like an out of control circus. Our working environment is horrible and we never have enough room to even set up our laptops. Forget working groups, the conference room is hardly ever available, and even when we have it booked we can be thrown out at the customer's whim. My company assigned a project manager who has something personal against me, and she is constantly reassigning my resources so, on a daily basis, I have no idea which team members will be showing up. That wouldn't be bad if at least they were doing other work but they aren't. They are sitting at home, or in the office, doing nothing while I have to struggle to do their work on top of mine because I don't want to blow my schedule.
The customer has tons of political issues going on in the company and they keep trying to involve my team in them. Keeping some of the junior members out of this game has been hard because they think they are gaining some power from this mess when in fact it's more like a set up. Keeping my company's resources working even 4 hours a day when I'm here is hard, and when I'm gone it's a disaster. Only the sub contractor working on the project is reliable. If I didn't have him I don't know what I would do. Meanwhile, there's a lot of pressure from my company to make this a referenceable project even though they are doing everything they can to sabotage it.
The customer has unreasonable deadlines for things, and try to force me to drop current tasks to work on unrelated, non-critical tasks. Then they ask me "why isn't this critical task done?" Even though I have a chain of emails showing I've been redirected and they've accepted that by forcing me to work on a non-critical task they are introducing risk of something critical not getting completed they refuse to take any responsibility.
And then they fire the people who are supposed to help us figure out who in the company we need to work with, and have assigned a new guy who's been with the company for one month and who doesn't even have a desk to sit at to be the head of the project.
And that's the way business is done here. Finger pointing back to the people who are trying to help. No matter how hard you work, someone is always unhappy and critical. People play political games and back stab each other and then try to force us poor consultants to take sides. And in the end, when we leave, I'm sure they'll claim that the project is a failure because it's easier to do nothing than to actually learn how to be self sufficient and successful.
People work here for years. I don't know how. Oh wait, I do. Last night at a happy hour with some people from a sister company it was recommended I get a prescription for xanax.
I didn't want to come back to do this project. But the customer begged me. They even put in the statement of work that I had to be the consultant. I made demands for the project to ensure it would be a success, such as getting to pick the team that would work for me, having a proper work area (conference room, projector, white board), and having customer commitment. Oh sure, they said, you'll get everything you want.
Then I get here and it's like an out of control circus. Our working environment is horrible and we never have enough room to even set up our laptops. Forget working groups, the conference room is hardly ever available, and even when we have it booked we can be thrown out at the customer's whim. My company assigned a project manager who has something personal against me, and she is constantly reassigning my resources so, on a daily basis, I have no idea which team members will be showing up. That wouldn't be bad if at least they were doing other work but they aren't. They are sitting at home, or in the office, doing nothing while I have to struggle to do their work on top of mine because I don't want to blow my schedule.
The customer has tons of political issues going on in the company and they keep trying to involve my team in them. Keeping some of the junior members out of this game has been hard because they think they are gaining some power from this mess when in fact it's more like a set up. Keeping my company's resources working even 4 hours a day when I'm here is hard, and when I'm gone it's a disaster. Only the sub contractor working on the project is reliable. If I didn't have him I don't know what I would do. Meanwhile, there's a lot of pressure from my company to make this a referenceable project even though they are doing everything they can to sabotage it.
The customer has unreasonable deadlines for things, and try to force me to drop current tasks to work on unrelated, non-critical tasks. Then they ask me "why isn't this critical task done?" Even though I have a chain of emails showing I've been redirected and they've accepted that by forcing me to work on a non-critical task they are introducing risk of something critical not getting completed they refuse to take any responsibility.
And then they fire the people who are supposed to help us figure out who in the company we need to work with, and have assigned a new guy who's been with the company for one month and who doesn't even have a desk to sit at to be the head of the project.
And that's the way business is done here. Finger pointing back to the people who are trying to help. No matter how hard you work, someone is always unhappy and critical. People play political games and back stab each other and then try to force us poor consultants to take sides. And in the end, when we leave, I'm sure they'll claim that the project is a failure because it's easier to do nothing than to actually learn how to be self sufficient and successful.
People work here for years. I don't know how. Oh wait, I do. Last night at a happy hour with some people from a sister company it was recommended I get a prescription for xanax.
FUBAR
I'm wondering how much worse things will get here before they get better.
My project sponsor was fired on Sunday. His back up was fired the Thursday before. There was no explanation of why this happened, and I found out from other people in the company, not because I was informed before hand.
Wednesday I was back in the office after being gone for two weeks. The problem child H now has the project moved under his department. He is so gleeful about this that it almost makes me sick when I talk to him. Luckily I managed to maintain a good relationship with him so the splatter hasn't hit me directly. But still. Everyone in the company who liked my project sponsor keeps asking me what happened. As if I know. I'm avoiding politics here as much as possible but people keep trying to engage me in a speculation game of what happened. At this point, I trust no one and refuse to say anything. That's in turn creating a sense of paranoia that I know something and so people have been asking me if they are going to lose their jobs. They don't believe me when I say I don't know. That's causing them to do things like stand behind my chair while I'm trying to work, speaking in Arabic, saying my name and the name of my project sponsor. If you're going to talk about me, and not in English, do it in your office.
To make matters more interesting, I'm getting criticized for things that are just insane. I was yelled at yesterday for not putting the names of my customer on the to: list of an email in the order of their importance (COO first, etc.). I was like are you god damn kidding me? A sales guy claimed to H that I was having secret meetings with other sales people behind his back (which, while also not true, is completely improbable as I haven't been in the office to have any meetings). H suggested I sit with the sales guy and talk to him to make him feel better.
So, even though I have a ton of work to do, I sat in the sales guy's office for an hour yesterday and tried to discuss his concerns with the project. It turns out, he has none. He made up his concerns to force me to talk to him. I sat there while he tried to grill me about my love life (short conversation, that one) and then he tried to force me to agree to go to dinner with him. I hate this kind of stuff. I don't want to hang out or talk to anyone here anymore. I just want to get done and go home.
H is also throwing all these road blocks in my way to continue moving the project forward. Meanwhile, since Wednesday, I've had to waste hours of my life I'll never get back briefing the new project sponsors on what we have done and what we have left to do. That's right, sponsors. Since Wednesday 3 people have taken over and then resigned as the project sponsor. I'm hoping the guy I talked to on Thursday will stick at least for a week so I can get some work done. The latest project sponsor is younger than me and has no experience in this stuff. He claimed the project was behind schedule even though we are two weeks ahead of schedule and have delivered more stuff than was required. I've been driving my team to make sure that everything is high quality so the customer can't nit pick up to death about spelling errors or whatever. The team is taking it pretty well considering everyone at the customer site is saying "why work so hard, the project is just going to be shut down".
And then yesterday, after working an hour of overtime to deliver some bullshit report to H, he smiled and said to me "Thanks, but this report doesn't matter, because as soon as you leave we're replacing your software tool with another tool. What do you think about that?" I know he was baiting me because there were some important decision makers in the room. So I said "Assuming you've done a trade off analysis that shows that tool will work for you, you need to make decisions based on the best engineering approach to your current problem. I also assume you've analyzed the cost of changing tools along with the required training. By the way, that tool isn't even on the Gartner quadrant. I assume you've checked with the vendor to make sure you'll be able to get tech support if something goes wrong, since it's not a well established company and may be lacking resources." Asshole. I smiled back at him. One of the decision makers asked if H had checked into any of the issues I had just brought up as I walked out of the room.
Only 5 weeks left. If I survive this project and get it delivered on time, with customer approval, I can do anything.
My project sponsor was fired on Sunday. His back up was fired the Thursday before. There was no explanation of why this happened, and I found out from other people in the company, not because I was informed before hand.
Wednesday I was back in the office after being gone for two weeks. The problem child H now has the project moved under his department. He is so gleeful about this that it almost makes me sick when I talk to him. Luckily I managed to maintain a good relationship with him so the splatter hasn't hit me directly. But still. Everyone in the company who liked my project sponsor keeps asking me what happened. As if I know. I'm avoiding politics here as much as possible but people keep trying to engage me in a speculation game of what happened. At this point, I trust no one and refuse to say anything. That's in turn creating a sense of paranoia that I know something and so people have been asking me if they are going to lose their jobs. They don't believe me when I say I don't know. That's causing them to do things like stand behind my chair while I'm trying to work, speaking in Arabic, saying my name and the name of my project sponsor. If you're going to talk about me, and not in English, do it in your office.
To make matters more interesting, I'm getting criticized for things that are just insane. I was yelled at yesterday for not putting the names of my customer on the to: list of an email in the order of their importance (COO first, etc.). I was like are you god damn kidding me? A sales guy claimed to H that I was having secret meetings with other sales people behind his back (which, while also not true, is completely improbable as I haven't been in the office to have any meetings). H suggested I sit with the sales guy and talk to him to make him feel better.
So, even though I have a ton of work to do, I sat in the sales guy's office for an hour yesterday and tried to discuss his concerns with the project. It turns out, he has none. He made up his concerns to force me to talk to him. I sat there while he tried to grill me about my love life (short conversation, that one) and then he tried to force me to agree to go to dinner with him. I hate this kind of stuff. I don't want to hang out or talk to anyone here anymore. I just want to get done and go home.
H is also throwing all these road blocks in my way to continue moving the project forward. Meanwhile, since Wednesday, I've had to waste hours of my life I'll never get back briefing the new project sponsors on what we have done and what we have left to do. That's right, sponsors. Since Wednesday 3 people have taken over and then resigned as the project sponsor. I'm hoping the guy I talked to on Thursday will stick at least for a week so I can get some work done. The latest project sponsor is younger than me and has no experience in this stuff. He claimed the project was behind schedule even though we are two weeks ahead of schedule and have delivered more stuff than was required. I've been driving my team to make sure that everything is high quality so the customer can't nit pick up to death about spelling errors or whatever. The team is taking it pretty well considering everyone at the customer site is saying "why work so hard, the project is just going to be shut down".
And then yesterday, after working an hour of overtime to deliver some bullshit report to H, he smiled and said to me "Thanks, but this report doesn't matter, because as soon as you leave we're replacing your software tool with another tool. What do you think about that?" I know he was baiting me because there were some important decision makers in the room. So I said "Assuming you've done a trade off analysis that shows that tool will work for you, you need to make decisions based on the best engineering approach to your current problem. I also assume you've analyzed the cost of changing tools along with the required training. By the way, that tool isn't even on the Gartner quadrant. I assume you've checked with the vendor to make sure you'll be able to get tech support if something goes wrong, since it's not a well established company and may be lacking resources." Asshole. I smiled back at him. One of the decision makers asked if H had checked into any of the issues I had just brought up as I walked out of the room.
Only 5 weeks left. If I survive this project and get it delivered on time, with customer approval, I can do anything.
helicopter
Last night I dreamed that I was in a war zone and I had a team of 6 people with me, men and women. A helicopter came in to rescue us because we had just finished our mission. I climbed up a rope and by taking up my end of the rope I was able to pull the rest of my team off the ground into the helicopter. But, for some reason, every time one of my team members would get on the helicopter, they would cut the rope a little shorter (there is no way to imagine the rope configuration I dreamed about as it was completely illogical).
By the time I pulled up the last person, which required me to pull myself up on my rope and then drop my weight down (kind of like belaying someone) my arms were really tired. I wanted to get onto the helicopter. By then we were way above the ground because there were still bombs going off. I went to hand a guy on the helicopter my end of the rope so he could pull me in, but I realized the rope was too short for it to reach him. I lowered myself on one end of the rope to make the other end shorter, and realized that I still couldn't reach the helicopter.
People on the helicopter started shouting at me to not let go of either end of the rope, otherwise I would fall. Some were telling me to make one end longer, others were saying to do the opposite. I realized no matter what I did I would never be able to get on the helicopter. I asked the people I had just pulled up to get another rope to pull me in and they said they were too tired and they walked away. My arms were getting shaky by then and I realized I was about to lose my grip on the rope. The guy who was supposed to be pulling me into the helicopter looked at me and said "that's going to be a very bad way to die".
Then I woke up.
By the time I pulled up the last person, which required me to pull myself up on my rope and then drop my weight down (kind of like belaying someone) my arms were really tired. I wanted to get onto the helicopter. By then we were way above the ground because there were still bombs going off. I went to hand a guy on the helicopter my end of the rope so he could pull me in, but I realized the rope was too short for it to reach him. I lowered myself on one end of the rope to make the other end shorter, and realized that I still couldn't reach the helicopter.
People on the helicopter started shouting at me to not let go of either end of the rope, otherwise I would fall. Some were telling me to make one end longer, others were saying to do the opposite. I realized no matter what I did I would never be able to get on the helicopter. I asked the people I had just pulled up to get another rope to pull me in and they said they were too tired and they walked away. My arms were getting shaky by then and I realized I was about to lose my grip on the rope. The guy who was supposed to be pulling me into the helicopter looked at me and said "that's going to be a very bad way to die".
Then I woke up.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Sunday, July 4, 2010
total disaster
Friday morning I thought that all of the problems on my project were contained. The "project manager" is on vacation for three weeks, so I don't have to read her annoying emails demanding I drop everything to go have some pointless meeting with her to discuss the "schedule" when she isn't even managing the schedule, I am. Even though one of our key players left, in an hour my customer and I figured out a solution. I also worked out this weekend how to finish the project on time, with all of the deliverables, in spite of my company's attempts to derail things by reassigning me unexpectedly to teach for a military customer, taking me away from the project for yet another week. The problem child H has been contained. I figured after I finish the training there is another week of really hard work, and then two weeks of wind down time where we wouldn't have to work so hard before I could be on a plane home.
Ah, why do I delude myself that anything in this country will work?
In the middle of class today, right as I was walking students through an exercise, my phone blew up. I paused to let the students catch up to me, and read the first email. The customer I work for, Dr. M, quit. In fact, was on his way out the door. I responded and his email bounced back - they had already disabled his email.
I was like are you god damn KIDDING ME? It was almost impossible to concentrate as my brain ran around in hamster circles going "NOW WHAT DO I DO?????????????" My stomach turned into a little rock fearing H would be put in charge.
About 10 minutes later all of my students were talking about how they had received an email that Dr. M had quit. I was accused of withholding information. A little political dust up occurred. I finally got everyone calmed down enough to finish the class for the day. I also ensured that the person taking over the project would be a guy I like to work with, and not H.
But now here I am, feeling totally demoralized, wondering, after all these months, if the project is going to crash and burn. To prevent that means keeping up the pace, and increasing it to make up for having two missing customer bodies (I am going to have to do their work because the replacement person can't, for example, prepare the briefing for the steering committee because he has a full time job). Every day I'm on the firing line from 7 am until I go home at 5 pm. I never have 15 minutes to sit at a desk, staring into space wondering why the hell I came here because I constantly have at least two people yelling at me or yelling for me. That's why when I go home at night I talk to no one, go no where, and submerge myself in drawing diagrams. It's been a while since I've been under this much pressure, in a foreign country, without having even my own company's resources to rely on. They are as bad as my customer.
Contact with the outside world? No thanks.
If I manage to get out of here in one piece I will be shocked. I'm pretty sure my face is twitching. Is that the sign of a psychotic breakdown?
Ah, why do I delude myself that anything in this country will work?
In the middle of class today, right as I was walking students through an exercise, my phone blew up. I paused to let the students catch up to me, and read the first email. The customer I work for, Dr. M, quit. In fact, was on his way out the door. I responded and his email bounced back - they had already disabled his email.
I was like are you god damn KIDDING ME? It was almost impossible to concentrate as my brain ran around in hamster circles going "NOW WHAT DO I DO?????????????" My stomach turned into a little rock fearing H would be put in charge.
About 10 minutes later all of my students were talking about how they had received an email that Dr. M had quit. I was accused of withholding information. A little political dust up occurred. I finally got everyone calmed down enough to finish the class for the day. I also ensured that the person taking over the project would be a guy I like to work with, and not H.
But now here I am, feeling totally demoralized, wondering, after all these months, if the project is going to crash and burn. To prevent that means keeping up the pace, and increasing it to make up for having two missing customer bodies (I am going to have to do their work because the replacement person can't, for example, prepare the briefing for the steering committee because he has a full time job). Every day I'm on the firing line from 7 am until I go home at 5 pm. I never have 15 minutes to sit at a desk, staring into space wondering why the hell I came here because I constantly have at least two people yelling at me or yelling for me. That's why when I go home at night I talk to no one, go no where, and submerge myself in drawing diagrams. It's been a while since I've been under this much pressure, in a foreign country, without having even my own company's resources to rely on. They are as bad as my customer.
Contact with the outside world? No thanks.
If I manage to get out of here in one piece I will be shocked. I'm pretty sure my face is twitching. Is that the sign of a psychotic breakdown?
welcome to your box, bitch
Last Thursday completed my plan to throw my problem child on the project in a box, and keep him there.
He's an obnoxious egyptian, we'll just call him H (he's the guy my customer tried to get fired as depicted in the blog colloquial). Since my project has started he's try to throw one road block after another at me to keep the project from progressing. He's supposed to be in charge of document management. The dude is so disorganized that he can't even find current versions of documents. He's supposed to learn how to use my software to get out of the mode of creating processes in word documents (how stone age) and into modeling them so they can be simulated.
Besides breaking things constantly so I have to fix them for him, he throws me under the bus in front of upper management, saying absurd stuff like "she never helps me" and even when I point out that I spend half my day with him he says "I never see her".
So, I started documenting in a spreadsheet how often we were meeting and what I was teaching him at each meeting, assigning a percentage to each skill (e.g. 75% comfortable drawing a business process diagram without help). I also made the meetings formal invites. In our last steering committee meeting when he started saying he hasn't gotten any training I pulled out the spreadsheet. Then he claimed I made up the percentages and that we had never discussed them, which was a total lie. So I produced all of the emails about the training I had given him. When I called him on his lie, in this sort of subtle but not really way, he changed his argument and said he would have to teach other people what I'm teaching him, and he couldn't do it.
Fine. Last Tuesday through Thursday he was in a formal training class I taught. He spent the first two days sitting there saying nothing was working. Time and again I had to go over and say "H, you can't display your diagram because you haven't opened it". Etc. Then he started carrying on long, loud conversations while I was trying to teach. I would give him a verbal warning and then send a follow up email.
The last day I said "I'm going to do something no person should ever do - I'm going to let an egyptian drive". I made him come up to the front of the room and teach class for two hours. He looked like he was going to cry. The other 15 students in the class liked me and so they harassed him mercilessly. He kept saying "I'm done teaching, you come up here" and I would say "no, keep going, you'll have to do this on your own when I'm gone". After the two hours were up I made the class clap for him.
Which all leads to my grand plan. In the next steering committee meeting, when he tries to report that, after formal training, he still can't do his job, I will point out that he in fact taught the class for a few hours, and everyone applauded for him at the end. Then I will also bring up the emails and say "maybe if there are things you still don't know it's because you were talking when you were supposed to be doing your exercises."
Welcome to your box, bitch.
He's an obnoxious egyptian, we'll just call him H (he's the guy my customer tried to get fired as depicted in the blog colloquial). Since my project has started he's try to throw one road block after another at me to keep the project from progressing. He's supposed to be in charge of document management. The dude is so disorganized that he can't even find current versions of documents. He's supposed to learn how to use my software to get out of the mode of creating processes in word documents (how stone age) and into modeling them so they can be simulated.
Besides breaking things constantly so I have to fix them for him, he throws me under the bus in front of upper management, saying absurd stuff like "she never helps me" and even when I point out that I spend half my day with him he says "I never see her".
So, I started documenting in a spreadsheet how often we were meeting and what I was teaching him at each meeting, assigning a percentage to each skill (e.g. 75% comfortable drawing a business process diagram without help). I also made the meetings formal invites. In our last steering committee meeting when he started saying he hasn't gotten any training I pulled out the spreadsheet. Then he claimed I made up the percentages and that we had never discussed them, which was a total lie. So I produced all of the emails about the training I had given him. When I called him on his lie, in this sort of subtle but not really way, he changed his argument and said he would have to teach other people what I'm teaching him, and he couldn't do it.
Fine. Last Tuesday through Thursday he was in a formal training class I taught. He spent the first two days sitting there saying nothing was working. Time and again I had to go over and say "H, you can't display your diagram because you haven't opened it". Etc. Then he started carrying on long, loud conversations while I was trying to teach. I would give him a verbal warning and then send a follow up email.
The last day I said "I'm going to do something no person should ever do - I'm going to let an egyptian drive". I made him come up to the front of the room and teach class for two hours. He looked like he was going to cry. The other 15 students in the class liked me and so they harassed him mercilessly. He kept saying "I'm done teaching, you come up here" and I would say "no, keep going, you'll have to do this on your own when I'm gone". After the two hours were up I made the class clap for him.
Which all leads to my grand plan. In the next steering committee meeting, when he tries to report that, after formal training, he still can't do his job, I will point out that he in fact taught the class for a few hours, and everyone applauded for him at the end. Then I will also bring up the emails and say "maybe if there are things you still don't know it's because you were talking when you were supposed to be doing your exercises."
Welcome to your box, bitch.
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