Here is my WTF job

brettdavis4

My previous job was a web developer position that would be utilizing ASP.net 2.0, SharePoint 2007, and SQL server 2005. I thought it would be great to be working with the latest and greatest technologies. When I took this job, I thought I would be able to move on in a few years and make some really good money. Unfortunately, my plan didn’t happen.

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I didn’t realize that I would waste the next 10 months of my career on the project from hell. The project was to upgrade a web site that was used by students and teachers. It was going to be upgraded to SharePoint 2007. The web site was contracted out to a local web development firm. I would be maintaining the site, once the vendor was done. I knew that I wouldn’t be doing the original work, but I realized that I would be adding any additional functionality to the site.

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The boss wanted to switch to the new site, half way through the school year. This bad decision was made before I was hired. What made the decision even worse, is this site wouldn’t have half of the features of the old site. The rest of the features were scheduled to come out in 3 months. As you can imagine, students and teachers were not happy coming back after the Christmas break to find a completely reorganized site that didn’t have half the features of the hold site.

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The 3 months to completing the site never happened. The deadline was really unrealistic. The web development firm took this job in hope that it would get other projects from the state. The firm was in such a rush to get the project, that they never completed function requirements. There were quite a bit of debates as to whether items were in or out of scope. My boss would also bring up changes and request additional features and this lead to a lot of scope creep.

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I was pretty much playing PM. Playing PM wasn’t challenging, but I kept hoping that the site would get done and that I would get the chance to do web development work.

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Besides the problem with project and not being challenged, I had problems with some of my coworkers.

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I wanted to create a test environment of the web site. I mentioned this to the head of IT and his statement was I didn’t need a test environment. I kept bugging him about it and his solution was to give me old laptops to create a test environment. The machines that were offer would not be adequate for SharePoint 2007. My plan was to buy decent desktop machines and make them into the test environment. The head of IT never purchased these machines. I realized he wouldn’t buy them because he didn’t want to be bothered by purchasing them and didn’t want to bother setting them up.

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I also had issues with his boss. My boss complained that content on the web site wasn’t up-to-date and wasn’t changing enough. Even though the job listing was for a technical position and my skill set was technical, according to her I was suppose to manage the content. Even though in the real world, most organizations usually have a person with a communications/media background maintain content on the site.

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My boss was also best friends with a marketing consultant. This marketing consultant only had one other customer besides my boss. As you can assume, like most consultants she was overpaid and worthless. One her brilliant ideas, was to make our site into a wiki.

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After 10 months, I realized if I stayed any longer I would not grow professionally and it was time to leave. In the first month at my current job, I did more work than I did in 10 months at the previous job. As for the site, it still isn't completed.

CaptainSmartass

The real WTF is that you thought ASP, Sharepoint, and SQL Server were the "latest and greatest". Everything else reads like a pretty typical webmaster position in any large organization.

Benanov

You realized it, and got out. At least you learned quite a bit, no?

MasterPlanSoftware

@CaptainSmartass said:

The real WTF is that you thought ASP, Sharepoint, and SQL Server were the "latest and greatest".

For a production environment? Everything he lists /is/ the latest and greatest.

TRWTF is that you don't seem to understand the difference between ASP and ASP.NET.

brettdavis4

@MasterPlanSoftware said:

@CaptainSmartass said:
The real WTF is that you thought ASP, Sharepoint, and SQL Server were the "latest and greatest".

For a production environment? Everything he lists /is/ the latest and greatest.

TRWTF is that you don't seem to understand the difference between ASP and ASP.NET.

I think CaptainSmartass is probably some LAMP/ROR fanboy. He probably thinks I should focus on LAMP or ROR, instead microsoft products. Even though, jobs that use MS products pay a hell of a lot more.

snoofle

@MasterPlanSoftware said:

you don't seem to understand the difference between ASP and ASP.NET

For those of use who have never used either one, what [i]is[/i] the difference?

MasterPlanSoftware

@snoofle said:

For those of use who have never used either one, what is the difference?

Here: GIYF

Xiphonex

@snoofle said:

@MasterPlanSoftware said:
you don't seem to understand the difference between ASP and ASP.NET

For those of use who have never used either one, what is the difference?

One's a development platform for web applications, the other an insideous form of torture.

ComputerForumUser1

@snoofle said:

@MasterPlanSoftware said:
you don't seem to understand the difference between ASP and ASP.NET

For those of use who have never used either one, what is the difference?

.NET

ComputerForumUser1

Edit: But to be honest, .NET doesn't google very well. It's not just a name. It does exist but only in the same way cygwin or mingw exist. And if you give the slightest hint of miscomprehension about it everybody who knows it will call you an idiot.

MasterPlanSoftware

@ComputerForumUser said:

Edit: But to be honest, .NET doesn't google very well. It's not just a name. It does exist but only in the same way cygwin or mingw exist. And if you give the slightest hint of miscomprehension about it everybody who knows it will call you an idiot.

Really?

http://www.google.com/search?q=asp+vs+asp.net

Looks fine to me.

ComputerForumUser1

@MasterPlanSoftware said:

Really?

Damn! It never used to last time I tried. Google used to ignore most punctuation and I got used to that. I don't know if it's done for specific names like .net and c++ or everything. Yep... "std::" still gets me warts :(

@snoofle said:

@MasterPlanSoftware said:
you don't seem to understand the difference between ASP and ASP.NET

For those of use who have never used either one, what is the difference?

One uses WSH (or an equivalent) and the other uses .NET. Other than that, not much.

MasterPlanSoftware

@TehFreek said:

One uses WSH (or an equivalent) and the other uses .NET. Other than that, not much.

Not much? How are they anything alike? You know... other than both being an MS web application platform...

danixdefcon5

@brettdavis4 said:

@MasterPlanSoftware said:
@CaptainSmartass said:
The real WTF is that you thought ASP, Sharepoint, and SQL Server were the "latest and greatest".

For a production environment? Everything he lists /is/ the latest and greatest.

TRWTF is that you don't seem to understand the difference between ASP and ASP.NET.

I think CaptainSmartass is probably some LAMP/ROR fanboy. He probably thinks I should focus on LAMP or ROR, instead microsoft products. Even though, jobs that use MS products pay a hell of a lot more.

Bleh. Screw ROR, that's for lazy developers. LAMP stacks are nice, but I personally prefer the Java EE platform. One of the very first to implement MVC, and did its job well enough that Microsoft went on and copied it over as the .NET platform.

Anyway, ASP.NET, Sharepoint and SQL Server are "the latest and greatest" in the Microsoft platform only. Kind of like SAP R/3 is "the latest and greatest" in the SAP platform, and Oracle 11g is "the latest and greatest" in the Oracle DBMS industry. It doesn't mean its "the best stuff", though.

MasterPlanSoftware

@danixdefcon5 said:

It doesn't mean its "the best stuff", though.

Who said it was?

mstum

Sounds a bit familiar. I'm a Sharepoint Developer as well, despite that my job is certainly not a WTF job, but Sharepoint has many many WTFs. Took me almost 9 Months to understand how Sharepoint actually works (including the inner details), and now it starts to get fun - Sharepoint is in my opinion a nice Application Framework, but it's not something that you can roll out in 2 Months or so.

And you DO Need a test Environment, since Sharepoint Development has to be done locally on a Sharepoint server (ok, it does not HAVE to be there, but every workaround to develop on Non-Sharepoint Server machines plainly sucks). Actually, every developer needs his own Sharepoint Server and then you need one Test-Environment that essentially mirrors the real site.

FraGag

@MasterPlanSoftware said:

@danixdefcon5 said:
It doesn't mean its "the best stuff", though.

Who said it was?

The OP, though not in these exact words:

@brettdavis4 said:

the latest and greatest technologies

@danixdefcon5 said:

Bleh. Screw ROR, that's for lazy developers.

What's wrong with lazy developers, provided they still make sure that security and testing are in place? The archive of this very site is filled with the results of coders that were far too industrious for their own good.

MasterPlanSoftware

@FraGag said:

The OP, though not in these exact words:
@brettdavis4 said:
the latest and greatest technologies

Apparently you don't understand what that means then.

brettdavis4

@FraGag said:

@MasterPlanSoftware said:

@danixdefcon5 said:
It doesn't mean its "the best stuff", though.

Who said it was?

The OP, though not in these exact words:

@brettdavis4 said:

the latest and greatest technologies

I didn't mean "latest and greatest" in a literal term. I ment it as a figure of speak.

Technically I probably should have said, the "latest and greatest in MS Products."

brettdavis4

@mstum said:

Sounds a bit familiar. I'm a Sharepoint Developer as well, despite that my job is certainly not a WTF job, but Sharepoint has many many WTFs. Took me almost 9 Months to understand how Sharepoint actually works (including the inner details), and now it starts to get fun - Sharepoint is in my opinion a nice Application Framework, but it's not something that you can roll out in 2 Months or so. And you DO Need a test Environment, since Sharepoint Development has to be done locally on a Sharepoint server (ok, it does not HAVE to be there, but every workaround to develop on Non-Sharepoint Server machines plainly sucks). Actually, every developer needs his own Sharepoint Server and then you need one Test-Environment that essentially mirrors the real site.

Thanks for agreeing with me about needing a development environment.

It has been 10 months since I left that job and it is funny that their site still isn't finished and the projects that the head of IT were working on are still not finished.

Netdiver

@danixdefcon5 said:

[...]
Kind of like SAP R/3 is "the latest and greatest" in the SAP platform, [...]

Only if you're still stuck in 2004. Since then, the "latest and greatest in the SAP platform" was first (my)SAP ERP (until 2007), and then SAP NetWeaver.

Netdiver

@mstum said:

[...]
And you DO Need a test Environment, since Sharepoint Development has to be done locally on a Sharepoint server (ok, it does not HAVE to be there, but every workaround to develop on Non-Sharepoint Server machines plainly sucks). Actually, every developer needs his own Sharepoint Server and then you need one Test-Environment that essentially mirrors the real site.

That's exactly the same setup as my company has for J2EE development. It's basically OK, but it gets really bad when you have to support multiple releases of the same application. Essentially you'll need one J2EE engine for each release, because the applications are named identically and would overwrite each other if deployed to the same engine. Were currently at three releases, but will go up to five over the next few months ... :(.

Random832

@ComputerForumUser said:

@MasterPlanSoftware said:
Really?

Damn! It never used to last time I tried. Google used to ignore most punctuation and I got used to that. I don't know if it's done for specific names like .net and c++ or everything. Yep... "std::" still gets me warts :(

Well, "asp.net" would always have worked because it recognizes "word punctuation word" with no space in between as being the two words right next to each other. (oddly, .NET is the first hit in a search for "net" for me)

mrprogguy

SharePoint is more evil than Flash. It's more evil than Perl. It's more evil than Flash and Perl combined. If you need to store large numbers of documents in such a way that they can never be found again, or edited again (because you can't find them), then SharePoint is the way to go.

The organizational structure of SharePoint uses the "heaping all your clothes in a pile on the floor." Or, if you wish, you can heap all your clothes in several piles on the floor, but it still doesn't help, since the product appears to support absolutely no sort of hierarchical indexing whatsoever. The search facility, when it works, provides you with links to documents that you can't edit. You can only edit documents you access via the Magic Special Web Link that can only be found by paging through hundreds of pages of documents provided in more or less random order, each title and link presented in 8pt type.

At least that's the way our Expert Guy installed it.

bjolling

@danixdefcon5 said:

Bleh. Screw ROR, that's for lazy developers. LAMP stacks are nice, but I personally prefer the Java EE platform. One of the very first to implement MVC, and did its job well enough that Microsoft went on and copied it over as the .NET platform.

ASP.NET still doesn't implement MVC yet. I seem to remember that the ASP.NET 3.5 MVC framework is still in CTP

Microsoft – Cloud, Computers, Apps & Gaming

bighusker

@CaptainSmartass said:

The real WTF is that you thought ASP, Sharepoint, and SQL Server were the "latest and greatest". Everything else reads like a pretty typical webmaster position in any large organization.

Eh...nope. And in my mind, there's a big difference between "webmaster" and "web developer." The latter word was not even used by the OP.