Frustration
Why are some people such twats?
Last month, one person managed to almost bring the business to its knees by running a huge pile of shit code overnight. The techie guys were really not pleased at being woken up at 5 am to sort it all out, cancel this shit job, and there was a knock on effect to the rest of the business, with everything else running late.
He then managed to alienate the techies even further by running the same pile of shite the following night - that in itself is stupidity - if it’s inefficient code one night, it’s going to be just as inefficient if you run the same code again with no modifications.
So the techies put a blanket ban on ALL people being allowed to run jobs overnight, thus pissing off pretty much the rest of the company.
Since then, me and B from my team have spent hours (and in B’s case days) rewriting the pile of shit, to be more efficient in terms of code, and to be better suited to our systems. Along the way we have been asking the Twat to please send us the results of him running our modified code, so we can at least confirm that what we are sending him is better - we believe it will be, but only he has the results of running the two editions of code.
He hasn’t bothered sending us anything.
B sent him some code two weeks ago. One week ago I asked him how it was running, and he said he hadn’t even had time to look at it, let alone run it.
So much for it being urgent.
So B and I postponed rewriting the rest of the shit, because why should we bother if it’s not that important?
Then, at the beginning of this week it suddenly became important again.
And to give him his due, the Twat appeared to be coming onside, accepting that maybe what we were suggesting was actually better than what he had, and seemed to be taking on board what we were saying.
On Tuesday, B sent him some modified code, saying she thought he would be able to run the code and bring back one years worth of data in one go, rather than monthly.
Yesterday, he tried to run the code. At 9 this morning I got a phone call from him, saying it was still running (a miracle in itself, the techies had told me they planned to cancel any jobs he had running overnight), and asking if it was near completion. I checked, and it still had a way to go - I put this down to there being a lot of traffic on the system, with everyone running their month end reports, plus I knew there were a lot of other large data extractions going on. I said I’d get the techies to look into it.
Now, 4 weeks ago these guys were within a gnats nadgers of revoking this Twats ability to run anything - nobody takes kindly to being woken two days in a row at 5 am to sort out somebody else’s pile of shite, and it had taken a lot of persuasion from me to stop them from doing it.
And now he is asking for their help.
Thankfully, as IT departments go we have some pretty sound guys up there, and J was extremely helpful. “Let it run until lunchtime - we can then take a call whether to cancel it, and we can try and run it direct from the systems overnight. There is nothing wrong with what it is doing, it is probably down to systems traffic. Oh, and he has 8 sessions running - he’s only supposed to have 2, and we are getting fed up with telling him this.”
I then spent the rest of the morning in a meeting, and when I got back to my desk there was an email from the Twat saying that his job had failed, due to lack of temporary space. He suggested running it one month at a time, and storing the data on the main system for the duration of the project.
I replied, saying that would be up to the techies as the main system was their responsibility, and I asked him if he could give me the whole project spec, so we could maybe look at the problem from a different angle, because up until now I had only seen part of the code, and had only been looking at making what was there more efficient, and hadn’t considered whether what he was doing what the best way of getting to his final point. I also pointed out that running the program for one month at a time was what caused problems in the first place, and we should consider running 3-4 months at a time, to ensure we got data back, but minimised the impact on the other systems. I also asked that he restrict his access to 2 sessions, in line with the guidelines, as the system was almost maxed out, and he was affecting other users.
In the meantime, the techies replied saying it was not possible for him to run and store everything on the main system, as it would take too much in temp space, disk space and resource.
The Twat’s response? “I can’t cancel anything because I am running very important reports for my department. And I don’t believe there will be much impact to the system, so that is the way I am going to do it.” Okay, I paraphrased here.
But what the fuck? He is telling the techie, the one in charge of our system to basically fuck off, he is wrong about the capacity and what it can do, and he is going to do what he wants anyway. Does this guy realise just how close he is to being kicked off the system?
And ‘very important reports’? Get a grip, sunshine, everyone has very important reports to run at month end, and everyone else manages to stick within the guidelines.
Oh, and I noticed he’d not bothered to give us the spec.
So I replied, patiently, again. I told him if he didn’t delete some of his sessions, we would choose which ones to delete. I also pointed out that I would take the techie’s view of what the system could and couldn’t do over his opinion. I asked again for the spec, explaining how it would help us all get to a result which would (maybe) keep everyone happy.
The techie also replied - remarkably calmly I thought, also asking for a “high level view of what he was trying to get at” so he could advise on the best solution.
The Twat’s response to that? “I’m afraid the boat has already left on that one - we do not have the time to go back to the drawing board, we have to go with what we have now and make it run as it is.”
What a fucking idiot.
I have now spoken to his boss, who has sent me the original spec, I have arranged a conference call with me, his boss, the techies and him to go through this tomorrow.
When I left, he was running the code, but for one month only, completely against what I had told him to do.
The only consolation is that his user has, somehow, got ‘deprioritised’ in the running order, ensuring that anything else submitted will run faster than what he has. And the techies on call have been issued instructions (from the techie, may I add, not me) that should the overnight batches be running slow, to just cancel anything running under this user’s id.
The man is just not helping himself. And is refusing to be helped. His arrogance is absolutely astounding.