[ANNOUNCE] [REMINDER] Social this Thursday - PLUS! free beer

[Nicholas Clark]

On Wed, Aug 01, 2007 at 03:37:29PM +0100, Tom Hukins wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 01, 2007 at 11:03:28AM +0100, Nicholas Clark wrote:
> >   * What version control system do you use?
> >   * How do you test the code?
> >   * What is your release process?
> 
> I find "Where do you want to go, how will you get there and what
> problems will you encounter?"  more interesting questions than "Where
> are you now?".  These questions have right answers: the answers you
> get offer good starting points to ask more questions and figure out
> how well you'll fit in.

I didn't mean to imply that the answers to the questions were fixed and
terse. They hopefully lead to discussion, and also reveal how things are,
what has buy-in to be changed, and what is uphill or impossible.
And sometimes those things aren't important. And sometimes they are.
All jobs suck. It's just knowing how, and finding suckage that doesn't bother
you.

> I've introduced, migrated or enhanced version control systems, bug
> trackers and release processes at various places I've worked, and I
> quite enjoy it.  I wouldn't have the chance to do that somewhere that
> already had everything sorted out, if such places exist.

I may well. But I've also been thoroughly destroyed by places that have no
such ability to change (One in particular always implying that it could, but
being completely set in its ways, despite that department being less competent
as a development organisations than boo.com was. They're advertising right now
in London. The only bit that is most definitely true is "Pay rate: Excellent")

The places I'm thinking of haven't changed after I left. Despite being
unhappy that I left, and knowing my reasons why. Leopards find it hard to
change their spots.

On Wed, Aug 01, 2007 at 08:55:23AM -0700, Ovid wrote:
> --- Daniel Barlow <dan at coruskate.net> wrote:
> 
> > Or "CVS, but we're in the middle of moving it all to 
> > $something_trendier"
> 
> Riiiiiiiight.  If I had a dollar for every time I've heard that ...

I've had enough places where "jam tomorrow" never happened (and sometimes
where things that are agreed and approved just don't happen) that I now
believe things when I see them. Action speaks. Words don't.

Although for grandiose folly, I hope that no-one beats Ernst Malmsten hiring
the Odeon Leister Square for an all company meeting in March 2000, standing
at the front saying "I'm going to turn this company around", despite not
actually offering any new ideas or policies that differed from the status
quo, which had got things to the state that they were in.

Nicholas Clark