Death March projects

[krytonsheep]

No one lost their job and the super genius responsible left for a better job soon after.

I've seen that time and time again. You'll get someone who is very outspoken, but lacking in any deep technical understanding. Managers listen to them, waste a gazillion pounds. The guy leaves, will put on his CV he did the equivalent of building a SpaceX rocket single handedly, and gets a ridiculously good job because people buy into the bulltulip.

The things I've seen people won't believe. The best analogy I can give is like someone makes a text input box in Javascript for a payment system, writes on their CV they made Stripe, and then gets a job as the governor of the BoE.

[willendure]

2 weeks to go. In some ways things are in a lot better shape now, we have a spec that covers a decent amount of future work, and things have settled down a bit in terms of time demands that completely short circuited the design process. The development work has largely been succesfull, just followed a very messy process, and lots of rework from testing. In that sense, the work should be a bit easier going forward, but I somehow don't trust this client to ever give me a straightforward ride! The main issue is that this client runs what I call fake agile - they pretend to be agile, but really do waterfall, but things never work out to allow the steps of the waterfall to complete. Often my step has been in negative time, development work starts before the spec is decided and ready for technical design.

Extension is up in 2 weeks, and AFAIK they still need somebody, but I need a rest.

Main skills are AWS design, and ability to deal with lots of unknowns and lots of patience. There is probably someone out there that might even enjoy this kind of work and be able to do it much better than me. Around the 500/day mark. When I tell the agency I am not interested in any extension, they will ask if I know anyone that might be interested, and if that is you, drop me a PM and I can tell you more and forward the job description and agency details and so on.

Death march - but its a job, init? In this market thats still worth something!

[CoolCat]

I am in exactly the same position as you! Indian devs all ready to go, they have started in fact, and the spec isn't even half way ready! I've been chasing the a-hole who is writing the spec for months and he kept promising I would have it next monday morning, next monday morning. I think he has actually made a start on it now. Project MUST be delivered end of Sept. Senior stakeholders making a BIG FUSS. Funny thing is, we needed the senior stakehodlers to do some actual work the other day, to get us some info on the clients to set them up with accounts, and they could not be arsed and tried to fob it off on me! Well, it is sunny at the moment, the poor buggers need to WFH and sit in the garden enjoying a lemonade most likely.

Just heard they want to extend my contract as it runs out in about 8 weeks. I switched my mic off I was laughing so hard. Haven't told them where to stick it yet! What a farce.

sounds like network rail, or the MOD, or ...

[jamesbrown]

that I call fake agile

Not a code monkey, but so-called "fragile" is definitely a thing - see it everywhere in orgs that formerly (read: still) used waterfall and, at some point, thought it might be a good idea to improve things, but couldn't be fecked to understand what or why.

[willendure]

Not a code monkey, but so-called "fragile" is definitely a thing - see it everywhere in orgs that formerly (read: still) used waterfall and, at some point, thought it might be a good idea to improve things, but couldn't be fecked to understand what or why.

Yeah, if they just stuck with waterfall and committed to doing that well things would mostly be fine. Or go agile, but get rid of the waterfall part completely - involve the BAs in backlog refinement, review and learn and adapt and so on. Can't see that working well with an off shore team though, hard enough to have a discussion about something simple like what a field is named, never mind trying to get into the higher level discussions around refining the OODA loop. But worst of all is to be in between and not do either approach well.

[BlueSharp]

2 weeks to go. In some ways things are in a lot better shape now, we have a spec that covers a decent amount of future work, and things have settled down a bit in terms of time demands that completely short circuited the design process. The development work has largely been succesfull, just followed a very messy process, and lots of rework from testing. In that sense, the work should be a bit easier going forward, but I somehow don't trust this client to ever give me a straightforward ride! The main issue is that this client runs what I call fake agile - they pretend to be agile, but really do waterfall, but things never work out to allow the steps of the waterfall to complete. Often my step has been in negative time, development work starts before the spec is decided and ready for technical design.

Extension is up in 2 weeks, and AFAIK they still need somebody, but I need a rest.

Main skills are AWS design, and ability to deal with lots of unknowns and lots of patience. There is probably someone out there that might even enjoy this kind of work and be able to do it much better than me. Around the 500/day mark. When I tell the agency I am not interested in any extension, they will ask if I know anyone that might be interested, and if that is you, drop me a PM and I can tell you more and forward the job description and agency details and so on.

Death march - but its a job, init? In this market thats still worth something!

We still need to pay the bill as long as the person who signs the timesheets is aware of the situation; that's all I really care about as long as my mental health is good shape. 3 and a bit weeks to go before an extended Christmas break.

[willendure]

We still need to pay the bill as long as the person who signs the timesheets is aware of the situation; that's all I really care about as long as my mental health is good shape. 3 and a bit weeks to go before an extended Christmas break.

Sometimes that is good enough, but in the main it isn't. As a contractor I will accept a difficult or boring or stressful job and not complain - but I would much rather be doing one of the more interesting and fun ones and I have had a few of those, so I know they exist.

Main reason for finishing this one really, as I am not scared about never finding another contract, and I know that worst case I can find another one just like it!

Some contractors make a living from having a out of date but niche skill that is still essential - such as mainframe coding. Others make a living from having cutting edge skills that are still fresh enough to command a premium. The latter kind of contractor is what I have always been. So I need time to brush up on my skills, consult my crystal ball on what tomorrows market is going to need, and go after it.

Thats what keeps it fun and interesting for me anyway. Proud that I can still navigate a many 100s of Ks of lines of Java and keep a level head and fix stuff, but jeez, its bloody dull. Something more interesting next, if I can get it!

[sadkingbilly]

Some contractors make a living from having a out of date but niche skill that is still essential - such as mainframe coding.

out of date? and still essential? can't be both pal.
and there's a lot more to mainframes than 'coding'.
but I expect nothing more from code monkeys.

[willendure]

out of date? and still essential? can't be both pal.
and there's a lot more to mainframes than 'coding'.
but I expect nothing more from code monkeys.

What I mean is - skillsets in stuff that was new decades ago. Java starting to move into that category even.

[sadkingbilly]

What I mean is - skillsets in stuff that was new decades ago. Java starting to move into that category even.

Java's just another 'language'. mainframe(Z/series) is an ecosystem and is constamtly being updated.