There are developers and then there are developers.
I don’t normally do work blahgs. I think it is dangereuse to blahg about your work. If you say all kinds of awful things about it, you might just get faarrred if someone finds yer blahg. Roight.
As y’all have heard before, I love my job. And I have no complaints about the company. It is pretty dern good to me and so is my boss. I am not sucking up here. I don’t have to.
So today. Our company tried to set aside a day of fun for all of us. Except that we are computer people. We enjoy our work. It can be hard for us to stop working and have, well, you know, fun… In this phase of my life, my job title is Business Systems Analyst. I write functional specifications that tell developers how stuff is supposed to function. They take my specs and turn them into code. I actually like this job. It combines writing, spreadsheet work, flowcharts and other diagrams, and coding web pages. Our day of fun. A couple of developers arrived over in our area asking for “guidance” on what they were supposed to do on our corporate fun day. After we got done rolling around on the floor laughing, we wondered if we needed to write a functional specification on how to have fun? Oh, probably not. But…
I love computer/web software developers. Even when I don’t. I hate *real estate developers*. There’s a difference there. I remember talking at lunch one day about sprinkling a few of my brother’s ashes on the seat of a real estate developer’s bulldozer. Heck, we had sprinkled them just about everywhere else, including the Pickle Finger. Why not sprinkle a few on that blasted bulldozer? I did the honors on that little task. I don’t know how the conversation started but I suddenly realized that I was using the dreaded word “developer” in front of some of our wonderful web developers. I immediately tried to back-pedal and describe the difference between software developers and real estate developers. Yiiy! It was okay and a female developer around my age joked that she’d know who to blame if she found ashes on her keyboard.
March 25th, 2010 at 8:11 pm
Friends have a small company, and each year have a Mandatory Fun Day, which almost always involves grilling out and cold brrrrrs.
March 25th, 2010 at 8:25 pm
I enjoy my job most of the time, but have some genuine frustrations that I do blog about. I hope I won’t get burned over it!!
March 26th, 2010 at 11:37 am
My husband is a software developer/architect. He has had so many experiences with corporate getting “fun” over the years. (I work in the academy or the nonprofit world — no “fun” there, ever!) The one that stands out is when they decided to give everyone $50 to make their cubes “fun”. After deciding to NOT fill his cube with kush balls, Paul bought copper pipes, build a “temple roof” over the cube, and hung a bead curtain down over the doorway opening. Corporate was NOT HAPPY; Paul called their bluff, and the “temple” stayed. A few weeks later, some business coach that the company brought in to help with strategic planning or something walked into the office and saw Paul’s temple from waaaaaay across the lines of cubes. Then he loudly announced: WHO IS THAT? THAT IS EXACTLY THE KIND OF THINKING YOU NEED HERE! (Much to the chagrin of the corporate staff.)
March 27th, 2010 at 9:39 am
Sometimes corporations are so silly. It is one reason I’m happy to work from home.
March 27th, 2010 at 5:36 pm
…then there are the “privately-held” companies that lay someone off [indefinitely] for 6.5 months, call them back, then lay them off again [indefinitely] after 4 months… that company apparently USED to be “fun”, but I haven’t seen any sign of that since about my 3rd month working there (about the time the economy decided to tank).
In the meantime, I’m trying to make the most of *not* working from home, taking a class, and walking the dogs and getting geeked about the upcoming concert tour of China!…..and cursing at the people who invade our subdivision to attend the “Estate Sale” just a few doors down the street and freakin’ block MY street with their poorly-parked veee-hickles!