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 Issue
1
We’ve all taken that first step up the ladder from junior programmer, or
hope to Real Soon Now. Join Angie Baxter for a week in the working life of a newly
appointed senior developer.
Monday
The start of week three and I’m still here, so things must be going well. When I
first arrived I wondered if I was really ready to be a senior developer, especially as I
was instantly nominated the firm’s OLE expert and had to start fielding questions
about the Automation API on my first morning. I’ve settled in a bit now though, and
I’m a lot more confident. The people here seem a good bunch to work with, and my
worries about being the only woman on the desktop systems team have proved groundless
– as long as you keep to the spec and don’t crash the server, you get the
respect you deserve, which is fine by me. I’m not completely isolated anyway, as
Penny, the team administrator, seems nice and we’re having lunch later this week,
when she’s promised to give me the low-down on my colleagues. It’s still early
days, but I think I’ve made a good move.
Tuesday
Why on earth did I put OLE on my CV? I could have been designing screen layouts for nice
grateful end-users now, but instead I’m stuck with Carl trying to work out why Excel
won’t respond to his statistics-feed Automation controller. To make things worse,
Carl obviously thinks it’s beneath him to deal with applications like Excel in the
first place, and seems to blame me for OLE’s shortcomings while dropping heavy hints
that I should take the whole thing over and write it in Visual Basic instead. This is
something I really don’t want to do, so I’m doing my best to get him running
again, while also trying to avoid getting too big a reputation as an Automation whizz.
It’s a difficult situation, but that’s what us senior developers are here for, I
suppose.
Wednesday
Success! Excel’s returning data instead of ‘invalid property’ errors,
Carl’s (sort of) happy and I’m back on my screen layouts. It took me nearly a
day to work up the courage to ask if I could see his source code, but within ten minutes
I’d found it – a silly structure error, but I didn’t put it that way when I
told him. Carl, for his part, didn’t ask me whether I understood
C++, although I could see he was dying to. In return, I’m not going to tell anyone it
was his fault, on the unspoken understanding that he doesn’t encourage the idea that
I’m especially good at Automation. Overall, I think we’ve reached an
understanding.
Thursday
Lunch with Penny. She’s been here six years, so knows everyone and everything. Carl
and Denny came from quite high-powered jobs: Carl in the nuclear industry, while Denny
actually worked for Microsoft in Seattle, or “Redmond” as he insists on calling
it. They are known as the C++ Mafia, for fairly obvious reasons. Kevin and Alan, our
project leaders, are like chalk and cheese – Kevin’s the go-ahead one, while
Alan’s more of a stick-in-the-mud. Poor Sammy tries really hard, but keeps getting it
wrong (as I’ve already noticed). Margaret, the business analyst, isn’t part of
our team but she works with us a lot and it’s best not to get on the wrong side of
her. Our boss Mike, the team manager, is a bit of an unknown quantity and there’s bad
feeling between him and Brian Wood on the AS/400 team. Greg (Mike and Brian’s boss)
is very pleasant but you can’t believe everything he says – oh, and don’t
get left alone with Malcolm Turner in Sales admin. Head swimming, I head back to my
desk.
Friday
My first encounter with end users, in this case the despatch clerks at the home
depot. They don’t like my screen layouts, because the buttons are too small and the
colours clash. The despatch supervisor sits there grinning like an ape through the whole
business, while I have to studiously take notes, including a whole paragraph about
Maureen’s eye trouble which they insist I write down. I go back to the office hoping
that Carl will need some more Automation help, but he doesn’t. I’m just about to
start checking my palette for ‘a nice green’ when Mike calls me in, tells me to
forget Despatch and work with Kevin on the Drivers’ Allowances system until further
notice. Perhaps there is someone up there watching over me after all.
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Issue 1 - Contents
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Angie >
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Issue 1
Issue 2
Issue 3
Issue 4
Issue 5
Issue 6
Issue 7
Issue 8
Issue 9
Issue 10
Issue 11
Issue 12
Issue 13
Issue 14
Issue 15
Issue 16
Issue 17
Issue 18
Issue 19
Issue 20
Issue 21
Issue 22
Issue 23
Issue 24
Issue 25
Issue 26
Issue 27
Issue 28
Issue 29
Issue 30
Issue 31
Issue 32
Issue 33
Issue 34
Issue 35
Issue 36
Issue 37
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