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Wednesday, 22 October 2003

It makes you wonder why you bother! [brit]


So, after 9 months development (excluding 2-3 months planning) and spending a small fortune on dedicated video streaming hardware, I receive a message that basically makes me wonder why we bother.
The beta test for the new corporate global extranet - a system which has a hugely complicated yet extremely impressive permissions system spanning 100,000+ objects accessible by 12,000 users - went extremely well; nothing came of it which indicated that we'd have to revise any soft/hard launch date or otherwise derail things.
Until now.
Part of this project involved the creation of a pretty cutting edge (in terms of what this company has available to it) video database system - all creative work (print, press, tv, cinema, radio) was digitised and put online; users can do exhaustive searches and build their own playlists which they can share, save or best of all export to practically any digital format (including DVD and DivX) from anywhere in the world. Nearly 4 years worth of stuff is on there and running sweetly..
Quite literally an hour ago, I was informed that this component was no longer to be made available; the guts had been ripped out of the project's creative channel by people who a) are nothing to do with the project team, b) have no concept as to what the point of offering such creative work is and c) have not (and this is what I find most insulting) explained their reasoning - dictum has come down from on high, and I'm sat here getting seriously wound up by the fact that someone 7,000 miles away is telling me that I'm not trusted (essentially) to view creative work from other network agencies.. what am I going to do with it? sell it on? hardly.
Live date (which was to be 1700 GMT tommorrow) is now suspended until such time as decisions are made by those who haven't been involved. It's at times like this that I really do honestly wonder why I bother. The net result? my team and I have just had the 'almost done' feeling beaten out of us, my boss is pissed off, and the idea that the stupidly long working days may be coming to an end has just been thrown headlong out of the nearest window...

1 comment:

  1. So you'll be wanting to set up your own company then, like a sensible person? :) I spent 5 years in start-ups looking upwards agast at the ineptness of my superiors. Now at least it's *my* ineptness hehe.

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