The Big One, almost
Feb. 13th, 2001 11:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sanpaku_backupWell, my boss called us into the testing lab yesterday and told us we were all being fired. OK, not quite. But the quality control department is being abolished and we are all being reassigned elsewhere in the company.
It is better than being laid off but all the same intensely depressing to realize that no one cares about the kind of work we've done. They all just consider it superfluous and a waste of time. All those long nights trying to make sure the stuff is readable and usable. But someone at the top figures we can save 3 weeks off of production time if we leave in the god-awful writing etc. that is in the early drafts of our product. It has taken a while to realize just how little people here care about putting out something of quality as opposed to rushing shit out onto the market. You just want to shake them-- "hey, we're doing this for COLLEGE PROFESSORS here, if the thing says the Emancipation Proclamation was written in 1862 [as our stuff currently does] instead of 1863, they're not going to use it no matter how many bells and whistles there are." So to lessen the fact that they are ungrateful jerks is the certainty that they will learn the hard way that we did something important.
As for me, on some levels, this might not be entirely bad. I am supposed to now do content work full time, which means being a historian again, and I like that. The question is whether or not the stench of failure attached to my department will follow me. I haven't really feathered my nest with the big cheeses and now everything will be in one basket. Adam was at least an advocate on my behalf. Another question is that if they didn't have a budget for 3 American historians 2 months ago, how do they have it now?
It's just a disturbing and depressing thing for all of us. This place doesn't express appreciation for the tiniest fucking things. We are supposed to be on another deadline, but we're all like, fuck this shit, we're not staying here late or any of that. No one would care if the stuff went up with mistakes anyway. So why bother.
It is better than being laid off but all the same intensely depressing to realize that no one cares about the kind of work we've done. They all just consider it superfluous and a waste of time. All those long nights trying to make sure the stuff is readable and usable. But someone at the top figures we can save 3 weeks off of production time if we leave in the god-awful writing etc. that is in the early drafts of our product. It has taken a while to realize just how little people here care about putting out something of quality as opposed to rushing shit out onto the market. You just want to shake them-- "hey, we're doing this for COLLEGE PROFESSORS here, if the thing says the Emancipation Proclamation was written in 1862 [as our stuff currently does] instead of 1863, they're not going to use it no matter how many bells and whistles there are." So to lessen the fact that they are ungrateful jerks is the certainty that they will learn the hard way that we did something important.
As for me, on some levels, this might not be entirely bad. I am supposed to now do content work full time, which means being a historian again, and I like that. The question is whether or not the stench of failure attached to my department will follow me. I haven't really feathered my nest with the big cheeses and now everything will be in one basket. Adam was at least an advocate on my behalf. Another question is that if they didn't have a budget for 3 American historians 2 months ago, how do they have it now?
It's just a disturbing and depressing thing for all of us. This place doesn't express appreciation for the tiniest fucking things. We are supposed to be on another deadline, but we're all like, fuck this shit, we're not staying here late or any of that. No one would care if the stuff went up with mistakes anyway. So why bother.
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What amuses me.
Date: 2001-02-13 05:35 pm (UTC)"It was a cold and windy inauguration day on November 22, 1917 and President Lincoln was in Gettysburg, Virginia to co-memoritate the dead from World War Two. He checked his tie as he stared into the television camera, and began his somber speech, 'Eighty Seven months ago I became Vice President, and now I am President because Gypsies shot Washington. After writing the Constitution, I freed the slaves in 1916 and now they have won World War Two against Hitler, who his evil. I therefore am granting a full pardon to Richard Nixon. Thank you.'"
Re: What amuses me.
Date: 2001-02-14 07:31 am (UTC)Hm, not to break my confidentiality agreement... a CERTAIN company, not MINE of course, had someone who ripped off hundreds of definitions from an online encyclopedia and just stuck 'em into our stuff. This person was long gone when, by a fluke, the material was caught, before it was published.
Yesterday an editor told me that by chance he happened to be looking at our map of NATO and it showed Norway and Sweden reversed, with Finland as part of Russia. Just random chance that this was caught. Such stories could be multiplied.
Such things could never happen now, of course. That is why we no longer need to have a separate department handling quality.
Supposedly a long time ago someone put in "xxx" as a placeholder somewhere and it got read as an address by the html tool. We had an angry prof call up to tell us about it. That is the new quality assurance method around here, I suppose: wait until people get pissed off.