This Week Sucked
This has been the worst week I've had at work in recent memory, and maybe ever. So I'm going to vent about it here.
My basic frustration is this: I think our team at work is suffering severely from the "too many cooks" syndrome. An awful lot of people are second-guessing various design decisions at late points in the process, and we end up spending an awful lot of time arguing about things that I think aren't worth even a tenth of the time, and I'm left wondering why in hell people are bothering to hammer at these points.
Of course, I also wonder why I bother defending the way I built the criticized elements in the first place.
I don't think I'm being closed-minded about these points; some of them are good ones, such as the screen which uses red, yellow and green to highlight certain characteristics of data; it was pointed out that color-blind people would not be able to pick up on these cues, which is a very good point. But there are other points that I consider frivolous or just wrong-headed.
Problem is, I see the team (a team of twenty-two people, by the way) is heading towards this effort to build consensus regarding every decision. I think this is an incredibly bone-headed way to approach a development project; you end up with a development process that moves slightly slower than the glaciers retreating from the continent, and a whole bunch of compromises that satisfy no one (we've already had this happen several times).
I'd basically like to see someone vested with the authority to make final decisions on each project. Maybe it would be me sometimes, maybe not. But I think all this arguing and negotiating and (aaagh!) vote-taking is complete bullshit.
I've spent most of the day trying to figure out what to do about this. I'll probably spend a good part of the weekend thinking about it, too. I need to do something to save my sanity. Although it's tempting to just make some global announcement about how the whole process sucks, that probably wouldn't be too bright. I think Monday I need to talk to my boss about it. We get along pretty well, and I think starting anywhere but with him would be wrong, and would go against my respect for him as a person and a friend. I feel a little bad about laying this on him, because I know he's already got an awful lot of pressure on him, but he's really the guy who needs to know how hacked off I am.
My inclination as to "what to do" is to abdicate my involvement in the design process for our application. I'd rather just have people what to do, and to do it without argument, than deal with all this fucking worthless back-and-forth. On the one hand, I feel I can make important and useful contributions to the system's design, but I also feel like the decisions I am making aren't being respected, and if I'm just going to be out-voted all the time, then I'd rather not bother.
I'm pretty sure no one from work is reading this journal; wouldn't it suck if someone chose this weekend to start reading it?
Maybe I'll feel better after a quiet weekend.
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