Tuesday 20 April 2010

Update on work

I've been at my job for over 6 months now and I've pretty much settled in…as have others settled with me. The person I sit beside has already remarked that I eat the same thing for lunch every day. Winter's gone so at least I'm not getting comments about never wearing a jacket any more. It also turns out an ex-colleague went to university with someone at my work. I know their name but I'm not too familiar with them as a person. I had met up with this ex-colleague and he asked me if I know such-and-such and I said "not really." Someone else who was there asked "does he know AS4L?" to which the ex-colleague replied with a smile "oh, everyone knows AS4L". I don't know if that's good or bad. I'm hoping it is in reference to my legendary comedy skills :)

As for my colleagues in general…it really is same s**t different day. The things that annoyed me in my old place are just annoying me slightly less in my new place. It seems that other people's flaws are universal. Again I am finding myself frustrated at other people's lack of attention to detail and inability to come up with decent solutions to things. I know that the detail thing is maybe just me being too focussed on detail, but I don't know if it isn't also that they're just slack or don't care. Maybe it's a bit of both.

On a related note I can see myself doing some things that, in hindsight, maybe weren't the best ideas I've ever had. One colleague brought me to his computer for me to look at something they had finished but I didn't like the way they had done it. I didn't like it at all. I advised them of a better way that was in keeping with good principles and practices and would be more flexible for the client and less prone to errors but they didn't seem to care, in their mind the job was done. So when I got back to my own computer I completely re-wrote everything they had done. When my way was finished I showed the colleague my method and explained why it was better. It was only in the following days it dawned on me that it would probably piss me off if I showed something to someone and they went and re-wrote it. I suppose it could be considered disrespectful…but he should have taken my advice and implemented my method himself so I didn't have to do it for him :)

Similarly I went over reams and reams of another colleagues work and noted down every error. I fixed most of them but left the more complicated issues for them to fix. When I was done I sent them this big list of things I had fixed and a list for them still to fix. My intention of telling him the things I had fixed was so he was aware that he had done them wrong so he could look at the updated version and learn from it…but again it was only in the following days that I realised he probably just thinks I'm a prick :)

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