Slashdot Mirror
How Fast is Your Turnaround Time?
petrus.burdigala writes "I work for a mid-sized commercial software company (~20 Mloc) and we are frequently challenged by our supervisors to get fixes around the clock. Overall, we manage to get a 'bullet-proof' patch in about 4-5 weeks (from coding->QA->Build/Packaging->shipment), which I consider not so bad. But the other day, we got an urgent request from our support team to come up with a decent fix in 48 hours. I think they're a tiny bit unrealistic. So I wanted to get feedback from my peers: are we doing that bad? It takes months for other software vendors to issue zero-day exploit fixes, are our customers being unreasonable?"
It may just be me but I think that's why they are called "customers"
Excuse me while I gather the virgin sacrifice and assemble the pentagram required to solve your problem
How much of that 48 hour deadline did you waste reading /.
Get back to work!
What was that exploit again?
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
How much time do you spend on TPS reports?
The last time I did one I forgot the cover page and my 7 bosses all bugged me about it.
In that case, 5 weeks is not enough time for a marketing team to decide on a new name.
Our running joke used to be:
Marketing: We need it real bad!
Engineering: How bad do you need it?
Marketing: <puzzled look>
Engineering: Careful what you wish for... OK, Ops. Ship it!
I made them believe it was a hardware problem!
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I work in a small company doing support (amongst other things). I've been there longer than most of the developers due to high staff turn over.
... wait a week or so for the client to get really cranky ...
A common scenerio for me goes like this:
1 - client reports a problem.
2 - spend 2-3 hours on phone with client identifying what's really going on.
3 - spend an hour or so in SQL Profiler/Delphi debugger to find the root cause.
4 - half an hour documenting what the problem is, causes & how to replicate in order to hand it off to a developer in an off-shore office
4 - have my supervisor ask me Monday morning if I can look at it because the client is cranky & the developer is sick/has quit/has family crisis/there is a public holiday in that country.
5 - fix the damn thing which only takes a few hours to code & test & delivery after all the hard work was done in step 3
6 - wonder why the hell I am still with this company
It doesn't take 48 days to burn a Linux CD and send it to the client.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
You sell toilet paper and control reactors with the same machine?
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
You have no idea how the real world works.
Sometimes I long for the easy days before I got that PhD in Nuclear Science/Tissue Engineering. Before I knew how the nuclear power/toilet paper industry really works.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)