The changing of the guard
At least once, Microsoft engineers poured their hearts into writing, optimizing, and streamlining some chunk of functionality that IBM wanted in their software, only to have the work rejected by IBM (and the engineers reprimanded) because Microsoft handed over an insufficient number of lines of code. You see, IBM didn’t assess the ingenuity of the programmer, nor did they assess the blazing speed of the code; all they cared about was quantity of lines of code written.
The result? Microsoft employees (at least for a while) padded their code with crap to make IBM happy. It goes without saying that this did not result in quality software.
Old dogs, new tricks. Sometimes they don’t combine well. I guess this always happens when the old guard goes kicking and screaming out to pasture and the new guard comes in and cleans things up. That can’t be pleasant if you’re one of the folks who are on their way out (or who are watching as the world is pulling out ahead while they lag behind).
Have you ever been in a situation like the one I described above, where the old guard asks you to do things that are patently foolish — that are severely, pointlessly wasteful — but you have no choice but to do them? Even when you know better? I have.
Hell, I’m in one of those situations now. Words can’t adequately describe how irritating it is, either.
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p> One more year. I can last one more year.]]>
