I’ve worked with some pretty rotten software, but management software is easily the most user unfriendly, so my vote goes to HPSM.

  • Admiral Patrick
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    8 months ago

    Ha, indeed. To elaborate on that part:

    He made this demo he was so proud of. Watching it interactively, it was like 70 steps of “move mouse {X,Y}, click, copy, etc”. I could literally hear Yakkety Sax in my head as I watched it bumble through.

    After that, I went back to my office and wrote a 30 line Python script that accomplished the same thing, only sanely and with the ability to handle errors. He preferred his method since “it’s easier for our non-technical folks to automate their stuff this way”.

    That was the exact moment I started looking for a new job.

    • Natanael
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      108 months ago

      Non tech people should ALWAYS ask the support team when they need help automating IT stuff for precisely this reason.

      • Admiral Patrick
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        48 months ago

        Exactly that. When building a load-bearing business process, it’s always critical that the person writing it knows what they’re doing.

    • @tool
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      38 months ago

      Before I replace it with something that won’t catastrophically collapse when the wind blows the wrong way, I get some sort of sick satisfaction out of doing autopsies on the house-built-of-matchsticks “solutions” that users come up with and I don’t know why. Some of them are truly fascinating and make you wonder how someone could possibly arrive at that conclusion based on what they were actually try to achieve.

      It’s also why if I’m asked to implement something, my first question isn’t “When does this need to be done?,” it’s “What exactly is the problem you’re trying to solve?”

      What a user asks for and what they actually need very rarely intersect.

      • Admiral Patrick
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        28 months ago

        I wish I could hire you and a couple other people who replied to this lol. “Match stick architecture” is definitely something we have and I have been trying to shore up / replace for years.

        • @tool
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          27 months ago

          Sorry, I missed this comment. I actually love doing that kind of shit, I get some sort of weird pleasure out of fixing chaotic stuff like that. That tends to be my role almost all the time; I’ll come in, stay a few years, fix everything and get bored, and then move on somewhere else to do it again.

          My current job is the only place that I haven’t done that, because it’s probably the best company that I’ve ever worked for.