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"If only you knew the power of the dark side."
- Darth Vader
"If you're looking for trouble, you came to the right
place. If you're looking for trouble, just look right in my
face. I was born standing up and talking back. My daddy was
a green-eyed mountain jack. Because I'm evil, my middle name
is misery. Well I'm evil, so don't you mess around with me"
- Elvis Presley from the song Trouble (Leiber & Stoller)
"Pathetic Earthlings! Hurling your bodies out into the
void without the slightest inkling of who or what is out here.
If you knew anything about the true nature of the universe,
anything at all, you would have hidden from it in terror."
- Ming the Merciless in Flash Gordon
May 7th, 2003
So, I've decided to be evil. With a capital "E"
which rhymes with "C" and that stands for "corporate".
As many before me have discovered, walking down
the path of darkness has many, many benefits. Those of us that
have been incovenienced by a conscience, need no longer worry
about the after life. We know where we are going.
Plus, we don't need to worry about those pesky little scruples
getting in our way. Our motivation is power, personal profit
and the infliction of pain upon the innocent.
And that's just the small stuff.
I've contemplated wearing a black cape and spikes,
but my company has a dress code. Being evil also means you have
to pick your battles. So, instead, I may just settle for running
with scissors.
I know what you are thinking - "What brought
about this change? Why join the forces of darkness?"
Well, it was a very slow change. It started about
a year ago when I was drafted into our development group's Quality
Assurance section. The Quality Assurance Group (QA for short)
of my company was derrived from the Microsoft Operations Framework
model. This simply means that it's extra evil. I mean, after
all, if you can't count on Bill Gates to be evil, who can you
count on?
For those of you who are new to corporate QA,
let me educate you.
The Microsoft Operations Framework model is divided
into four sections: Project Management, Program Management,
Development, and Quality Assurance. Essentially, the workflow
works as follows.
- The Program Manager makes a request to the
Project Manager.
- The Project Manager sends the requirements
to Development.
- Development and QA review the requirements
and provide time estimates for a product release date.
- While Development makes the application, QA
creates a test plan and a test script from the software requirements
documentation and high-level design documents.
- Development creates the product and places
the product in a test environment for QA to run their test
script.
- QA, then, does everything in its power to
break the product. If there are problems, then QA sends the
product back to Development with a list of everything they
have to fix.
- Development makes fixes and QA tests again
to see if any of the fixes corrupted the entire application.
This process can go back and forth several times.
- When everything checks out in the QA environment
and QA "signs off" on the product, it is uploaded
on a Friday night after 8:PM EST (to accomodate the West Coast).
The developer, QA rep (me), Logistics rep (the guy who moves
the product into the production environment) stay to release
the product to production. It's showtime.
- After logistics moves the product into production,
QA tests the product again to make certain that there are
no problems due to the move to production. If there are -
everyone stays late until the product is fixed. If it can't
be fixed, the product is rejected and sent back to Development
for a later release. If everything is good the first time
around, everyone can sign off and go home.
It rarely happens that way, but that's how it's
supposed to work.
But in a nutshell, my job is to break things
and be a cruel bastard by keeping engineers away from their
families on a Friday Night. It's a hard job, but it beats cleaning
garbage cans at Great Adventure in November.
Did I ask for this job? No.
Did I want this job? No.
Was I happier designing web pages? Absolutely.
Am I any good at QA? Unfortunately, yes.
I developed a small propensity toward evil while
I was doing Management Reporting. In order to do Management
Reporting, a person has to follow the facts and present the
truth.... no matter how ugly it is. If a person is bad at his
job, it is the reporter's responsibility to publish the facts.
If a group fails to do its job, it is the reporter's responsiblity
to let management know they are screwing up. In other words,
the reporter is a spy and a squealer. Anything less than the
truth is a compromise of his position.
But that's Management Reporting. This is QA.
I was drafted. I didn't want to do this. I was
quite happy being creative and using the right side of my brain
to create beautiful useful things. I was good at that. My training
for the last five years or so consisted of making all things
"web". I was learning Flash, ASP, SQL Server, PhotoShop,
and JavaScript. Then one bleak day in May 02, the new department
head decided that a web designer wasn't necessary for our group
and transferred me to QA. At the time, I didn't know what QA
was and thought it wouldn't last.
My first experience in the field of QA told me
that I wasn't going to enjoy it. I was on a 3 hour conference
call doing my best Verizon Spokesman imitation. "Can you
hear me now? Good." Except it was, "I'm sending something
to you... What do you see?... No." It was enough to make
my eyes bleed.
The next instance told me I would like it even
less. It was my first release and I was trapped in New York
until 2:AM doing testing. Granted, I was allowed to come in
later in the day as I knew I'd be here until at least 8:PM,
but it still sucked. And let me tell you, driving home from
work at 2:30 in the morning sucks the big one. I got home at
4:AM Saturday.
Another little surprise I got was they changed
my hours for no apparent reason. As a designer, I worked from
7:AM to 3:PM. It was ideal for the guy who wants to work out
and keep a fit bod. The first week, they had me in 9:AM to 6:PM
in New York. Traffic was my life and working out became a rarity.
My hours have since been adjusted. I now work from 8:AM to 4:PM.
Unfortunately, it means that I can't work out in the morning
now, as the gym opens at 5:30 AM and in order to get to work,
I have to catch the 6:15 in. Unless I do nothing but cardio
- I'll never catch that bus. Also, when I get home at 6:PM,
I'm too tired to do anything. And even if I do exercise, I'm
now too hyped up to fall asleep at an hour when I HAVE to go
to bed.
Well, it's a year later. I've gained weight.
I hate my job. I hate what it's turned me into physically, emotionally,
and mentally. What I've discovered through meditation is the
reason I'm so miserable is that I've been resisting the change.
Some remote part of my mind was hoping that I'd be laid off.
After all, it's happened to all of my friends - why not me?
If I got canned, I would start exercising again and get a new
job as a designer. And as I'd have a substantial severance package,
it would be like a vacation.
I don't think it's going to happen. Despite the
fact, I won't stay late, I do my best to buck the dress code,
I won't cut my hair now, and I am just difficult in general
to work with. THEY JUST WON'T TERMINATE ME!
I think one of the things that keep me here is
my inability to not do a good job. If a product is bad, I won't
release it... period. I've now gotten a reputation as "Mr.
Severity 2" or "The Deus". A severity two issue
is the minimum that will keep a release from going out. On that
basis, I've kept development and logistics in the office at
times until 5:AM. All this in the name of a job well done. Incidentally,
we get no extra for this... we are all on salary.
So, you see the irony. Because I actually have
scruples, I am committing these nasty acts that keep people
away from their homes and their families. Because I actually
know how to design things, I know how to break them.
So, let me ask you: "Is it evil to commit
the atrocities in the name of good or is it good to not commit
the attrocities in the name of evil?"
Figure that out and you've answered the $64,000
question.
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