Fellow programmers will feel my pain

[pbray]

We're in the midst of a crash development project, that's being sandwiched in around November close, prep for year-end and everyone's understandable desire to take vacation days before they lose them.

The goal is to build a new subset of the corporate spend database. Last week they created a test database for this project and I've been asked to pull sample data to load into it so we can start the analysis.

- The corporate spend database model has 12 dimensions.
- The test model that they built for me has 18 dimensions. The person who built it is on vacation this week and no one can explain why we have the 6 extra dimensions, or whether or not it is safe to delete them and go back to the regular 12 dimensions.
- The SQL queries that load the corporate spend model create an output file with 42 fields (dimensions). Several of these dimensions are obvious duplicates (three different formats for department numbers, for instance) but no one can explain to me which of the 42 fields are used to load the 12 dimensions in the corporate model and which ones are ignored. The expert on this is too busy to talk to me, and the backups are... you guessed it, on vacation.

And now the project lead is IM'ing me to ask why we haven't been able to load sample data yet.

Comments

[mtlawson.livejournal.com]

Oh, and there are plenty of other reasons why IT isn't for the faint of heart and light of stomach. I've been an engineering tech, a code jockey, a sysadmin, and now a security admin, and I can't decide which field has the largest amount of clueless people. That said, I couldn't do your job if it involves answering those sorts of questions; I simply couldn't handle it.

Yes, I'm one of those guys who thinks that they don't pay first and second level support enough considering all of the stress they go through.

That said, there are enough clueless people in IT to make me shudder. In a field that demands critical thinking and teamwork, we sure have a lack of both a lot of the time...

[mtlawson.livejournal.com]

Ugh. Bad editing on that post.

Coffee.... Need coffee....

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

Must be all that beer my last comment made you drink ;^)

[mtlawson.livejournal.com]

I sure wish it was; I can handle a hangover. Not very nicely, mind you, but I can handle one.