Adjoined Issues...

Two of the associates that were going to join come onboard yesterday... Madhu and GV Naga not joining. Identified new candidate, Rajlakshmi. called her for interview. She didn't take the technical interview will take tomorrow.

Set up a call at 9:30 tomorrow morning for the VPN Connectivity issue with Vinod More, Martin Miranda and Aasif Ulla on the call. Now these are the networking guys... we have been going on back and forth about the connectivity issue since the last whole week and couldn't get the network connectivity between offshore and onsite going... the sole reason being the communication was not direct between the networking guys onsite and offshore....

Worked on Some use cases... Some issues with reviewing the data model we are writing.
There was some power play... and some dirty politics... there is a struggle for authority going on between these two guys at work and they are really making one hell of a ruckus...

Now this guy Kevin... He is pretty good... I mean ethical... Honest and nice... but honestly... He shouldn't be working for a consulting company... he shoudl rather be working for a product based company... focussing completely on quality of product he is delivering and the code structure... because everything that he has learnt in his life is right and whenever he says something he is right... But sometimes it is too right to be true... at least in a consulting company...

Consider the scenario... We are working on the project... I know the code that has already been written sucks... the code was written by a german company called Info Systems... and the basic principles are not followed... Incredibly complex requirements but some basic flaws:
1. No structured exception handling
2. Only 2 layers UI and database
3. Hard coding everywhere
4. Database being called from the IU layer directly
5. Code has absolutely no structure and no standards are being followed
and so on and so forth. But the point here to be noted is that the adjoined team is not to be blamed. This project was started by the german company and there was lack of initiative and nobody tried took the risk of re-structure the already existing code running code... which was running and not a problem then... but as we all know the requirements change and defects creep in...

So the code was not structured and the defaults creeped in. Complexity of requirements were increasing by the day and the code was becoming more and more difficult to manage by the day... Basically a developer nightmare...

Now the situation is we have written 75% of the code already... which is already a nightmare and out of the 25% of the code that is left out only half is being shipped out to offshore... and to do that much it is going to take the next 6 months... for which I am responsible...

I understand that the code is crappy and everything but what am i supposed to do in a situation like this... I just have to deliver... crappy or otherwise... I cannot change the architecture or the structure of the code at this point and if i have to i would actually have to scrap the entire thing and start afresh... which doesn't make business sense... for me this is a beast... I have to just cage it and deliver it and then it is not my problem...

In a situation like this... I feel the best thing to do is maintain the quality of the code as much as you can hence forth and deliver... deliver like a maniac... don't think about the best practices and architecture and stuff that could have been done or should have been done...

And when i say deliver what i basically mean is get a sign off... At a time like this if you talk idealistic stuff like Kevin does... even though I agree to what he is saying and I know he is right... I listen to him... but he would definitely piss someone off... and such arguments and battles are bound to happen...

Code is not the only thing that is a problem with this project... People are another problem... there are people who are fighting for power... other are scared shit as to what is going to happen with them after the Kanbay - Adjoined Acquisition... some have an attitude not to work... others depend totally on others... there is the hero mentality and there is the quitter mentality... Loads of problems i am dealing with and until the time I am done with this project... I am sure I would be learning a lot...

One thing I discovered today is that the best thing about the onsite business model like Adjoined is that there is not much maintainance cost on the infrastructure... which means the costs are down.. which means they can quote real low prices without making their developers slog.. and without compromising on the profit margin... If adjoined still has tight deadlines... I think there is seriously something wrong somewhere... Of course there is a negative side to it... If the client doesn't provide you with a good working environment... which includes stuff like heating, air conditioning, ventilated rooms, chairs, desks, good machines and software licenses... you have to deal with it...

There is nothing much otherwise... came home late... had a beer... smoked some cigarettes... talked to mom on google talk...

Kiran has come here... and he is probably planning to come over and stay at my place... If he does that.. we would save a load of money and it would be pretty ok... I mean the next 6 months would be bearable...

Of course I would still miss home like hell and I would be dying to get back... But what the hell... at least i wouldn't be drinking the beer alone here... like i did today...