pythorlh's Journal: Trials and Tribulations

I've been under a lot of stress lately. Mostly work related. And a good deal of it is my fault. I feel like writing about it. It's long.

I've been working on a large project for several months now. We had almost gotten to where we were ready to test, and it got rolled into an even larger project.

I was having trouble getting a good list of billing codes for the project from my team. It was late '05, and a lot of people were on PTO, so I came up with a brilliant idea (aka first mistake). I had the programmer base his code on two files that I built in the system. I created the files with the codes I knew of, and figured I could add additional codes when I got more information. At least the programer could start working.

I just deleted several paragraphs of specifics. Not germane, and likely to get me in trouble at work...

Anyway, I took on a lot more responsibilty in the project than I "should" have, and we had some big issues with the project. These are not necessarily directly related, but I feel bad about it anyway. My job is essentially to document the project, and set up meetings. Testing is someone else's job. Creating the list of files should have been the customer's responsibilty. I did a lot of both. And then some. I tend to do this a lot. If I can get something done, even if it's not really my responsibility. In addition, I've got dome skills that make such things easier for me than for the people actually responsible. In this case, it got us in trouble. Mostly because once I had done what I could, the actual responsible parties didn't do due diligence in verifying it. I still feel guilty about it, because if I had kept out, it would have gotten more attention from them. Maybe.

For the past 3 weeks, we've been scrambling to get everything fixed. Several late nights getting things back together before bills went out. Unfortunately, while I was focusing on the bill corrections, our reporting was getting further out of whack. I was left out of those discussions, but I feel responsible there, too.

In the meantime, while all this is going on, I'm being pressed for other projects to be rushed, both projects I was already working on, and others that are new. No rest for the wicked, I guess.

The good news is that my annual review went well. Hopefully that translates into a raise come next month. I could certainly use it.

OT: The journal preview page has a link at the top titled "Enable Comments." Don't use that. It could completely erase what you're working on. Live and learn, I guess.