20th Jan

 Didn't really sleep yesterday. Just went round the clock.

Buzzy.

The day was also super annoying and frustrating.

Our junior was enormously useless and annoying.

Middle aged dude. Academic. A few years in c++, a few years in web stuff, "high quality IT" as he has it on his CV. Taught a bit of astronomy. This uni. That uni.

Intelligence of a brick.

I had to babysit him for a large chunk of today. Backtracking right back to one step at a time through a logical series of actions. Find this. Go here. What's that telling you ? Which means ? And then ?

All day. Like that. At no point could I let him get on and just say, ok, you get the idea, follow the logic. Or investigate. Or poke around. I tried a few times.

No. A complete stop each time. I don't know what to do.

Plus panicked sprints into dead ends. What's that. How can I get that. You don't need that. Can I get access to it. You don't need that. Will I need to change that data. YOU DON'T NEED THAT. And never change that data ! It's read only, if you managed to change it, it would not be good.

I had to babysit him through a very basic understanding of how to approach a problem and think about it logically. Not IT. Not code. Just. How to answer a question. Methodical. Scientific.

And this is an academic.

I don't know.

Perhaps I am some world class genius in that I can follow a basic trail of breadcrumbs. A task beyond normal mortal ken. Or I am not a world class genius and I just meet more than my fair share of morons.

Honestly. CVs.

Not worth the paper they are written on.

High quality IT.

According to who ? Your mom ?

Fuck me.

I have no problem with people learning. Or being slow or fast at picking shit up.

But when you have to continually tell someone to stop. Just read what the client said. Stop. Just read what I literally said to you. Again. And again.

HOW DO I DO THIS.

Ok. The client told you. Right there. Instructions.

Jesus.

Maybe he was having a bad day.

I am beginning to suspect not however. Every bit of work he does fails. Code checks against his work continually brings up forgotten bits, evidence of no clue of how to code. The other day he couldn't figure out what a javascript function was. Pretty basic.

We kept falling into pretty nasty patterns where it was clear he would just panic, switch off all thinking capabilities and just ask me every single thing that popped into his head. What's this ! What's that ! Well. Just read the 4 sentences the client has written. Fire up the app. You will immediately see.

I had to reset him a few times. Slow down. Just. Spend 5 minutes getting familiar with what you're looking at.

Problems.

I think he has some head problems. Andy said he had had "problems" with him recently but that the dude had assured him "it was behind him now".

Anxiety. Panic. Incapability to be methodical, think logically, pick up stuff very fast.

These are the people in Universities ?

Ho hum.

By mid afternoon - having got precisely nowhere with my own task, I had to tell him, that if he got stuck at this point, push it back, and I would pick it up later when I had time. I had basically been doing his work for him all day, but not just jumping to the soluton and prompting him along the steps so he could perhaps try and be more methodical, but eh, at some point, after most of a day doing that, and him not learning, and you then basically getting stuck at a point where he says, it does this, here ( after much fucking prompting of how to methodically diagnose where the issues was ), he gave up. Didn't know. A mystery. What should I do now.

Try a different career ?

So I parked him. Do. Or do not. The oodles of time I have spent with you is ending. I actually do need to do some shit myself.

The more quality time I spend with him, the worse it looks. He's in many ways the opposite to a few others we have had. Asks inane questions. Won't read 4 sentences to find the answer already stated to his inane questions. Panics. Over asks. Has a tendency to just go into secretary mode ( you dicate at him, he does ). Compared to at the other extreme. Almost never asks. Sinks endless time figuring stuff out that could have been asked in 5 minutes. Self starter. Reliable.

Bah ha. The over asker is wayyyyyyyyy worse. The whole, hey, I can tell you're not thinking or reading because the answer to your question is literally in the description you just pasted to me, is just super fucking annoying once it starts repeating. Once or twice you can understand. Derp. Just read. Got it ? Good. We read ! Over and over again is like, hey, are you fucking dense. READ BEFORE ASKING.

Anyway. My actual work for the day. "day" ( a few hours at the end of the afternoon squeezed in around the enormous iceberg that was the repeated parrot squawking of the junior ).

Two tasks. Both of which ended up being, of course, human error.

People with fancy titles.

Head of IT. Guru of their IT.

Again. A lovely CV piece of bullshit. In actuality. A fucking derp.

Had managed to make a super basic error, cut out two file exports, had borked all the data, and now one of her cohorts was asking us why the system wasnt returning data properly.

Ask your fucking idiot colleague.

I know what she had done. She had mistaken the name of two files. Forgotten she needed four files. And fucked it up. To be clear. This is her process. Not ours. Their files. Not ours. She forgot how that worked. Didn't check it. Didn't test it. Didn't perform the most basic of verification on her work. Just fucking bodged it, phoned it home.

Part of my stupid job, is knowing everyone elses job better than they do and telling them the mistake they made. Nothing to do with me. Not my process. Not my system. Not my business. But in order to answer the question - why doesn't this work - I need to know how you fucked up your own system, your own data, and the mistake you made internally. At times this takes on hilarious levels of second guessing, prediction of human behaviour, and general all round knowledge of other vendors and systems. IE. Working out why someone elses code, running on someone elses server, on technology we dont use has failed, and how to fix it. I shit you not. This comes up a lot. And the expectation there is that I fix it, or at the least tell them how to fix it.

Frustrating as all shit. And not uncommon. As it turns out this is one of my super powers that no one else - so far - can do. Playing blind chess and telling clients how they are fucking up their own processes without seeing what they're doing. Ask anyone else. And you just get a shrug. And months of email pings back and forth wondering what oh what the problem could be.

If you're lucky you get some gormless fucking PM oozing their way diplomatically through a meeting whos end result is basically, yes we're all shit at our jobs, let's just chip away for another few weeks until one of us happens to trip over a solution, or accidentally fixes it, or it just magically goes away.

So. The fuck up with files. The woman who is in charge of their tech ( for whatever thats fucking worth ).

For the record.

This was the same woman who tried to tell me how my own software worked. The software I designed. I wrote. I installed. All from scratch. At the time, she didn't know that.

It does this she says.

No. It does not.

Yes, it does she says.

No, it does not I say. I wrote it. 

Doubt. Yes it does she said.

This. In fact. Here's the bit of pertinent code. It does not do that. I wrote that. Fuck you. Stop wasting my fucking time you mouth breather.

Sulky silence.

Amazing how much people think they can just act confident without knowledge and stroll their way through.

No shame ?

Also for the record she is a lovely person. Charming. Warm. Funny. Amiable. Lovely. As is her boss. The CEO. Lovely dude.

Both are not cut out for their jobs.

She belongs to the cohort of people brought up on the fake it til you make it bullshit. A tenet I despise. Also, hilariously, one that Andy read a book on, and took to heart.

Please don't.

It makes it much harder for those of us in the room that do actually know what we're doing. Because now as well as doing what I need to do, I have to argue utter nonsense with you, that clearly hasn't a clue what you're talking about but likes to give a good pretence. Won't backdown. Until I inevitably fish out the black and white in code irrefutable truth that what you're saying is bollocks.

Been there. Done that. Got so many fucking t shirts I could open a t shirt store that specialised in I Told You Fucking So You Moronic Twat t shirts.

Such. Are people.

Your average person does not belong around the internals of a computer. Far too vague. Far too non methodical. Way too prone to rely on bullshit. And reformatting the narrative. ( Oh that's what I meant. Sure you did. Fuckface. ) . It's something you realise when you start to get up the expert end of the IT field. Just how much wishy washy bullshit and hand waving people do in realtime to smooth over the incompetence and ignorance. Social engineering away your idiocy. It's rampant. Part of the human condition. As it turns out it's a whole lot easier to bullshit about something than it is to actually learn it and get expertise. Learning stuff is so hard. Fake it. Then pretend like it didn't happen and you knew it anyway. Or never talk about it again. Because now the person feels awkward being reminded of the time they were demonstrably, proof on table, in email, black and white, a twat.

Ugh. Spare me. From bruised little egos and idiots.

Anywho.

In summary today.

You wasted my time. And are an idiot.

You wasted my time, and are an idiot.

You wasted my time, and are also an idiot.

Which is par for the course.

A good chunk of my job is just proving to people they are idiots without even writing a bit of code. Because the code, data, or the like is kosher. It is, and this is a huge surprise, the people that are the weak point. As it turns out. I write pretty fucking hardcore bulletproof systems and processes. Which. You'd like to think I would be pretty good at after 40 years.

In other news.

Athena is not doing too well. All round. Nothing specific. Age.

A properly worrying, dark ominous cloud sits overhead. A conversation with myself.

Is it time ?

No if, but when.

Is it time ?

No.

No no.

Wait. Calm. Breathe. Perhaps it's just an off day.

But I can see. It's harder. Much harder.

The end is coming my dude.

No.

Is it time ?

No.

Remember how sudden Ares was ?

No no no no. No.

It comes for all of us whether you like it or not.

No.

I know. It sucks beyond measure.

No.

I am sorry. Try not to worry too much. Let it go. Tomorrow maybe a better day. Do not worry before something happens else you will worry all the more.

Yes.

Distract yourself. Carry on. She may well be a lot better tomorrow.

Yes. But I am so sad. And I do not know what comes next.

I know. What will be, will be. Would it truly matter one way or the other ? Oblivion is always there, is not going away, and will have to be faced. So. Does it matter what happens to you really after she goes ? Peace. I am sorry. I know you suffer. I am sorry.

Drown.

Slowly sink into it. Stop struggling. Let go.

Fade to black.

I need sleep. Rough day.