Fermented Dog Shit

2006-08-31 5:22 a.m.
I feel like fermented dog shit.

I'm sober, mind you, though that has only been true for a couple hours now. The big project I've been slaving at for 3 months has just been shut down. The project that covered half my credit cards, caught me up on rent, is flying LK out here this weekend, is flying me out to Chicago / NY / DC in 2 weeks and helped my savings balance is a resounding failure.

I took it pretty hard at first. I was head developer on this thing. The client: one of the larger, more well known companies out there. I had a say in how everything went down. The majority of the _work_ was mine. When I say head developer, I don't mean that I had an assistant. The designer helped with some minor coding, but overall 95% of the code was conjured by the same fingers and keyboard as this. It was my sculpture. My novel. My masterpiece. And it was shat upon.

Of course, when a project fails, all participants are to blame - but it's still my blood and sweat mixed into the gears and threads. I felt as though I'd thoroughly failed a fine group of people and that being pelted with solidified canine feces was not only reasonable but encouraged.

It fucked me up. I had plans to meet my cousin for lunch. She just moved here two months ago - just out of college and excited about taking on the world. I don't know her well and was planning to resolve that and was looking forward to our drink. But I wasn't going to be very entertaining last night. Basically turned down a drink for a drunk.

I called my mom. That's not as whiny as it sounds. My mother and I talk business more than anything else. It's the subject on which we relate the most. So I told her the bad news. Then I told my roommate.

I was too embarrassed to tell anyone else. I've been glowing about this motha fucker for 3 months now. Big name company. Big project. Nobody would really see it - it was mostly an internal application. One of the biggest projects in my career (so far), even though it would have been seen by far less people than anything I�d done before. But it was the big check and the big name on my modest web site. It was the accomplishment in the higher ranks. Bragging rights.

And I failed.

And... Now... Believe me. I'm generally pretty fucking harsh on myself. Such statements are silly internal banter in comparison to my general personal criticism. It's why I can sometimes get in trouble for the shit i say to others. I tend to curb my criticisms of others, but sometimes something that's harmless and daily to me is painful and awful to others. I have quite a few daily lashes for myself in general. Just the way I am...

And then there's always the way that a creator looks at their creation. As if it were their retarded abortion that somehow lived on specifically to remain a blazing mockery of the creator's existence. It stares you dead in the eye and tells you to quit while you're behind as it's only going to get worse.

And it's no different for a programmer worth his salt. Every bug is a slightly heavy brush stroke. Every usability infraction is an extra second of exposure in the wrong direction.

But, Fuck All That.

I didn't fuck this one up. I've handed over far worse in the past and they've grown to be largely successful. And that's the thing. I'm actually proud of this damned thing. I opened it up and used it for a bit. It works like it's supposed to. It does what we said it would do. There are a few quirks, but definitely not deal breakers. I opened up the code and my notes and the forums we've been using for project discussions and my schedules and the bug tracking app and anything else I have that's related to these past 3 months.

I'm happy with every decision made. There's not a single conversation which I did not speak up when needed. There's not a single instance I was willing to make a compromise when I felt it would hurt the project. There's no moment I humbled myself when I should have spoken up. Whether it be a technical issue involving database planning or a usability issue involving how the user did this, that or a third. I was unwilling to compromise quality.

I stood up in this project in the way I wish every person would stand for everything they believe in. Every point I made and fought for nods to me as I look over these pages. I look at the framework I've been building for years (on which this was based), and every letter of code is necessary and meaningful. I use the app for a few minutes and everything works as it should. It works the way I told it to. There are Very few discrepancies between my goal and the actual outcome.

So what went wrong? How could I be so happy with this and the client be angry enough that they want to scrap it all together?

Of course, when a quarter into this bottle and still pretty pissed about the whole thing, I explained it to my roommate as some fuckhead in a tie, stoned on vicatin taking out his bullshit aggressions on my work. But that's not necessarily the case. More than anything, it was lack of communication. And in this instance, I had no means of resolving that. I'll be sure such is not the case in the future.

Well, to be honest, I don't know enough yet. I'm still waiting to hear about their closing meetings. The problem, from what I can see, is that we didn't have enough information from the people using this thing. I was under the impression that everything I was told was needed was directly from the user. This is apparently not so. And so, when the user finally sits down with it, it has nothing to do with what they want.

Of course, it's built in such a way that I would probably be able to meet his expectations within a week's time if only I were allowed to know what they were. But not here. Not at this scale. The blessing and the curse is that all kinds of managers make the decisions and the user gets fucked and hence the developer gets fucked. In the end nobody's happy.

But at least I still get paid. I already told my client (who I was partnered with, not _the_ client) not to feel obligated to fight for the rest on my behalf. I'm not greedy and I have a few bucks in my pocket. Legally he would potentially owe me and I was essentially getting it across that I'll accept the loss without issue. But he wasn't hearing it. He knows I trooped on this. He's keeping me for our next high profile project which begins in a week. Keeping him as a happy and loyal client is more important to me in this than anything.

So... yeah. I'm proud of what I did and everything that went into it. 3 months of my life, quite a few broken promises, angry clients tapping their feet waiting for me to finish - ends in a steaming pile. And I guess I'm pretty ok with it.

When I put down the phone this afternoon, I considered drinking it off and looking into another profession. But that�s not me and never has been. I stopped a half a bottle in so I could wake up this morning and get back to continue doing what I know I do well.

But it does still feel like I just got left by a good woman without a decent reason or even a kiss goodbye.