You are given a project to work on. You are given no specifications, no requirements, no documents (or if you DO get documents they are 6 months old, incomplete and obsolete), no guidance and no direction. You are expected to complete this project and have it meet the DoD of the stakeholders, although you have no idea what the stakeholders are expecting. You will send email upon email, you will ask hundreds of questions and either get no answer or the wrong answer, you will pull you hair out and want to scream. You will be screamed at instead. Three different middle managers will tell you 9 different directions that they want to see this project go and all of them will be contradictory. Then you will settle down, accept your fate and embrace your despair, and do what you can with what you have because you have no other choice. Using logic and reason you will do the most exemplary job you possibly can . Then, at some point, management will remember that this project exists and they will ask you the status. You will inform them of your progress and let them know that you weren't able to totally complete it due to the total lack of information and communication from them. Management will then tell you that this project needs to be completed by some arbitrary deadline that is right around the corner, and you will be expected to work nights, weekends and holidays to complete it. You will inform management that you still are unable to finish the project because of the lack of information, then management will proceed to blame you and tell you that you have failed in your responsibilities. They will say these things without even a hint of irony! Welcome to software engineering at ICE!
- The Software Engineering department is a layer cake of mismanagement and incompetence. The only layer which isn't terrible is at the bottom, and unfortunately that layer is hopelessly squished by the layers above it.
- There is no process, no structure, no foundation or best practices. It's cowboy coding at its absolute extreme and absolute worst.
- Everyone is a VP! They aren't really VP's, however. They are low-to-middle tier managers who are apparently very fragile. I am convinced that there must be a "VP of VP Coordination" whose full time job is just to keep track of who is a VP and who isn't.
- Scrum, agile, process, specs, requirements, documentation, quality assurance, methodology, sprint, planning? Those are bad words. Never speak them out loud.
- There is an extreme example of nepotism at work here. It's consequences are magnified a thousand times over due to position at which it lies.
- This is an environment where if you described it to a person who hadn't experienced it for themselves they would rightfully assume that you are exaggerating. But you are not.
