Joys of Christmas

Not going to be a good Christmas really.

Last year we had a breakout site that was doing really well. This year we have a mess that is dying on its arse, pardon language.

In 2015 we put together a roadmap of things to be done. All the work on it for me and in my area has been done.

Unfortunately there are parts that require the intervention of a third party our database handler. Who has done precisely one piece of work, after I threatened to sue.

When asked to do their part, they instead asked:

– why can’t I also do the databases instead of them? (You know, as well as all front end work, feeds, set up, membership, provide all the content, etc.) Because I’m flat out doing my work for the year and building work-arounds to get round the work they haven’t done.
– why do they have to do anything? Let’s see: agreed roadmap, costs and more.
– does this really need to be done? Yes, that’s what was discussed and signed off. – and he’s worked really hard for two weeks, so why am I still an unhappy customer?

Well…

• The roadmap and agreed work covered twelve months
• The site’s traffic has halved,
• It has lost 600,000 Alexa ranks,
• Ad revenue has collapsed and it is no longer supporting itself
• We’re losing subscribers over persistent bugs and promised features that have not arrived
• And I’ve been on two hours sleep a night for the last four weeks trying to fix it all.

And then at the weekend I learned he was claiming to have completed work that he hadn’t. I ended up in his office forcing him to actually look at the code, at which point he did the “Oh no, you’re right, it doesn’t work” and added a note to a pad. No apology, no indication he would actually do it.

Unhappy? I want this guy’s head and a competent coder!

And he now wants to take on video production for us. Somehow I don’t think so…

And I have will be logged in on Christmas Day to try and fix the mess from home. Did I mention I won’t get paid for this? I suspect there may be a damning post after Christmas naming and shaming the company.

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This blog has now moved to http://www.rablogs.co.uk/tirial, where the original article can be found.  Joys of Christmas - http://rablogs.co.uk/tirial/2015/12/23/joys-of-christmas/ was published on December 23, 2015 at 9:47 am.