musings
this week has been quite annoying work-wise.
we had a 4 hour meeting on monday which is way too long (i ended up doodling a pattern on paper and writing my shopping list to keep me awake). for me what came out of it was that a few people are unhappy for various reasons, and that there is a profound difference in thinking between those of us who want to be proactive and continually improve our software, and those of us who are too happy to be reactive and sit back and let people come to us with problems and suggestions for improvement - the "if it's not broken why fix it" attitude.
the problem with being reactive in IT is that quite often people don't know what they really need or want, which is perfectly understandable - it's hard to know what you want software to do when you've never designed it and there's no real-world example in front of you to compare it to. this leads to absolutely zero improvement. part of my job is talking to people to find out what they think they want, then from an IT perspective suggest improvements or ways of doing things. this process often leads to users coming up with a better idea of what they want because they have a better idea of what's possible. i can do this because it's what i've been trained to do and i've built software so i have past experiences to draw on.
it's what i do every day. so i find it excessively complimentary when people treat me like i am some genius. i'm not really. all i did was spend 4 years at uni being taught the IT way of doing things. that's it. nothing special. i don't understand lawyer-speak or accountant-speak. to some extent i don't even understand all of the IT-speak either. but it seems what i can take out of this is that i do have people skills, which i didn't think i had.
but what makes me happy is when my proactive way of approaching work is appreciated by the people who i am meant to help out - the people who have to use the software i make (unless they treat me like a genius).
oh and i have a new phone. i don't need it to be fancy although i do like that i can handwrite texts, and that because it's a nokia it has better coverage than the iphone. ha!
we had a 4 hour meeting on monday which is way too long (i ended up doodling a pattern on paper and writing my shopping list to keep me awake). for me what came out of it was that a few people are unhappy for various reasons, and that there is a profound difference in thinking between those of us who want to be proactive and continually improve our software, and those of us who are too happy to be reactive and sit back and let people come to us with problems and suggestions for improvement - the "if it's not broken why fix it" attitude.
the problem with being reactive in IT is that quite often people don't know what they really need or want, which is perfectly understandable - it's hard to know what you want software to do when you've never designed it and there's no real-world example in front of you to compare it to. this leads to absolutely zero improvement. part of my job is talking to people to find out what they think they want, then from an IT perspective suggest improvements or ways of doing things. this process often leads to users coming up with a better idea of what they want because they have a better idea of what's possible. i can do this because it's what i've been trained to do and i've built software so i have past experiences to draw on.
it's what i do every day. so i find it excessively complimentary when people treat me like i am some genius. i'm not really. all i did was spend 4 years at uni being taught the IT way of doing things. that's it. nothing special. i don't understand lawyer-speak or accountant-speak. to some extent i don't even understand all of the IT-speak either. but it seems what i can take out of this is that i do have people skills, which i didn't think i had.
but what makes me happy is when my proactive way of approaching work is appreciated by the people who i am meant to help out - the people who have to use the software i make (unless they treat me like a genius).
oh and i have a new phone. i don't need it to be fancy although i do like that i can handwrite texts, and that because it's a nokia it has better coverage than the iphone. ha!