Corporate mentality, MarCom, and web redesigns: these things rarely ever turn out well.
So here’s how it is:
I was first contacted about this job mid-October. It was presented to me as requiring CSS, some minimal ColdFusion knowledge, HTML, XHTML, minor JavaScript familarity, and familiarity with social networking tools and web-analytics practices. The agent said that they really needed someone to do all the copy-pasting, moving existing site pages into the new template, helping to create the new site architecture, and all that rot. Not glamorous at all. I was very much up for this. Forget glamor, I wanted a steady paycheck and a steady stream of work that needed to be done and needed to be done well. Kind of a zen-of-web-design thing.
I interviewed for this job on Halloween. It was presented, in that interview, as being a nonglamorous maintenance-style position. I would need to know HTML, CSS (including positioning, not just applying pretty fonts), and XHTML. I would need to be comfortable customizing pre-existing JavaScripts and ColdFusion, or working with the developers to couple the front end to the back. They didn’t need a ColdFusion guru (though one would have been more than welcome, it seems they all wanted CF developer jobs that have more glamor and a much higher payrate.) They were getting time-critical on this project, and needed to hire someone right away. I was in the running with two other candidates. I was offered the position, and accepted. I turned in my one-week notice (more on that later), and changed positions.
Cut to yesterday, the first team meeting for which I am present. The actual job we’re supposed to be doing has been shunted aside in favor of some mental masturbation by the newish boss-dude…who is also hellbent on rearranging how the dev team does everything. The HTML production associated with the great, big, huge, 19-plus site redesign — which I was brought here to do, by the way — is not only not ready to go, but is being redefined to add whizbangs and get all Web-2.0-oid. The boss-type-person is slinging acronyms around like they’re magical talismans (or worse: boss-type-person really actually talks like this), and meanwhile, the dev folks are marinating in happytalk.
We are due to convert over all of these sites — that’s over 15,000 pages — by mid-March.
How much you want to bet it won’t be anywhere near ready to go?
Keywords: | work | usability | marketing |
Posted by Laughing Muse • 587 views • Share this link • Newer • Older
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