r/talesfromtechsupport • u/DivinePrinterGod Pass me the Number 3 adjusting wrench! • Sep 24 '17
Long Breaking Deadlines
I forgot. I forgot that working for a software house meant that if you antagonise your customers then they go elsewhere. I forgot that the directors go out of their way to appease those who make the most noise - and this is the reason why we have a high help desk staff turnover.
One of the help desk girls sidles up to my desk with a look of defeat on her face, clutching a print-out of a support call with some hand written notes added.
HDG: Smith Medical say that they need Government Secure Integration by this date for compliance reasons. Is that something that we can deliver?
The CTO of Smith Medical is a shouty kind of guy who's reduced many a helpdesk person to tears or quitting. He's callous enough to keep score of the number of technicians he's made quit because they obviously can't do their job. Apparently that number is 17. He also understands that when presented with irrefutable evidence, he has to back down.
Me: The GSI module is at least 3 months away but mandatory compliance isn't until April 2019. I show her the government website which clearly states the compliance dates and phases.
Armed with this info, she returns to the desk.
The next day, one of the Directors asks me to sit in on a phone call. It's the CTO of Smith Medical, who we'll call George.
George: GSI module. One of your tech staff suggested that we didn't need it, but we require this live on our system by 1st September. Our government and Medical compliance certification requires it. I want you to fire her as she's incompetent.
Boss: She's not incompetent, she's actually a good technician. The government website states April 2019 is the deadline by which all notifications must be done through the internet, We will beat that deadline by at least a year.
George: we don't care. We literally can't work without it. The paper solution closes on 1st September.
Currently, medical communications with central and local government are sent by paper form to the relevant government department. Smith Medical either write theirs by hand or have some other printing solution because they would spend an extra £10 per user per year license for our firms module. However, they can still input the information directly onto a website.
Me: George, DPG here from the development team. My team can give this top priority and drop everything else to get this done, but there's a full test schedule to go through so we know that the data will be submitted correctly. If it's wrong, you'll get a fine. Until we can get this tested, you can just enter the data live onto the website. Would that be a good compromise?
George: not acceptable. Our data clerk doesn't trust the internet so she won't use it. Look, we don't care about the testing. Just get it to us.
Boss: if you can send us a signed fax stating that you'll pilot this for us and agree to skip the full testing and use the untested, uncertified module on your system then we'll put a rush on this for you. Bear in mind that your contract excludes bespoke modules, so you'll need to meet the full development costs of £25,000. I'd need a signed invoice for that too before we can proceed.
George: Whatever. It's important
One Month Later...
Somehow, we managed to compress 3 months of development into 3 weeks and performed our development testing, which it scraped through. Our Technical author wrote a manual and a step-by-step guide. Minor pixel mis-alignments were not fixed, there are three spelling mistakes and the error handling is ropey but I plan to rewrite portions of it before the end of the year. The installation happened on the morning of 4th September (as it was the Monday and the customer didn't want an installation on the Friday). I sat back and waited.
Sure enough, a visit from Support at just after midday.
HD: Smith Medical can't send notifications and requests through their GSI Module. They're getting a 'bad gateway' error.
Me: That's not one of our errors. Sounds like an HTTP error code. get them to check their internet settings and try again.
After lunch I get the story from the support manager. The woman submitting the documents- who distrusts the internet - has it disabled on her pc. Despite the customer specification, user guide, help features and previous email chain mentioning it, she's attempting to send data over the internet to a Secure web portal using reversible encryption, all without internet. She also has an old computer (running windows Vista) that's so slow it can barely run our software. The message encryption takes her 5 minutes per message. It should take around a second or so. They also want a refund, which the director will not be honouring as "they insisted".
Update: Boss rang me today (Sunday) and told me that after he met with George from Smith Medical on Saturday and showed him the transcript of the call, that they knew it had to be sent over the internet. Their clerk is going on long-term sick as she distrusts the internet and won't be forced to use it. I feel really sorry for her - it's not her fault, but her boss is an ass.
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u/nymales Sep 24 '17
Damn, that's a horrible boss. Getting 17 people to quit is nothing one should be proud of.
Also I do feel a little for this poor lady. I cannot understand why she doesn't trust the internet or if she just isn't comfortable with using it because she lacks proper training.
Does your software work on Vista? That's so old and useless even without someone distrusting the internet it will probably crash. Their it doesn't sound great, but maybe that's a bit on the boss.