Bummer @ Work

My manager called me into his office on Friday mid-morning and had me sit down.

He told me he had a received a couple complaints about my work already. Basicly he said the complaint reported that I’m not checking my work, I’m submitting code that isn’t tested, and I’m not following procedure on code pushes and testing (I still haven’t figured out what SOP is on that yet). He said that I should take code quality more seriously than its deadlines. The nature of the data I work with is serious and not to be taken lightly. He reminded me that I’m a contract worker at the moment. They want to take me on full time but if I develope a reputation as a bad programmer I am effectively useless to them and they won’t be able to take me on full time.

He said not to take it too personally and that he has had this talk with a number of people when they first started. I find it hard to understand how it shouldn’t be taken personally though. Not to say the complaint was unwarranted but I do have pride in my work as any programmer should. Noone wants their work to be of poor quality in this field and I would this he should be worried if I didn’t take it personally in some form or another.

The specific project that was complained about isn’t even the one I’m having the most trouble with, which is probably the most discouraging part. I’ve just spent most of the weekend looking through the errors the control tester found for this project and researching them to see if they really are due to my code. 3 of the 4 were not my fault, but were data errors in the first place. The fourth I just finished fixing. It was something I had meant to go back to, but had forgotten because of the complexity of the rest of the project I was working on and pretty much just because I’m that inexperienced at this.

I know now at least I need to make some sort of check list as I do a program to make sure I cover all areas I need to in order to meet the requirements set out in the specs they give me. (which are at times faulty themselves.)

I really don’t want to lose this job. Its the first setting I’ve been in of this nature and I am really enjoying it. The work is challenging and theres a lot of it. The people all seem cool for the most part and location can’t be beat. I like commuting on the T (though not parking in the T garage everyday). And in general, I just want to be a better programmer. I want to be more motivated to do more side projects and not be discouraged by any complexity.

Now I double my efforts to prove myself.

I’m starting to think I’m always going to have to prove myself.