skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Sometimes I wonder.
- Why does the executive director of the agency have a brand new monitor, when the people in Accounts Payable are still using the DOS verson of Lotus 123?
- What is the point of buying a new software package, when you don't invest in ongoing training for the employees who are going to use it?
- Why is everyone anxious for the agency to have a web site, when nobody has thought about what sort of content and features it should have?
- Why did management put all the candidates for the IT job through an 18 month hiring decision cycle, and then go with a part-time college student intern?
- Why are the servers located in the men's room?
Posts
6 comments:
Because the inmates are running the asylum.
"Why is everyone anxious for the agency to have a web site, when nobody has thought about what sort of content and features it should have?"
AMEN! Friends and colleauges approach me all the time about building site for them to which I reply, I don't do content. So if you see a decent looking site out there with nothing but Lorem ipsum on it, I probably did it. Glad to know I'm not the only one who hears this.
I spent ten years in non-profits and I really feel for you. Really I do.
Nice to know nothing has changed though. I am sure there are some organisations out there where the director is a meglomaniac luddite who takes pleasure in dropping a ton of work from a great height (on those stupid enough to do their jobs properly). I just haven't met any of them.
Get out while you can!
I just got back from a month in Nepal, where all of the above are true! Except the part about the servers. There are no servers. There is no men's room. You don't even want to KNOW about the toilet facilities.
When I arrived, with a custom-designed database I spent several months building for them, I found that a college intern had been assigned to duplicate my work. AND the Exec Dir was "so busy" she didn't even LOOK at the database for ten days. While I twiddled my thumbs.
You can check out my adventures in Nepal on my blog:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/travelertrish
Another point of contention. Why are the people doing all the "Techy Stuff" paid less then everyone else in their office? I am not a huge compainer really, but come on 5 years Raisers Edge Experience, Mail Merge, E-commerce knowledge, Website developement, is worth more than....
Get my point! I feel like the "worker bees" "grunts" as some people would say, aren't viewed nearly the same as other positions on an office.
Vicks
vicknj@optonline.net
My pet peeve: working for a university that teaches great courses on information architecture and spends money freely (e.g. our main DBMS is PeopleSoft which cost in the neighborhood of $100 million to implement and then our unit bought into Vignette for a CMS) routinely has web projects driven either by marketing staff, or content providers, or even graphic designers. Not only is an information architect rarely at the table from the beginning but even when a site turns out to have really minimal usability, IA is rarely acknowledged as a neccesary piece of the puzzle. So we spend millions, have lots of pretty sites but users have trouble finding things and have even come to expect that this is how things normally work. On the large sites it would only increase a budget a few percent to increase usability by a real multiple.
Post a Comment