It's a song that sings itself

[austin_dern]

So there's been this boring problem at work in which a company we license software from wanted to know which of our clients was using the licensed technology, because they weren't sure that the way we were presenting it to them was in accord with how they thought they licensed stuff. This is fair; when I put the code in, I figured we'd have it in testing for a while and then have a phase where it was adapted to real live production code, and somehow it slipped into production code without any really conscious decision going on.

The trouble is I couldn't get a list of who our clients were, which kind of points out how much I don't know about what my work is used for, or who by. I asked the guy who's the de facto office manager, and he kept saying that the company we deal with should have a list of clients of ours who might be using their code. And the other company would ask me every few weeks for the client list and you see how this gets absolutely nowhere.

Finally we got a horribly 8:30 am conference call scheduled for this, raising the question of at what point in a business relationship it's safe to tell someone their on-hold music is atrocious. It really was. It was loud, tinny, and melody-free, but also percussive, in the way that on-hold music never is because it's supposed to be music you kind of stop paying attention to.

Anyway, after a half hour of talk between the office manager and the guy from the other company they agreed to get our access turned back on in exchange for a list of our clients using their code through us, or in other words what the other company has been asking for for three months. I was barely needed in the conference call at all, as is normal for this sort of thing. Also, now the office manager needs to find someone who can figure out wh our clients are, which is about normal for this sort of thing.

Trivia: The fourth month of the Babylonian calendar, Shunumun, was dubbed Du'uzu in the Semitic calendar and Loos in the Seleucid calendar. Source: Mapping Time: The Calendar and its History, EG Richards.

Currently Reading: Pasta And Noodle Technology, Editors James E Kruger, Robert B Matsuo, Joel W Dick. My library impulse-reading habit might be out of control.

Comments

[porsupah.livejournal.com]

This puts me in the mind of those Tales from Tech Support stories where the error message has dutifully appeared on the user's screen, outlining the issue clearly, and what they need to do, prompting them to call up for help, leaving the tech to essentially read back the same error message to them, upon which enlightenment is attained. (Which may be why Uhura had assured job security)

8.30am? Eeg. We tried that for our weekly conference calls with the outsourcing brigade, back in San Francisco.. it wasn't so ideal. We swapped places, leaving us at about 8.30pm instead, which proved considerably more agreeable. ^_^

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

This isn't quite so clearcut as that, although I do have the nagging suspicion the problem is our company was trying to hide just how sloppily relations with our clients are handled. Well, maybe call it casually instead of sloppily, but the effect is equivalent: we don't really have a clear idea who's using the service I've developed and I would not be surprised if there's people using the licensed software who properly speaking shouldn't be.

I can't fault 8:30 as a conference time except for my own telecommuting standards: everyone involved is on Eastern Time, and it's well after the start of business for both companies. It's just that left to my devices I'd be in bed at minimum an hour and a half after that. (And would be working well past their close of business, mind, when there's useful work to be done.)