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Before you do something drastic, I think the advice below to take some time to rest is a good one. Take your sick days or vacation days and take a full 10 worki

Before you do something drastic, I think the advice below to take some time to rest is a good one. Take your sick days or vacation days and take a full 10 working days off. What happens when you are not around to fight the fires? Are you working in an agency or for a single corp? Does the random reporting of strange bugs increase the budget or show in the costs? You may have better luck showing how much this is costing in terms of man hours rather because that is something managers/directors care about more than "tools, workflow, etc" Try to take it up to the top and show how being less fragmented benefits the company rather than yourself and you may find more people that will listen to your concerns.

mouzogu 10y ago
Thanks. It's an agency. Where the client is king. I have tried discussing things but really its an endemic problem. Our teams are multi-cultural, multilingual and tend to be divided into different platforms and technologies. I therefore have to be the dynamic element in this static setup - I have no choice but to adapt myself to the different teams. To the company it is the most efficient (time) solution. The work culture is not great. I have 3 or 4 different sources of bug reporting, often without enough detail. Basically there are 10 people constantly testing and reporting bugs. Therefore I am always chasing a moving target and it seems that my output is always buggy. I'm trapped in a circle of hell. In addition to fixing bugs I have to develop new templates and work with outsourced teams in resolving their issues which tend to be things that no on else has been able to solve. I don't see how I can survive in this position and frankly I don't envy anyone who would replace me. I would say 70% of it is a work culture problem and the other 30% is down to the wide wide umbrella of issues that fall under front end development. Just developing responsive templates is in itself a full time job, without factoring in extensive testing and all the javascript logic that goes with it. I envy the java devs and IT admins. No one bothers them. They seem to sit at work alone in peace all day. Whereas my desk is like Kings Cross station during the rush hour. I know this is a naive view but that is just how I feel about my work now.
- cylinder 10y ago
  Agency model is the problem. I just went through this with my spouse (again). She is not a developer, but in an advertising agency. Agencies just win accounts, then hire people like you to do the grunt work, and they cater to every whim of the client, no matter how unreasonable. That's the model -- why lose the client's dollars? They'd rather burn you out and lose you instead if they need to lose someone. They squeeze out as much work per $ out of you as they can, then keep what's left over as profit. It really doesn't matter what type of business -- law firm, ad agency, consultancy, CPA firm -- they all run on this business model, and you'll notice the "associates" (that is, not the partners who bring in the money) are always miserable grunt workers. Much better to get on a "product" side, as in, the company makes money by investing in a product or solution, and it's worth it for them to invest in talent that improves this solution.
  - paulcole 10y ago
    I work at a small marketing agency and we don't have this problem at all. We're reasonable about what we offer and our clients are reasonable about what they need. We're happy to lose clients we can't continue to help-- it's just not fair to us or them. So maybe what I'm saying is #notAllAgencies.

mouzogu 10y ago

Thanks. It's an agency. Where the client is king. I have tried discussing things but really its an endemic problem. Our teams are multi-cultural, multilingual and tend to be divided into different platforms and technologies. I therefore have to be the dynamic element in this static setup - I have no choice but to adapt myself to the different teams. To the company it is the most efficient (time) solution. The work culture is not great. I have 3 or 4 different sources of bug reporting, often without enough detail. Basically there are 10 people constantly testing and reporting bugs. Therefore I am always chasing a moving target and it seems that my output is always buggy. I'm trapped in a circle of hell. In addition to fixing bugs I have to develop new templates and work with outsourced teams in resolving their issues which tend to be things that no on else has been able to solve. I don't see how I can survive in this position and frankly I don't envy anyone who would replace me. I would say 70% of it is a work culture problem and the other 30% is down to the wide wide umbrella of issues that fall under front end development. Just developing responsive templates is in itself a full time job, without factoring in extensive testing and all the javascript logic that goes with it. I envy the java devs and IT admins. No one bothers them. They seem to sit at work alone in peace all day. Whereas my desk is like Kings Cross station during the rush hour. I know this is a naive view but that is just how I feel about my work now.

cylinder 10y ago
Agency model is the problem. I just went through this with my spouse (again). She is not a developer, but in an advertising agency. Agencies just win accounts, then hire people like you to do the grunt work, and they cater to every whim of the client, no matter how unreasonable. That's the model -- why lose the client's dollars? They'd rather burn you out and lose you instead if they need to lose someone. They squeeze out as much work per $ out of you as they can, then keep what's left over as profit. It really doesn't matter what type of business -- law firm, ad agency, consultancy, CPA firm -- they all run on this business model, and you'll notice the "associates" (that is, not the partners who bring in the money) are always miserable grunt workers. Much better to get on a "product" side, as in, the company makes money by investing in a product or solution, and it's worth it for them to invest in talent that improves this solution.
- paulcole 10y ago
  I work at a small marketing agency and we don't have this problem at all. We're reasonable about what we offer and our clients are reasonable about what they need. We're happy to lose clients we can't continue to help-- it's just not fair to us or them. So maybe what I'm saying is #notAllAgencies.