My username is a little handy here. Often I would put together sites, applications, etc., that would be used by people who were at least at one remove. I woul

My username is a little handy here. Often I would put together sites, applications, etc., that would be used by people who were at least at one remove. I would ask my stakeholders, "Have you heard anything?" Occasionally I would hear that "well, this one guy said he didn't like it about six months back." That's it. I tried to have people look at what was going out before release but nobody could seem to find time to do so. I had even posted my direct phone line on some of these sites, as well as a troubleshooting walk-through in the form of a clickable flowchart and a form that would be sent right to my inbox, yet I got only crickets. Faced with this kind of behavior, I would literally face users in their dens to ask them. If I saw a student using it when I was out and about, I would say, "Hey, I'm the guy who put that together. Please tell me about your experiences, good or bad." Oftentimes, despite my requests to meet with other users (I even offered to drive to people's offices to help), I would be told that the stakeholders would "collect feedback." Often my chain would be yanked for my attempts. No feedback was collected, or if it was, I never heard about it. This was not just me. We might find out that a printer had been having a problem, and then be told, "Yeah, it's been doing that for a few months now." I am not sure entirely what was going on, but it wasn't for lack of effort on my part that I did not find out. To some degree, I believe there is a culture among users, management, and stakeholders that programmers can be blamed for only by trying very hard to do so.