4 ms·

I worked for the same field-manual-into-Unity employer for a few years, first doing DoDAF architectures on a contract on Ft Huachuca, switching to the serious g

I worked for the same field-manual-into-Unity employer for a few years, first doing DoDAF architectures on a contract on Ft Huachuca, switching to the serious games division for a small number of weeks before I politely quit in frustration. We spent years building what amounted to UML diagrams of existing Army units. Great effort went into them. Coordination with active-duty officers, with GS civilian stakeholders, training from certified DoDAF-training instructors; we had TS-SCI clearances. Then the resulting products went into a database somewhere, and nobody ever looked at them. I imagine that sort of thing is rife in the government contracting world, but it seems like that particular firm has a real knack for finding truly futile things to get paid for.

MrLeap 7y ago
It was a rough situation at times. I really took advantage of how self directed things were in the beginning. It was basically a masters program in whatever technology I chose to learn. Some people used the time to watch netflix. I wrote a 3d engine for android in almost entirely openGL ES2.0. After that, Unity was what I chose. I did find a few things I could do that made an impact. One project I did on a lark even resulted in a little recognition. I overheard an instructor complaining about an onerous, all hands on deck eternal data wrangling task. Seemed like an easy thing to automate. For bureaucracy dodging reasons, I wrote it in actionscript3. All it did was eat files and spit out xslx files. Turns out it wiped out XX% of the manual labor every instructor on post had to do in a single button press. A GS megaboss said it was going to save the government millions of dollars a year. Was a little disappointed I never personally got a challenge coin for it. My boss did :) I'm grateful for the numbers though, I could leave that job confident I saved the tax payer more than I cost. Hopefully some of the things I'm working on for my current employer will get some visibility in the outside world. Software is ephemera, but I'd like to make a token effort to be remembered.
- sizzle 7y ago
  Awesome mindset and perspective. Wish I could say the same about my co-workers. I'd work with you in a heartbeat... This intrinsic motivation is highly contagious to me in my experience and I wish I could be around it more often.
Enginerrrd 7y ago
Honestly, this kind of thing is still super valuable. It's really nice when you go digging up some old resource and have it be there when it's needed, and it's amazing when it was done right. What sucks is if it was half-assed when you finally do find it. Or worse, it gets forgotten about and the work gets duplicated every time someone needs that info.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
dsfyu404ed 7y ago
I had an intern that whipped up a new set of training walk through slides and used MS paint to draw color coded boxes and arrows on screenshots to teach you how to use it. It was like a day of work for him. People with C in their job title saw that PowerPoint. It was a really damn good training presentation. I call it Schrodinger's work. Maybe it matters to someone, maybe it doesn't. You don't know until you do it. The stuff you spend a month on winds up being worthless and the stuff that you spend an hour on winds up being used everywhere. There's no telling which is which. Such is life creating support documentation for systems that live and die by things outside your team's control.
samplatt 7y ago
It's basically rife in any organisation with more than ~2K+ total employees, regardless of private or public sector. The only that changes is the scope of how much funds & talent get wasted.
lkrubner 7y ago
This must have been a huge project, because I had a friend in Charlottesville, Virginia who got hired in 2008 to do almost the same for the Navy, "what amounted to UML diagrams of existing Navy units." They paid him $125 an hour and he took the work because it was the middle of the 2008 recession, but it was boring work. A year later they asked him to do more, but he turned it down.

MrLeap 7y ago

It was a rough situation at times. I really took advantage of how self directed things were in the beginning. It was basically a masters program in whatever technology I chose to learn. Some people used the time to watch netflix. I wrote a 3d engine for android in almost entirely openGL ES2.0. After that, Unity was what I chose. I did find a few things I could do that made an impact. One project I did on a lark even resulted in a little recognition. I overheard an instructor complaining about an onerous, all hands on deck eternal data wrangling task. Seemed like an easy thing to automate. For bureaucracy dodging reasons, I wrote it in actionscript3. All it did was eat files and spit out xslx files. Turns out it wiped out XX% of the manual labor every instructor on post had to do in a single button press. A GS megaboss said it was going to save the government millions of dollars a year. Was a little disappointed I never personally got a challenge coin for it. My boss did :) I'm grateful for the numbers though, I could leave that job confident I saved the tax payer more than I cost. Hopefully some of the things I'm working on for my current employer will get some visibility in the outside world. Software is ephemera, but I'd like to make a token effort to be remembered.

sizzle 7y ago
Awesome mindset and perspective. Wish I could say the same about my co-workers. I'd work with you in a heartbeat... This intrinsic motivation is highly contagious to me in my experience and I wish I could be around it more often.

Enginerrrd 7y ago

Honestly, this kind of thing is still super valuable. It's really nice when you go digging up some old resource and have it be there when it's needed, and it's amazing when it was done right. What sucks is if it was half-assed when you finally do find it. Or worse, it gets forgotten about and the work gets duplicated every time someone needs that info.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

dsfyu404ed 7y ago

I had an intern that whipped up a new set of training walk through slides and used MS paint to draw color coded boxes and arrows on screenshots to teach you how to use it. It was like a day of work for him. People with C in their job title saw that PowerPoint. It was a really damn good training presentation. I call it Schrodinger's work. Maybe it matters to someone, maybe it doesn't. You don't know until you do it. The stuff you spend a month on winds up being worthless and the stuff that you spend an hour on winds up being used everywhere. There's no telling which is which. Such is life creating support documentation for systems that live and die by things outside your team's control.

samplatt 7y ago

It's basically rife in any organisation with more than ~2K+ total employees, regardless of private or public sector. The only that changes is the scope of how much funds & talent get wasted.

lkrubner 7y ago

This must have been a huge project, because I had a friend in Charlottesville, Virginia who got hired in 2008 to do almost the same for the Navy, "what amounted to UML diagrams of existing Navy units." They paid him $125 an hour and he took the work because it was the middle of the 2008 recession, but it was boring work. A year later they asked him to do more, but he turned it down.