ex and the current (job)

i've been pretty busy the past week. with my other teammate on vacation, i'm left with no mentor and some extra work. now that things have somehow died down, i have time to reflect on my new job (aka "here") compared to the previous one (aka "SPI"), hehe!:

• at SPI, we do vendor-specific codes, and have lots of generic codes we could just re-use. we have the codes in chunks, so it's easier to maintain and troubleshoot. here, we modify one thing, then it affects a bunch of other stuff in the whole system. it's one big piece of system, with so many options available. it's like opening up MS Word, then a spreadsheet, a slideshow, a database, a media player, a disk management utility and a browser opens up with it. =P

• here, tracing the path of the codes is almost impossible. =P i said almost, because somebody discovered we could actually use doxygen . we don't use this stuff at SPI because we just set a DEBUG environment variable to ON, then we could trace which function calls which.

• at SPI, we make sure we copy the appropriate people on our emails. this helped save our butts (especially our teachleads') when one of the team members is not around to give a status of his work. here, you only send email to the person you want to talk to. so when both people are out, nobody has an idea on what's going on in a project. OR, sometimes the techlead commits to a certain schedule, when the developers actually encountered a bump and will take a while to fix it.

• the email subject lines here bother the oc-oc me. =P how would you like to search for emails that say "Updates" on the subject line?! at SPI we are so structured, even the subject line has a format. hehehe! oh yeah, i missed typing those looong subject lines (ex: W*1980465 NYCMUN B01045 - Update on Testing as of 06/16/2006).
  

• i discovered here that not many people utilize the "Search" option on Microsoft Outlook either. everytime i see someone look for a certain email, they scroll up and down their inbox. at SPI, they'd give you THE look if you don't know how to search for a certain email. hehe! =P we deal with several products at any given time, so email organization is a skill you must develop in order to survive. =P

• another thing, imagine ALL your emails in just ONE location? i see only a few people here who actually use the "Rules" option of Outlook to manage their emails. at SPI, if you don't have Rules, you will spend half your day just sorting your email. =P

• on the brighter side, i'm glad we are not strict with our time here. on my timesheet, you only need to specify a project you are officially, currently assigned to. then specify if you are on Design, Development, Testing, Research, Admin Work, etc. phase... every hour is billable! =) at SPI, doing your timesheet is actually logged on the timesheet itself (30 minutes), because it really takes time to create one. you have to identify if the work you've done is billable or not billable to the client. =P

• in here, no sizing of work hours! well, there is, but it's just an estimate and you can change it anytime without questions. they just use it to monitor how complicated you think the work to be done is. i could set it at 60 hours, then change it to 120 later on if i run into problems. it doesn't require approvals or anything. just set and go. =) at SPI, you need to size up the number of hours per work, it needs to get approval from client, and if you happen to run out of hours, you need to do another sizing (and justify it) and get approval from client again. i must admit, this is the worst part of the job at SPI. =D

• status report is also easy here. just mention the work you've done this week, and your targets next week. no questions asked. at SPI, you need to specify all the details, even the milestone emails you send, when you followed-up, from whom you are waiting a reply, emails pending approvals, etc. although, i think SPI status report is more efficient, it's a pain giving updates. =P

• free stuff! coffee, choco, tea (flavored pa), utensils, office supplies, etc. this is a standard among american companies, i guess. =D at SPI, you bring your own everything! the only thing that's free is water, and SOME office supplies. =P you still have to bring your own stapler, pen holder and scissors. =P

so there, a point by point comparison of the two jobs i've been in so far. i hope to introduce the better system into the team sometime. maybe i'll wait a few more months before i start making epal. hehehe! =P