Internship season approaches.

[azurelunatic]

Ev is applying to All The Internships, at a very sensible and sustainable rate. This week's applications includes a little company whose product I was ... privileged ... to have been introduced to during my time at Virtual Hammer.

I speak, of course, of the "new" (July '14) helldesk software.

Ev: "how did you hear about our company?" "my godmother wants to stab the hci designers"
Azz: not *just* the HCI designers
Azz: also the API designers
Ev: "my godmother wants to stab everyone"

I have asked Ev to ask some mutual friends about their impressions of the place, based on the words I've emitted about it over my 1.5 years of experience with the thing. So far the timing hasn't worked out so well.

Comments

[silveradept]

From what I have seen of your struggles with the helldesk software, it lives up to the name in far too many ways and that if Ev wants to go to work for that company, Ev will hopefully go in knowing it's a piece of shit and work tirelessly to improve it to the point of almost tolerable.

[quartzpebble]

Eh. That's a heavy expectation to place on someone who's going to go in at the bottom of various company hierarchies. But Ev should be aware that nothing gets that impressively fucked up without some substantial systemic problems and a global lack of interest in discovering, acknowledging, and fixing mistakes. A company that ignores HCI and undervalues design and usability is probably also going to undervalue various other things that enable healthy interactions with a company and its products/processes (like, say, healthy development standards and processes, or HR processes).

I would say work there until you can find something else if it's the only game in town, and don't expect to be able to change that much.

[silveradept]

That's true. My idealism fire burns bright, perhaps more than the one that works in reality.

[quartzpebble]

My cynicism/realism burns brighter right now, as a result of burning the idealism out in my last job.

ETA: if you have no power, you have no responsibility.

[azurelunatic]

Observe what happened with me vs. the helldesk at Virtual Hammer, and I had 1.5 years and support of some very angry engineers. (The Very Angry Engineers still avoid filing tickets, even with the changes.)