And… we’re back
It’s been a while. 7 months, to be exact. I have since joined the workforce and am working as a Java developer at an ERP company of sorts, the same company for which I interned. I rejoined the tools team, and they put me right back on the server code.
Within a few weeks, I was drafted into a special interest team whose only goal was to improve “performance” and memory management on the server for high loads. I say “performance” because, like so many managers, the one term can be used in suitably hand-wavy fashion to encompass response time, memory usage, throughput and CPU usage, without actually committing to anything at all.
The most infuriating conversations of all go something like this:
Developer: We’re implementing feature Y because the current feature X uses too much memory.
Manager: Very well, how much will feature Y improve performance?
Developer: It will improve memory usage. I can’t speak to how it will affect throughput until we see it. But we won’t get the OutOfMemoryErrors.
[Next day's meeting]
Manager: So, our developers tell me we’re implementing feature X to improve performance. Can you tell us how much faster feature Y will be than feature X?
Developer: No.
Manager: But you said it would improve performance.
…
And so on. The issue at its root is that “performance” is a horrible, huge term. And nobody wants to say that we’re willing to sacrifice throughput to help memory usage, even though high memory usage has led to stability problems. So nobody will say “we need to have 100 transactions per second,” instead, they say “we want as many transactions per second as possible.” And around it goes…
So there it is, my life resembling Dilbert more and more every day. Aside from work, I’m looking into a master’s degree in computer science (which necessitates taking the GRE), and I’m still working on a Java certification. The last attempt was held up by an Operating Systems course that required learning C instead of studying on Java.
Until next time…