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Trenches comic: Thursday Sept. 8, 2011
Bogey
I'm back, baby!Santa Monica, CAModerator Mod Emeritus
I'm back, baby!Santa Monica, CAModerator Mod Emeritus
Not Even a Game
09/08/2011 - Anonymous
I once had to “test,” for two weeks straight, 8 hours a day, a series of advertisements for a new channel that would be coming to the console. Keep in mind, what I was testing was not the channel itself, but rather the ads announcing the channel.
These consisted of eight screens of pictures and text (maybe 650 words total) and a video, each two-and-a-half minutes long. Our crack-team of FIVE TESTERS finished putting the ads through their paces in well under an hour, yet somehow the project was slotted for two straight weeks. Going to work to do absolutely nothing is bad, but what I didn’t mention is that we were put in the “cage” to do our work. Despite having nothing to do with this particular testing project, the “cage” was a room designed to block out extraneous wireless signals, so wireless connectivity could be tested in a relative vacuum.
I cannot describe the base and terrifying levels our psyches reached. By the end of that two week span, I knew that what normal people call “boredom” did not even begin to approach the intricate, diabolical knowledge of that state of being which I now, forever and to my great sorrow, possess.
Bogey on
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also, is it just me, or are all of the "most recent post" times really messed up? It says the most recent post on the last trenches thread is Sept. 6th, when me and one other just posted in the thread about an hour ago
Warframe: TheBaconDwarf
I think I'm startin' to like these guys.
Are they meant to be in Hell? Because the first thing I thought was "Why are they at a bar in Hell?
Heh.
I dunno, to me the backgrounds in this one seemed very appropriate. Nice color tone and all. :^:
So, yes.
kingworkscreative.com
kingworkscreative.blogspot.com
Beat me to it.
My first thought as well.
Also, I enjoyed this comic. The previous ones seemed mostly bland and exposition-y, but the art and tone of this one made it more familiar. If that makes any sense outside of my head.
dumb
I mean you had five people gathered together for 8 hours a day and you couldn't work out anything fun to do to spend the time? No one could smuggle in some board games? Or at least like bring a book or a gameboy or something? People entertained themselves before we had wireless internet guy.
http://www.audioentropy.com/
(without wifi)
Ever consider that the bosses of the place might get seriously pissed if you don't actually work (even if it involves watching a 10 minute trailer repeatedly for 8 hours straight)?
I work at a place where something like that has happened (in fact, I have a feeling it may be the very one, that "cage" sounds awfully familiar) and if you got caught messing around on work time, you were in trouble.
I had a work situation like this, although completely unrelated to testing or a tech environment. I worked for a summer at an underground zinc mine, with the safety department. Me and another guy were hired to service all the fire extinguishers and first aid kits on the surface and underground, which had to be inspected annually. It was grunt work that nobody else wanted to do, obviously, but it was fun tracking down the ones that were in remote areas of the mine; we had a pickup truck and complete freedom to do this on whatever schedule we wanted. We also did other odd jobs whenever our boss needed us to, but we weren't usually directly supervised.
The problem was that we were too good at it, apparently. The job took other summer hires a full 3 months in previous years, and we got done in one and a half. We had nothing to do, and little contact with our boss, so we would just wait near his office for him to stop by and tell us what to do. Often, this would be for hours, or even for a whole day. One day, the mine superintendent passed by where we were waiting, looked at us with concern, then hurried off. Later that day our boss yelled at us for being lazy and not working, and said that if we were done with the fire extinguishers, the front gate and gate house could use a fresh coat of paint. This was basically the worst job ever (and completely not in our job description); it was August in middle Tennessee, humid as hell, and it turned out the gate posts were infested with hornets. After we got done with that job, we just hid in a supply closet and napped whenever we weren't busy for the rest of the summer.
All I can think of when I see that is "real life achievement hunter"
I'm betting years of video game experience is what gave you both the skills in this "job."
week one: allowed to work at their desks. rushed through the ads in an hour then fucked around on the internets for the rest of the week.
week two: goddamnit guys we try to treat you like normal human beings and look what happens get in the faraday cage
I've worked as a tester, but not on ads though so it's possible it's very different. But I laughed when he said they finished testing in well under an hour. This testing sounds like they read/watched the ad once and made sure there were 8 pictures and called it done.
This story reads like an exaggeration of what being a consultant/contractor is like 24x7.
"QA is a boring job! Not a fun one! I did not realize! Be afraid!"
Do the job for 4 years, then we'll talk. Horror stories is being told to edit: on second thought, I'm not going to share that.
Sounds like a bit of that, but mostly some bad scoping by a PM somewhere to me. I mean, assuming the story is accurate, there is no way you need five guys, for a week, to check eight ad deliverables. Even assuming a 5 hour a day velocity.Especially for a console - you're not looking at a load of compatibility work there, after all No IE7 (or come to that, IE6..brrr..).
Someone ought to have stepped up and told the PM that they were done at the close of day one, and asked for some more work.
Unless, of course, they were on contract (and thus, asLTM says, billing by the day/hour for a defined scope). In which case, they should have had a Lead, to go and get them more work, and negotiate a day rate.
I can't believe 5 people sat in a Faraday for 10 days doing nothing, and nobody got a kicking over it.
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SF&F Reviews blog
That said, it's not uncommon, in many lines of work, to be stuck in downtime mode for hours or even DAYS, and if you don't have super lenient supervisors, it can be hell itself. In a non-gaming job of mine, I had so much free time, due to my efficiency, that I read the entire California Civil Code just to keep busy with something I could claim as useful to work, since I was at a construction company.
Especially since I'm pretty much in Isaac's position right now on the job front.
When my old boss was around, we used to have lunch work meetings at the corner bar.
I ♥ making awesome crafts! I ♥ my Cookie Brigaders!
"I'm the guy who leaked Half-Life 2." dun dun dunnnnnnnn
your = belonging to you
their = belonging to them
there = not here
they're = they are
Were you alone, that would really suck. This sucks, but misery loves company and such.
We knew from context clues that Issac was someone fairly important, by which I mean he was probably a game designer or something similar on a big, higher profile project that something went horribly wrong on, and this strip sort of confirmed it.
http://www.audioentropy.com/
maybe the boss hangs around a lot of prostitutes?
http://www.audioentropy.com/
Gaaaaaaaaaaarry!