[TRENCHES] Thursday, August 15, 2013 - Passover

Geth

Passover
http://trenchescomic.com/comic/post/passover

The inefficiency, she is fierce.

Anonymous

The first time I tried out for a QA job was for a large publisher handling several different titles at once. The QA floor had different sections for each game, but rather than give each tester a computer, every tester had their own station (TV/console) and the PCs to enter bugs were centrally located in the middle of the floor. Note that there were five computers for around, say, fifty people to use.

When you found a bug, you had to:
a) Go stand in line to use the computers, because there were many games being tested and a whole lot of people writing bugs.
b) Log in.
c) Search the bug database for your game to make sure that the bug you’re about to enter hadn’t already been entered by someone else. God help you if you make a dupe! If your bug already exists in the database, go back to your station (and all that time at part A is wasted). If not:
d) Write up the bug as expected.
e) Print out the bug.
f) Log out.
g) Drop the printout in the QA lead’s inbox for review.

Many people saved themselves time by collecting several bugs before going over to the computers, which in turn made everyone else’s wait that much longer. Also, if two people from the same game happening to be entering bugs at the same time, you pretty much had to stop and compare notes to ensure one of you wasn’t about to dupe something the other was currently writing up.

After enduring of a week of this, we were told that they had purposefully brought in twice as many testers as there were open positions, and the half of us with the fewest bugs entered in the database were cut. Seven years and three jobs later, I still make it a point to flip off the building when I drive past it on the freeway.

JohnnyricoMC

Bet Gwen secretly climbed up the ladder. She's been pretty much flying under the radar since they started working on Rhymeblade.

On the tale: Most asinine system ever. Might work in a library, can't work in a software company.

zepherin

Hiring twice as many staff to a position then laying off half of them is such a retarded way to do things. Fuck, I treat laborers better than that, and I had a guy going through nasty hot steam tunnels carrying cable from one end to the other, digging ditches. I have one right now wipeing down 50 benches with a bucket and rag cause the hose isn't long enough, but I wouldn't sabotage them and then fire them like this company. Jesus.

As for the comic, amusing, take that Issac nobody likes you, and you are kind of a dick. Also in relation to ideas in builds, ideas are cheap, execution of ideas is invaluable.

Bursar

...How old are these stories? That sounds exactly like one of my own experiences, and for the life of me I can't remember if I submitted a story back when Trenches began. Either that, or there's someone eerily like me out there who worked for the same company and also gives that building the finger while driving by.

Ori Klein

Don't give it the finger, give it a canister of gasoline.

forty

Many people saved themselves time by collecting several bugs before going over to the computers, which in turn made everyone else’s wait that much longer.

This seems like a logic error.

Gaslight

It is absolutely Gwen who is about to get promoted. She came off as an ambitious climber when she was introduced, but since then she's been almost invisible.

Also, I don't think Q is dumb enough to give Cora a position of greater power. Granted, he was dumb enough to hire the rest of the main cast as the QA team for his new project despite firsthand knowledge that they are all amount to saboteurs (whether through intent or incompetence). But I suspend my disbelief about that because I realize it was a necessary contrivance to keep the established cast in the comic.