Confessions of an IT Manager_Phil Factor
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The Escape from Developer Hell<br />
First published 20 March 2009<br />
Where the instrument <strong>of</strong> intelligence is added to brute<br />
power <strong>an</strong>d evil will the developer is powerless in his<br />
own defence. Had D<strong>an</strong>te lived today, he would have<br />
dreamed up a special place for the sinful soul <strong>of</strong> the<br />
dead developer, ruled with fiery menace by the<br />
incompetent DBA.<br />
"C'mon <strong>Phil</strong>! You c<strong>an</strong>'t blame developers all the time! You must have<br />
encountered a really bad DBA at least once in your working life!"<br />
The developer flushed <strong>an</strong>grily as I rambled on, recounting some <strong>of</strong> the<br />
hilarious mistakes that developers make when tackling databases. Somehow,<br />
my SQL horror stories didn't strike him as amusing.<br />
"Well, str<strong>an</strong>gely enough, yes. Once, the boot was on the other foot, entirely.<br />
There was a time when I directly experienced the sort <strong>of</strong> hell that D<strong>an</strong>te would<br />
have dreamed up for the sinful soul <strong>of</strong> the dead developer."<br />
I le<strong>an</strong>t back in my chair, <strong>an</strong>d put down the soothing cup <strong>of</strong> Darjeeling tea.<br />
"But we escaped relatively unscathed in the end …"<br />
The scene goes watery, <strong>an</strong>d there is weird music …<br />
It was during one <strong>of</strong> those sporadic downturns in the industry that I was<br />
ejected from a rather cozy job with <strong>an</strong> international Fin<strong>an</strong>cial Services<br />
Provider. I'd been a Technical Architect specializing in documenting <strong>an</strong>d<br />
maintaining the corporate data model. A CV that mistakenly lists this sort <strong>of</strong><br />
esoteric skill is <strong>an</strong>athema: the phone never r<strong>an</strong>g, <strong>an</strong>d my CV hung limply on all<br />
the jobsites. Eventually, I did what everyone does in these circumst<strong>an</strong>ces <strong>an</strong>d<br />
reverted to being a VB developer. I'd used the l<strong>an</strong>guage now <strong>an</strong>d again, though<br />
I'd never previously admitted to it. It was like confessing to unnatural practices.<br />
Soon, I was sitting at a desk in a vast <strong>of</strong>fice-block in London, heading up a<br />
newly formed Dev Team <strong>of</strong> six developers <strong>an</strong>d ten testers. We were tasked with<br />
writing a Database-driven ECommerce application.<br />
As there was not a line <strong>of</strong> code written, the testers busied themselves<br />
sc<strong>an</strong>ning social networking sites on the internet <strong>an</strong>d trying to look import<strong>an</strong>t. I
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