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timwilky · 15-12-06, 03:36 PM

Normally I am pretty lucky and enjoy my job. But at present I am fairly P.O.ed

I act as a project manager, developer and anything else for the in house IT Dept. But recently I have been pulled back into the hosting centre I set up about 6 years ago because the manager has walked out and one of their hosting specialists has gone long term sick with stress.

The guy on sick was supposed to have migrated an application onto new hardware in august for an awkward customer. I have brought in the application suppliers to do the migration and they tell me.

1) I need new licenses as part of the app is keyed to the server name and ip address
2) License is £12,000 and the customer will not pay as they say it is upto us to provide it as part of our hosting provision
3) the application has failed to index any documents since February 2006 as no application administration is done
4) the customer now expects the hosting team to administer their app.

I am piggy in the middle I have already spent £3,000 on establishing what the problems are. It is going to cost a further £20,000 to resolve but the customer is refusing to spend a penny as they already spend £6,000 a year for our hosting service (8 servers, 2 oracle clusters and unlimited bandwidth).

Now my boss is unhappy. He is getting his backside kicked that we are failing to deliver, we are overspent and no guarantees that the problems will be resolved.

The customer is unhappy that we have not administered their app. (Hosting only contract) and it is all my fault and making complaints against me. I have only worked with this customer for 4 weeks and brought in to resolve their long standing problems. Everyone is running round blaming each other, but as the project manager the smelly stuff is sticking to me. It would appear the customer expects us to provide application specialists. yet it is a custom application developed by 3rd parties on behalf of the customer. We have no documentation. They expect us to provide 24*7, 7 days a week support when they pay for a 9-5, 5 days a week service. We have already moved their databases onto fault tolerant clusters free of charge.

There are time when I wish I could tell internal customers to go and find somebody else to do what they expect for the price they are prepare to pay. I am seriously over budget on this with no end in sight. I now understand why the original project manager has gone off with stress. My holidays have been canceled to allow me to spend my time on this project. The company has promised that they will buy back 10 days of my entitlement and allow me to carry a further 5 days into next year. The wife is threatening divorce as I have not been home for the past 2 weeks.

Oh happy days.

15-12-06, 03:36 PM	#1
timwilky Member Mega Poster Join Date: Mar 2004 Location: Not in Yorkshire. (Thank God) Posts: 4,116	times when you hate your job Normally I am pretty lucky and enjoy my job. But at present I am fairly P.O.ed I act as a project manager, developer and anything else for the in house IT Dept. But recently I have been pulled back into the hosting centre I set up about 6 years ago because the manager has walked out and one of their hosting specialists has gone long term sick with stress. The guy on sick was supposed to have migrated an application onto new hardware in august for an awkward customer. I have brought in the application suppliers to do the migration and they tell me. 1) I need new licenses as part of the app is keyed to the server name and ip address 2) License is £12,000 and the customer will not pay as they say it is upto us to provide it as part of our hosting provision 3) the application has failed to index any documents since February 2006 as no application administration is done 4) the customer now expects the hosting team to administer their app. I am piggy in the middle I have already spent £3,000 on establishing what the problems are. It is going to cost a further £20,000 to resolve but the customer is refusing to spend a penny as they already spend £6,000 a year for our hosting service (8 servers, 2 oracle clusters and unlimited bandwidth). Now my boss is unhappy. He is getting his backside kicked that we are failing to deliver, we are overspent and no guarantees that the problems will be resolved. The customer is unhappy that we have not administered their app. (Hosting only contract) and it is all my fault and making complaints against me. I have only worked with this customer for 4 weeks and brought in to resolve their long standing problems. Everyone is running round blaming each other, but as the project manager the smelly stuff is sticking to me. It would appear the customer expects us to provide application specialists. yet it is a custom application developed by 3rd parties on behalf of the customer. We have no documentation. They expect us to provide 24*7, 7 days a week support when they pay for a 9-5, 5 days a week service. We have already moved their databases onto fault tolerant clusters free of charge. There are time when I wish I could tell internal customers to go and find somebody else to do what they expect for the price they are prepare to pay. I am seriously over budget on this with no end in sight. I now understand why the original project manager has gone off with stress. My holidays have been canceled to allow me to spend my time on this project. The company has promised that they will buy back 10 days of my entitlement and allow me to carry a further 5 days into next year. The wife is threatening divorce as I have not been home for the past 2 weeks. Oh happy days. __________________ Not Grumpy, opinionated.