Definitely Summer

Damn, it's hot out there today, but pretty much in that "good" Summer way -- very sunny, quite warm, blue skies, but not that blinding-white-sky-so-humid-that-even-a-15-minute-jaunt-outside-makes-one-utterly-miserable-type of Summer day. I don't seem to be minding the Summer nearly as much up here in New Hampshire as I did in NYC (although, I'm sure there are a lot of factors contributing to that).

Friday was an interesting day at work. I had a couple of emails before I had even left my apartment in the morning, one to let me know that the PM on my project was out sick and the other a forwarded email from the business liaison about a reporting program that was screwed up (for an area of the Desk that is not usually my responsibility) and could I maybe help? (Since PM was out sick).

It turns out that the PM has a reporting program that he wrote that runs on with a regularly scheduled job and pushes an Excel file out for various VPs in the trading area to review. So, after this has gone out, it turns out that much of the info was wrong and it becomes an urgent issue to get it fixed right away. Conveniently, the author of the program is out sick, so they come to me.

After doing a little looking around, I find that this is a reporting program for which I had, at the request of PM, developed a special technique for pulling multiple rows of data together for display (something that wasn't straight-forward and took me half a day or more to do). Anyway, so I'm a little familiar with part of the program, which helps. I was able to pull apart the program and (after breathing a sigh of relief that the incorrect data was not caused by anything I had written) I was able to fix the problems. I then worked with the various parties to get the updated files in place for the next scheduled run that afternoon.

I'm glad that I was able to jump right in and help. That I was able to fix the problems relatively easily and that the clients were all appreciative of my efforts. All these things I hope will assist in their viewing me as a valued contributor. The business liaison sent out a very nice note to my manager late in the afternoon (cc:ing the tech manager on the customer side and me, of course) complimenting me on the work I did and the very quick turnaround, especially with having no notice, etc.

It is really little bits of feedback like this that make all the angst and frustrations and uncertainties of my work worthwhile.

There was one small thing that disturbed me, however. Speaking with the business guy, I found that the way the data was displayed, for which I had developed my technique for PM, had been a special request from the business. I quickly realized after discussing everything that no one has any idea that I was the one who worked this out for them. I didn't speak up then to inform them of this, but it bothers me a bit. I wonder what other future work of mine the PM plans to take credit for. Or perhaps I'm being paranoid (wouldn't be the first time).