This was an intense week. Or perhaps a tense week would be a better way to describe it. I had trouble figuring out a way at the end of each day to describe what had taken place so this set of post on pairing with Josh is me going back and attempting to reconcile actuality with my memory and hopefully in that process finding some important notes to keep in mind as I venture into my client work.

Right off the bat I had some indication that this week was going to be much different than my week with James. Pairing with James I felt I had gotten a good deal of technical experience about what the day to day of an established crafter is like. This was a good thing. I felt faster and more fluid in my own coding ability by the end of the week. Being that James is a consultant-crafter, I suppose I expected that I would run into quite a bit of the consulting part of the job, but there were few if any major client issues that came up while I was pairing with James. That was not the case this week.

Day 1

Day one I arrived at the client a little early and I was only a little bit nervous. It was my first time actually going onsite to a client, so I was prepared for the nerves and swallowed them like a boss. It took a minute to get me actually in the door. Josh had told me ahead of time that he let the client know I was coming and I should expect an email over the weekend with visitor instructions, but smartly also told me to expect that email might not come and just to go to the front desk and everything would get taken care of at game time if that email were not received. It was not received, and I was not on the list so I began the process of signing in and Josh came in shortly thereafter and let me know that he would meet me upstairs once I got checked in.

Upon getting checked in I awaited Josh at the front desk. He came shortly thereafter and brought me to the client’s engineering staff area, where I quickly met the client employee we would be working with along with another one of our crafters, Aaron. We then headed down to the cafeteria area (which was super nice I might add…) and grabbed a nook and got hooked up to swarm.

Josh gave me a good high level view of what technical problem we were trying to solve: We need to integrate a vendor product that helps to stand-up and manage a cluster of servers. Already by the time 8th Lighter’s had touched this issue, the integration has been excetionally problematic, and had yet to work despite attempts made internally with the client and externally from the vendor’s consultants.

The client started the week clearly stressed out but hopeful. He promised a full day off to both Josh and Aaron if they could solve the problem by Thursday. Neither of them excepted or really acknowledged the offer but it’s worth noting that it was made. I’m guessing it had been made before. In fact this offer would be made several more times throughout the week, at any point where it seemed a solution might be close, the offer was made… Up till the last 2 days which I’ll discuss more later.

Josh and Aaron both told me to expect a crazy week. It was crunch time, and I assumed my position as a bee on the hivewall, buzzing about only when I felt I might be able to help vs hinder the efficacy of the swarm.

The day started and ended in the throws of a long (approx. 40m-1hr) feedback loop, and work on debugging a gigantic decidedly heinous bash script written by another consultant. I sort of knew what was going on. There were no tough conversations this day… That would change.

Client stress level on a scale of 1-10: Day Start: 6 Day End: 7