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Comment by edw519 | Hacker News Reader

what is the warehouse actually trying to pencil in?

Wow! Great question!

This tells me that the root problem here is that development was done before analysis. Broken process. Often broken results. And most certainly broken management.

OP is nitpicking semantics while unsupported is identifying something so much larger: an opportunity to avoid OP's conundrum by doing things right in the first place.

Best wishes, unsupported. I hope you get an opportunity to build what was actually needed in the first place (and may deliver results orders of magnitude higher). But somehow I get the feeling you'll end up just giving them work-around landscape and move on. We've all been there.

TRANSLATION: What would need to change in this business to print the warehouse workers' notes on the pdf before it's actually printed. And please don't supply a response that begins with, "Just don't"

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Thanks for the positive feedback!

As a consultant or contractor or whatever (client doesn’t know the difference), I need to find a happy medium somewhere between “how can I personally reconfigure the business for you” and “I’m a mindless pair of hands that codes”.

I can’t go so far as to change how the warehouse operates.

But it wouldn’t hurt to answer my questions about how the warehouse operates and ask me to come up with solutions in line with that, rather than “just make it landscape and stop wasting time with questions”.

I can’t go so far as to change how the warehouse operates.

Why not? That's what differentiates those who sling code from those who do real Digital Transformation (not the crap our bosses spout off.)

it wouldn’t hurt to answer my questions about how the warehouse operates and ask me to come up with solutions in line with that

This says volumes about what they think about you and worse, what they think about their business and the problem at hand.

Most users are fleas who used to jump 6 feet but now only jump 3 feet because they can't even imagine any more.

Sorry to hijack the discussion and I didn't mean to suggest you should be doing any more than you are. (Believe me, at my rate, I get the job done and move on.) I just enjoyed seeing someone bring up the bigger picture.

I was wondering why this answer was rubbing me the wrong way and I realized it is because your answer shows a complete lack of empathy for "the other side". I have worked on warehouses and it is complicated.

>This says volumes about what they think about you and worse, what they think about their business and the problem at hand.

Why is this bad? If someone who is not technical, asks you to explain in detail about how the networking is setup and why is it not possible to just rewire the entire network to support something small, I wonder what your answer would be..

Operations managers in warehouses hone their skill over many years, running a large, very variable labor force efficiently. There are many variations over every single process and they have to keep the flow going while people come and go. If you cannot deal with an abstract request without asking everyone undergo "digital transformation", maybe you are in the wrong business.

shows a complete lack of empathy for "the other side"

I must have misspoke or I'm just not the writer I used to be because this is exactly the opposite of what hundreds of warehouse and shop people have said about me for over 40 years. (about 10% of that work is mentioned here: edweissman.com)

Why is this bad?

Because NO ONE is working the real problem (which is certainly not changing report orientation to leave enough white space for "out of the ERP system" notes). Everyone's dancing around it with semantics, jerry rigs, and workarounds. I.T. should be a trusted business partner. And unsupported's management should be putting them in a position to work the real problem. Instead, they're just another nerd who should shut up, put in a meaningless fix, and stop threatening their managers.

I have worked on warehouses and it is complicated.

Agreed. All the more reason to find out what notes they're adding to reports. Mission critical "notes" outside the system is a giant red flag. I'd rather work the red flag than make people happy. If it's important enough to put on a packing slip, it's probably important enough to be part of the system of record. A good old VSM should identify that and reduce that complication.

this is exactly the opposite of what hundreds of warehouse and shop people have said about me for over 40 years

Just don't. They specifically said "your answer shows a lack of empathy", it wasn't a personal attack. Your post doesn't show 40 years of experience.

I.T. should be a trusted business partner

Agreed, but you also rightfully admit that that's a management problem, and cannot be fixed by either side of the original conversation. So you discarding their work by "differentiating those who sling code from those who do real [work]" or calling users "fleas who used to jump 6 feet" does come across as juvenile.

From past experiences (don't work freelance anymore) I think consultant and contractor cannot be the same person. For example: If you are paid to give advice and then develop, wouldn't you recommend the most expensive thing? Too many times I lost energy and renounced money to recommend not doing extremely dumb stuff instead of doing it. And I was even wrong in doing so! I'm not the entrepreneur, I'm not the one organizing resources, so I should not have a say unless specifically paid. If I were to work again as freelance, I would only do either consultancy or contracting, never mix the two

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