Joel's Mundane Life

GAAAAAAAH! I hate not getting any feedback! I'm increasingly finding myself in situations where I'm working my arse off day in day out, sometimes struggling valiantly to meet deadlines imposed on me, and then the meeting doesn't happen or there's a deafening silence.

This is irritating for a number of reasons:

• It may mean I can't continue to the next stage of a project without risking wasting time.
• A lack of affirmation of 'what the client wants' invariably leads to greater misunderstanding later on.
• It causes diary issues when the client eventually does come out of the woodwork demanding action right now (and of course something else is blocked in so I either have to play Tetris with timesheets or disappoint the client).
• There will be less testing time resulting in the real risk of major issues being discovered post-deployment.
• The project slips and slips and slips...

...And of course if I'm not doing work, I can hardly do a billing run so my own income suffers.

I realise clients pay the bills and call the shots, but if you employ contractors to carry out work at least spare them the time they need to do their job and give you value-for-money. If you don't, you'll lose cash, your contractor will go elsewhere come renewal time, and your project will die on its arse.

(Note: This is not aimed at any individual or organisation in particular, it's industry-wide. Of course this is a hazard of the job, but it seems to be getting worse. Gah.)