Chemetco decided to outsource some computer work to a company in the Philippines. Most of our IT staff was pretty chuffed about it and acted like those folks didn't exist. My thought was that since they were on the payroll, we should give them something to do. So I gathered up the old programming bugs that nobody wanted to address, and faxed them to the Philippine crew. Mario was OK with this but the result was that I sort of ended up in charge of them. They were good, hard workers so that wasn't a problem; the problem was communication. The Philippines are 14 hours ahead of St. Louis time. So if we wanted to talk, someone had to stay late. One of the perks of being the outsourcer instead of the outsourcee is seniority: they were the ones who had to stay late. But that didn't solve all the issues; they had one phone line. We could either fax or talk, but not both. So we all agreed that the fax machine would stay plugged into the phone line most of the time, and if someone in St. Louis wanted to talk to them, we would fax them a request to unplug the fax, plug in the phone, and stay late. Awkward, but they never complained.
They got a lot of those old code bugs fixed, but we had some explaining to do; there were bugs in the system that were so old that at least one major program could not be complied on the new compiler. Anytime we changed code in that program, we had to uninstall the current compiler and install the old complier. And while the old compiler was on, we had to make sure nobody compiled another program. Then, after compiling and checking the code, and after making sure nobody was compiling anything, we had uninstall the old compiler and put the new compiler back on. This presented endless opportunities for a screw-up, which we made the most of. That was kind of embarrassing to explain to the Philippino folks!
Eventually Chemetco decided to bring someone over from the Philippines for some face-to-face training. They sent us a likable and hard-working woman named Luci Bacar. Randy and I set out to show her a few of the sights. We took her to St. Charles Old Town, where we all enjoyed going through the antique and thrift shops.
They got a lot of those old code bugs fixed, but we had some explaining to do; there were bugs in the system that were so old that at least one major program could not be complied on the new compiler. Anytime we changed code in that program, we had to uninstall the current compiler and install the old complier. And while the old compiler was on, we had to make sure nobody compiled another program. Then, after compiling and checking the code, and after making sure nobody was compiling anything, we had uninstall the old compiler and put the new compiler back on. This presented endless opportunities for a screw-up, which we made the most of. That was kind of embarrassing to explain to the Philippino folks!
Eventually Chemetco decided to bring someone over from the Philippines for some face-to-face training. They sent us a likable and hard-working woman named Luci Bacar. Randy and I set out to show her a few of the sights. We took her to St. Charles Old Town, where we all enjoyed going through the antique and thrift shops.
but of course, the view from the top was much better!
It was winter but we didn't have any snow yet. One day when I was driving Luci around, it started to snow. Big fat fluffy flakes, the kind you see in a Disney movie. And Luci, who had never seen snow before, leaned forward in her seat and stared, open mouthed and starry eyed, at the beautiful sight.
Later, near the end of the week, another programmer from the same company came over. Ray Trinidad also took some training with us.
