What's it all about, Alfie?

I was in a meeting this afternoon and realized that I've really lost faith in The Shop's ability to pull itself out of it's current problems in a reasonable timeframe. Moreover, I'm not really sure that I'm interested in trying to fix the problems here. Maybe that makes me less committed than those willing to stay, but I think that a lot of people here are here simply because it's a relatively easy paycheck. I just don't see the kind of commitment and passion that I've seen in the past that leads to real, substantive, change.

It's not just The Shop - it's also that I have management that's trying to be technically savvy, but really should just step out of the way and realize that their technical skills are really non-existent, and if they want second opinions to my advice (which is always OK), they need to ask someone else. Me explaining the pros and cons of a technical decision isn't really helping because there's no real opposing position. Having the non-technical manager trying to be that "devil's advocate" isn't feasible because he doesn't know the right questions to ask.

I'm just finding myself frustrated by all these encounters.

We have what appears to be a completely dysfunctional communication system between managers of essential groups... we have a pandemic of mediocrity in the development groups... and there seems to be no one in the upper management that is either aware of these issues, or interested in tackling them. While I can understand that changes to these things will take time, I don't see any evidence that any change is occurring at all.

When I voice my concerns to my manager, he says there are changes, but what I can't understand, and he can't explain is why some simple issues like the egos causing communication problems is allowed to exist for even one more day. While I know it's not my company, this is having an effect on everyone as it seems very clear that this situation is allowed to exist, even perpetuate, and it's soon going to be time to start choosing sides.

Why? It makes no sense to me.

If you have a major problem, set forth a plan saying how you plan on attacking it, and then do your best to do that. If you have two highly-paid professionals that are acting more like 5-year olds than professionals, get them in a room and treat them like the 5-year olds they appear to want to be.

Or offer them both a generous severance package and show them the door. That would certainly get other people's attention. The message would be loud and clear: No more. Period.

But this place doesn't believe in that - clearly. So I'm really left with no choice but to admit that I don't understand why this place functions as it does. That disconnects me from this place in a very fundamental way. From there, it's not far to the loss of faith.

I'm sad to see this come to pass. I'd love to see something give me hope that real, substantive change is in the offing. I want to see that spark - even if it's just from a small group of people. Something to make me believe again.

I fired up Google Chrome this morning and noticed that it seems to update itself on each start-up, if necessary. A nice feature, to be sure. The current release is 5.0.366.0 (dev) and I have to say that a lot of my previous concerns about Chrome are slowly, but surely, starting to disappear as the browser matures.

Isn't that always the case? Getting the basics is relatively easy. Getting it polished, well... that's another thing entirely. My latest concerns were really focused on the responsiveness of the browser. It seemed to take a lot longer to get the data from the server than, say, Firefox or Safari. I'm not sure if they have done anything special with the sockets, or if their "every page a process" scheme is causing some additional overhead that the other two don't have, but there was a definite lag in Chrome that wasn't in the other two.

Thankfully, 5.0.366.0 (dev) seems to have cleared up a lot of this. It's actually about on par with Firefox now. Very interesting. I may have to use it for a day or two to see what it's like in more significant usage.

This morning I noticed that DrawIt was updated with a fix to 3.10.3 (which I missed) that fixes the undo feature. I'm not exactly sure what I missed, primarily because I can't find the release notes on their web site, but in the end, it really doesn't matter. It's the latest, and that's what I'll use.

Today I spent the entire day changing the way in which data sets are selected for display on the graph. Doesn't sound like much - but Holy Cow! it was a ton of work. The page was a relatively simple volatility by strike viewer, but the users wanted to be able to see any set of product/expiration pairs on the graph. At the start of this, I was allowing them to see any set of expirations for a given product.

Big difference.

The problem was really two parts: creating the GUI for the selection process, and then modifying the SQL to get the sets of data, and then coalesce them into one final data set.

The way I solved the first problem was to have a traditional selection drop-down set: the portfolio, the product and the expirations. These all made referential sense: change the portfolio and the products would be updated. Change a product, and the expirations would be updated to reflect that product. It allows for the selection of a single, 'tuple'.

I then had 'Add' and 'Remove' buttons between this on the right, and a single-select multi-line HTML SELECT on the left. The user could then 'create' a tuple, 'add' it to the list, and if there was one thing in the list they didn't want, they could select it and 'remove' it. It works pretty well, I have to say. Not amazing, but it's clean, simple, and almost everyone will understand how to use it immediately.

The second problem was how to get all this data into a single, coherent, data set. The answer was pretty simple: don't. What came to me was the idea that each of the tuples could be easily turned into a DataTable, and then I can put all those tables into a list and iterate over them, and then through the table. It's really a lot like the code I had to run through the JDBC ResultSet, but this time it's a nested loop.

In the end, I had just what I needed, but it took a lot of time to get all the features of the GUI right, and to get the servlet working properly. There was an additional wrinkle in that one of the users wanted to be able to specify the way in which the strikes would be placed on the same x-axis. Hey... it's silly, but it's a user, and that's what I do.

Today I spent quite a bit of time doing work for a single desk because their desk developers were all busy building new infrastructure for the firm. Of course, the infrastructure team was busy doing something else totally unrelated to the new infrastructure, but that's really the point, isn't it?

There is a serious bit of disfunction here. While the firm's stated goals are communication, cooperation, and excellence, many groups are so completely walled off - either on accident, by the business, or more likely through the use of incredible egos, that they simply have no need to communicate with others. They are the pinnacle of excellence, and any cooperation they offer is out of the goodness of their incredible generosity.

For a place that says it doesn't like egos, it's all about egos.

So we play this silly game of shuffle responsibilities. Since the infrastructure group is not talking to the desk developers, the desk developers are building their own infrastructure. Since the desk developers aren't providing the product they are supposed to be building for the desks, the desks come looking to the global risk group for that work. My manager is interested in looking good to all the groups, so he allows them to ask me to build and maintain things.

Unfortunately, the buck stops with me, as I have to do their work and mine as well. It's a shame I don't have a group that could pick up my work - Hey, I know, maybe the infrastructure team can manage to do this stuff!

It's just amazing that this place is run like a playschool. Managers know of problems in communication, and they do nothing about it. They give their tacit approval because having a job here is having a job for life. It's sad that professionalism is so lacking from people that are supposed to be professionals.

In truth, a lot of these folks wouldn't last like this in another job. They'd have to actually work, and they don't here. It's very frustrating for me as I end up doing other people's jobs, and nothing is being done to stop it.

Sometime this "iPad Weekend", (turns out it was Friday) Firefox 3.6.3 was released with more security fixes that could have led to remove code execution. Standard stuff, but good to see it's still plugging these holes.

Because tomorrow is Good Friday, and that means a vacation day for the markets, I'm taking off early for the day to get home and help get things settled at the house in preparation for taking a few days (3) and visiting Kalahari Report in Wisconsin Dells, WI. The kids said they wanted to go this year, and while Liza's schedule didn't allow for a lot of time off, there is time to go get soaked, and that's just what we plan on doing.

It's always a lot of fun to ride the rides, get all wet, and see the kids laugh. Good fun. Can't wait.