Level Two

A little over two years ago, I left my long-time job at a software development firm and transferred to the IT department of a multinational company. Although I started still as a programmer, all application development of my new company was eventually outsourced to a third-party and I ended up becoming part of functional production support.

I had the intention of professionally branching out of coding, but did not expect that the chance would come as soon as it did. I had my hesitations at first, but decided that it would be a good thing to learn more about business processes and the applications that support them at a higher level. So I transitioned to the new position. I scooched over to the functional support and am now sandwiched between the clients and the technical group.

Now, just a background of my previous programming job. For a long time, it had been my comfort zone because the setup was fitting to my personality.  In actual work, I only had to deal with three people: my systems analyst for the specs, my test engineer for the bugs, and my team lead mainly for the schedule. All I had to do was to make sure I followed the design, I fixed all the bugs before deployment, and I met the schedule.

I went from having to interact with those three technical people to having to interact with multiple marketing managers across the world who use the application I support.

My first few months in production support were rough, at best. The workload was not a concern as I was used to having a six day workweek with 10-12 hours a day in my old job. But needless to say, I did have to adjust to a number of other things: the increased number of people I had to interact with and also the multicultural differences. However, the most significant adjustment for me was that I now had to deal with non-IT people.

The difficulty in transition did not lie so much in the difference of technology skills, but the communication. Business people and IT people talk different languages -- that much is a given. And I now found myself in the position of being the interpreter for both sides.

When the tech tells me that the database listener of the web server is down, I cannot relay that to the client word for word. Because all they know is that nothing is working and that it should just get fixed. This is an instance wherein detail is not appreciated. So I choose my words and to consciously rid it of jargon.

And there would be times when I get the heat from clients when the application does not behave the way they expected. It takes patience to explain that it is not a bug when the expectation does not match the design.  Especially when the design have been communicated, reviewed, and approved by them.

There have also been funny, priceless facepalm moments. I once attached a form in an email and have asked it to be returned to me filled out. I was very suprised to find out that the client printed out the form, filled it out in ink (you know, by hand and with a pen), scanned the document and sent me the image file. I should have tried to be more explicit in the instructions.

Another time, a client was adamant that her access rights were revoked because she cannot view a record. She was about to raise a ticket when I asked her to just please try scrolling down. And her priceless response to me was: "It was hiding!" (exclamation point and totally serious demeanor are hers, not mine.)

It got me thinking whether I should have accepted that job offer by old friends from the university who went into start-ups and new cool technologies. I visited them a year ago and was asked the same famous line from Steve Jobs to John Sculley "Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and change the world?" I knew he didn't mean it, but it was a witty and coincidentally appropriate joke.

Regrets hover on me for just a bit, but do not really settle, because in truth, I do have an interesting job. I get the chance to step back from the nitty gritty details of semicolons and pixel widths and millisecond response times. And now, just think about how all those are used in the real world and how they affect real people. Also, one nice thing about this transition, my clients are very expressive of their appreciation whenever I help them resolve an issue. I've been called a very nice, kind person and an angel numerous times complete with the halo-bearing smiley emoticon. I mean, I never heard that from any of my systems analysts or test engineers.

I guess there are far worse things than dealing with, eww, people.