Good morning, frens.
@benhamill *waves*
@auntiekiki OHAI. How're you today?
@benhamill Good, thanks! Chilly out, but a gorgeous sunny day. And finishing some of those pesky little tasks that always get bumped back when big stuff comes down the pike.
You?
@auntiekiki Also good. Also chilly. Also sunny. Hmmmm. A theme. Doing lots of small things and being like ✅✅✅✅✅✅✅ can be real nice.
We're having some high technical conversations at work and I enjoy them, but I don't wanna fall into the trap of spending too much time designing shit and get stuck looking perfect. On the other hand, it feels like "really much better" is juuuuuuuuuust around the corner. Heh.
@benhamill It's hard to know where that line is, sometimes. Especially when there are many Opinions on the matter. (I am so, so glad I don't do look-type work. It'd drive me up a wall.)
@auntiekiki Look-type?
@benhamill Design. What info goes where.
Give me a report to run, metadata to futz with, or a new employee to train. That's my happy zone.
@auntiekiki Oooooh. Yeah. Everybody thinks their a damn designer. Luckily, we're doing, like, data architecture design and talking about how different systems can best describe data so that they can communicate about it, etc. So we're not going to have a product owner wander in and be like, "But can you make it smaller and more blue? Also punch it up a little. I'll know it when I see it." 😜
@benhamill Ah! Fabulous! Sounds like fun, then. *pulls up a chair*
@auntiekiki Haha. The crux of the matter is that we made a design decision 6 months ago that we now think might have been… suboptimal, but is in juuuuuuust enough usage that it's a giant pain in the ass the change, so the next part we're going to need to add on for more functionality is going to be messy. And it's such a bummer when something new like that just immediately has… not tech debt, but some sort of cognitive equivalent.
@benhamill Oof. Yeah, those kinds of things are...unfortunate. We don't usually see such immediate negative returns, though. Instead, we get things like: Two librarians push through their (non-standard) preference for how the metadata should look for periodicals, then ten years later we're having to do a major cleanup project because, hey, we're migrating to a new system and what was simply non-standard is now totally FUBAR. *sigh* I don't get people who don't get standards.
@benhamill The wild, wild west, then! Kinda cool, when it's not waiting to bite your rear.
Meanwhile, the data standard we're working from has been around since the 70s (earlier if you include card catalogues) and a _lot_ of people are very cold-dead-hands about it.
@auntiekiki Heh. Yeah. I've come around to thinking that a shitty standard is better than no standard (or multiple competing standards, which is basically the same thing). So I'm down for a standard from the 70's, tbh.
@benhamill History has it's uses, for sure.
Good luck, in any case. Hope y'all find a solution that isn't too hair-pulling.
@auntiekiki Thanks. Have a great rest-of-your-day. 😄
@auntiekiki Yeah. We're sort of doing that. But there's not really industry standards for what we're storing and tracking, which is kind of neat, but also means we're at the mercy of our own experience alone. And learning as we go. I'd rather pick something off the shelf, but… it's empty. 😜