It Rolls Down Hill First!

The company that my company works for, Company X, is under the gun right now. Seems like everyone is running aground like chickens with their heads cut off. Ever since the Enron and MCI World Com scandals every large company has to go through audits. Some have called these audits the "Accountant and Lawyer Employment Fund" seeing as how they get the most business and money. The short version is that companies have to conform the SOX audit named after too guys in congress or something like that. The audit is designed to ensure that there is always a chain of command that must be followed so some ass can’t say ‘Write me a check for $50,000,000’ without approval. It just really sucks because of all the details that a company must conform too. While I’m sure it will be nice in the end, the process of getting there is not fun. For example, Company X needs a report or data pull for this audit and they always needed it 'two days ago'. So they wait until it’s late to tell you about it and blame you for not providing it on time. Our view of the situation is, 'I need a report and I needed it two days ago. I don't know what I need or how you’re going to get it but I know that its late so where the hell is my report!'

Aside from that, we delivered an application that manages two separate systems. Company X wanted this so bad that when we gave it to them, they haven’t touched it yet! They’ve had the application for four months and have not touched. No with all the audits they want us to teach them how to use it and add more reports to it. The problem is that the reports they want added would break the way the system was designed. Company X asked for the system to follow a specific procedure and we delivered. No they want to break the procedure.... Go figure! In the words of Henchfig, “I’ll just kill myself.”