I'm so glad I only contract for this company. On my desk sits a little commemorative lucite plaque/trophy that has the company logo and says "Extreme Effort" on it. They had a big box full of them, and handed them out the other day. There's a date on them too -- five months ago. No names or anything though. Color me motivated!

It's more than that. This is a long contract -- I've been here fifteen months now. We've been building a web site for a government agency. Our company insisted on using their COBOL back-end database, which is a 1960's technology. And the people responsible for maintaining this database are several steps removed from us. We're not allowed to talk directly to them. (The front end, BTW, is mainly Java servlets and JSPs.)

To top it off, now they are denying us the use of any data in the database we use for testing. So, we have to code functionality into the web pages we're building, then submit it to them and hope it works. It's rather like trying to paint a picture by reaching around from behind the canvas.

And when there are problems, they are reported to us using the company issue bug reporting software, which is mainframe-based, and was designed by dullards. For instance, to view the second page of a bug, you type slash-D-1, then hit the F11 key. (Why? My personal theory is that it's an inside joke.) If you want an idea how old this software is -- it prominently features the color cyan in its interface. Cyan is as sure a sign of obsolescence in software as Bakelite is in telephones.

Myself and the core group of developers here could have easily had this thing built in three months with a decent database we could actually access. Heck, we could've even handled that end of it ourselves. But if we did it that way, it would have only ended up faster and easier to maintain.

How can I complain though? As a contractor, I'm expected to just do the work and cash out. And fifteen months getting fat on the company teat is nothing to scoff at, especially with the job market the way it is right now. Still, it would be nice to contract like this for a company that isn't always reaching over its shoulder to scratch its backside.