Guys what is the greatest problem or Embrassment you've encounterd in your business be it Web design or Web hosting or Programming that makes you tell yourself that i'm going to quit this job i'm doing, and later on you came to your senses and say to yourself that no matter what the devil does or tries he cannot stop me from shinning in my prefession.

Do tell us so we can learn from your mistakes.

Let me talk about my first presentations



After implementing a complete student-management system for a cyber cafe that wanted a centralised web-based tool, I was ecstatic. That was it! I could write it all over in Asp.NET [I wrote it in PHP] and I felt I'd have jobs for some time to come. I was in for a rude shocker.

First, almost all the firms I walked into were too small or too un-computer-oriented to have a custom interactive site built for them. The few that could afford it had some quirks. Let me give you an example.

I approached the attendant of a high-tech cyber-cafe (it's part of a complex which includes a fast-food outlet and a hotel). I showed him examples of stuff I'd done for myself and for others and asked if the computer training division needed something like what I built for NdeeSystems. I wouldn't have bothered if he'd told me he'd recommend me and take a cut.

The guy simply saw an opportunity to get bucks. So I saw the most disgusting charming anyone has ever tried on me. First, he told me he also built websites (called what he thought was an impressing list of technologies like DHTML, HTML, and mentioned he used FrontPage, CorelDraw, Photoshop and God-Knows-What). He then proceeded to show me a souped-up page he had "just designed that morning". It was so full of images and marquees (not to mention Javascript effects newbie designers think are cool but are extremely annoying to the end-user - they looked like cut-and-paste scripts). Then he dropped the bomb-shell. He wanted me to teach him PHP so we could be partners. He had "a lot of jobs for prominent companies running into millions, he had Governemnt-house contacts (and he was selling timer tickets 8-9), and if I joined him I'd be rich, " He even said his friend and he had written a new language called "Sam" that combines HTML,C++,PHP,Javascript and XML (even though I had to tell him what XML was).

I just nodded bleakly throughout his nonsense talk. Did he think I really was that stupid? Maybe. That was the last we talked about that - and the guy didn't even realise me the next time I walked in!

That was just one. For others, it bordered on disbelief. I'm always aked my age and when I say I'm sixteen, they think I'm crazy enough to think I can build a website. I was even asked, "Even if you can build one, can you upload?." When I tell them I head the web development team at Cads Consulting, I get practically shooed. There was even scorn in the yes of a particular girl-receptionist when after running through rain, I walked in with mud all over my shoes and my clothes dripping wet . She must have thought I was either a tramp, was hungry or that I was putting the moves on her because she hurriedly rid herself of me - rudely of course.

Embarrasment Number 1
Never assume you know "How" the client wants it. after impressing the client with a likable draft and scorng points with the ICT department. i was called a week earlier to take off the picture of the Chairman from the home page and replace it with the MD. hmmm, i thought, "that's not fair" so I put the MD's picture under the Chairman's and all hell was let loose, while i was hyping my skills in people-management, the company was agog with a political war, people taking sides with the MD and Chairman, at the end, I was called by both MD and Chairman to decide where i was or loose the contract, it was really scary talkless of embarrasing.

Embarrasment Number 2
Same company, after building a "tight" recruitment web application that assigns tracking numbers auto-generated and stored in sessions, i forgot to add the tracking numbers into the database, after 3,000+ applications, HR could not tell the job seekers on interview date that their tracking numbers meant diddly-squat and the job-seekers went mad thinking there was some unfair juggling of numbers to get some preferred candidates in front, i messed up there big time

Happened four years ago. i was trying to explain to this guy some cool stuff you can do with CGI scripts. Out of the blues he asked me what the acronym CGI stands for. My mind completely went blank. He was like, you don't even know the meaning of what you are telling me. I felt and look soooo dumb.

Ynot:

Happened four years ago. i was trying to explain to this guy some cool stuff you can do with CGI scripts. Out of the blues he asked me what the acronym CGI stands for. My mind completely went blank. He was like, you don't even know the meaning of what you are telling me. I felt and look soooo dumb.

. I love this. . .

The funny thing is that if you ask most people who use PHP what it means, they'll come up blank.

before i fumble. what does PHP stand for, I had a similar problem when my Boss was in a meeting and called the Server room praising his boys that they know everything, he asks, what is ICT, what does it stand for, on speaker phone,, after s studied silence, i answered, i do not know,


so what is PHP

i no know book oooh

lagerwhenindoubt:

before i fumble. what does PHP stand for, I had a similar problem when my Boss was in a meeting and called the Server room praising his boys that they know everything, he asks, what is ICT, what does it stand for, on speaker phone,, after s studied silence, i answered, i do not know,


so what is PHP

i no know book oooh

PHP originally standed for Personal Home Pages but the name was changed to conform with the recursive acronym 'PHP: Hypertext Processor' just like GNU ('GNU's not Unix').

Can't stop laughing at other folks experiences (those posted above). I have been developing web sites / applications for over four years now and can't remember a particularly embarassing moment.

This is one I can remember.

A London-based client is in town and we agree to meet at his nephew's office here in Accra. I'm at the office waiting, and an elderly man walks in asking where Mr Ajao has been waiting for him. He's shocked I was so very young. I'm sure he was expecting some middle-aged fella.

When he learns I'm a Nigerian, he won't pay anything upfront (deposit) though he is excited about the prototype. He would only pay half when the site is fully done and online, and the rest half after three months (perhaps, just to be sure the site wouldn't disappear).

I don't know how I got home that day. I was very devastated.

It all went well eventually. He paid according to HIS schedule.

it happens four years ago and it landed me at Mushin Police Station slept in the CELL for 4 good days, very bad i will tell you in abit when i compose my experience latter and paste it here.

Thanks

Mine?

On a project, this designer came up with the craziest design for a website the company I worked for just won a contract on. This was way back in 2002. 3 years out of university. I didn't know CSS at the time. As senior User Interface Engineer (at my age, I was so immature and was always full of myself. Na big name o! ), I was livid, and swore that it couldn't be done and still keep to our principle of less than 30K per page. The powers that be said to go with it. I did, using at least 50 tables in the process.

To make a long story short, it came up to about 60Kb. The designer, who just graduated from art school and had less than 3 months working experience decided to take a crack at it. His page? 100% CSS and 12Kb

Needless to say, I picked up on CSS right away and I learnt 2 valuable lessons that day:

- if you think you know it all, think again, because you don't know jack

- Pride definitely cometh before a fall

That is another reason y i chose my username, my2cents, because I assume that until someone has proven otherwise, everyone I meet is smarter than I am

Pretty philosophical there, my2cents.

Every comment on embarrassing moments have been indeed embarrassing and worth sharing. I haven't had any embarrassing moment worth sharing but one that I can remember for now happened sometime in '05.

I'd been pretty broke and the jobs weren't coming. I secured this contract that wasn't really much of a sh*t as regards cost but it was welcoming at the time. I was invited for a last minute meeting with the client (some consultancy firm to the major oil companies here in PH) and I was rudely embarrassed by the sudden twist in the client's agreement with me.

Meeting's held with of 3 guys and 2 ladies (didn't know what they all had to do). I had been kept waiting for over an hour in the conference room before they showed up and after absently inquiring about business, the guy at the head of the table drops the bomb.

The company regrets to announce that they weren't going to pay anything beyond 50% of what I was charging them. The initially agreed cost was a 100gs and that meant they weren't paying anything above 50gs. I was overly pissed off to say anything. Just stared at the guy with sheer malice in my eyes.

He had dropped the bomb with a little smile at the corner of his lips and I swore the guy had invited all the other guys around to watch my reaction to that. I could have got up and walked out but the 50gs was something that would have done a lot for me at the time. I considered the fact that all they requested for was a redesign, there weren't going to be any domain purchases nor hosting so all I could do was say I had to confer with my colleagues and get back to them. (You and I know I work alone. )

Of course I went out, stood for some few moments and went back in, with my tail between my legs and said my colleagues said the least they could do was 70gs. At this, they said no. 50. No more no less. I got up and walked out.

A week later, I called and said my colleagues were willing to do it for the 50. I finished the job in 4 days and didn't regret my decision. But the thought of what went on in that conference room always kicks me.

Nice experiences, I remember one I had a couple of years back.

I made this application to handle the stuffs in this company in Hilton, Abuja. I was in Lagos for biz with ma homes when the manager called me up that "when the program is on - she can't see her desktop". And she had called in some 'programmers' and they said that there was an error in the program! I was KO'd.

I explained to her how to change screen resolution and stuff over the phone but it was difficult for her to grasp. I had to get down to Abuja to see her. She showed me the system and 2 minutes later when she came back everything was k. She said what did I do, I showed her how to right click on the desktop, change screen settings, before starting the program. Someone changed the screen resolution to 640x480, and I built the program for 800x600, the html helpfile stated this in "minimum requirements" but the 'programmers' who said I was erroneous were too 'good' to read.

@ Farriel

We have had similar experiences,  infact we am having one now,  a very rich financial services firm met with us 8 months ago for a website and database integration to their in-house asset mgt database. we stood at 2million,  they told us they'd never do it beyond N500k (MD, some smart alec consultant and the guy who recommended us),  we explained why Heaven is for Agels and Hell is for drunks,  they stood their ground. so,  we walked. They called in last month to accept the N2m just because we launched the site of a competitor and it was way better than their supposedly N500k website.

Having had benefit of hindsight,  we decided that when-ever we got an RFP, we would quickly study the company, get some material and logo (or download their entire site if they have one). do a smart-looking demo on CD and stack it with the proposal.

Rather than going for a round figure like N100k, we do this instead N163,191. it is way above N100k,  but there is a percieved honesty in the figure stated and to the client she thinks she has taken off N400k at least (just a trick of the mind)

no matter how they bid (after looking at your smart demo) they won't go below N155k.

On the other negotiation gambits,  try out rdawson.com http://www.rdawson.com/articles.html

Hope it get's you out of embarrassing situations as these

I read engineering before studying programing at home. although I was very good in Fortran and BASIC back in Naija. In my first just as an Oracle Developer/Junior DBA I was asked the size of the databases I've worked with, I said 10 MB. The guy who conducted the interview yelled 10 MB! I quickly corrected my self and changed it to 10 GB, blaming it on my accent.

@ALL om lolzing my a$$ out here, what relief for a 1:00am stay awake,
well ive had like a million f-ups cant remember so much but okay yeah, there was this time i had ti revamp a bank site an i had no account not even my company was registered not even a 2k domain, well the check was written in my fake company name and i had to start begging with sweet lies why they should put it in my name, man i worked for 2 months in house before i got paid

recently i was at a presentation and my almighty cms decided on that day to messup, as in it just refused to upload a simple image, i wanted to die, wanter dripping from my armpit, anyways i always managed to scale through,

Farriel nawa ohh, this guy call me now, we get gist

Guys i cant just stop laughing, timi you and i had similar experience, though mine was not a cms, i developed the script sha, it worked very well, i even tested it that morning just to make sure that no issues, when i walked into the office to do my presentation, lo and behold my script would not upload the image. U needed to see how i was sweating under a 2horse power AC, any way i found my way around it, uptil now the are yet to call, though the said they would get back to me.

@topic: mine will be titled "A JAVASCRIPT EMBARRASSMENT". I learnt javascript properly immediately after learning HTML, before i even touched cs and perl (php was not yet in market then).
So i created this fantastic website (which surprising is similar to my current website now) - the site was done in something close to ajax - this was almost 10 yrs ago - i was so very very happy. But unknown to me, the fonts i used were only on my pc, so i uploaded and was happy. Only for the person that
sourced for the job to call me that "She was ashamed of me - that i embarrassed her in front of a very good client" - the lady in question works in signonafrica then, i at first thot she was joking until i went to a cafe to see for myself. I nearly cried - dat was my first job - but i will never forget.