blarg ([personal profile] napoleonherself) wrote2013-12-13 05:50 pm

Sometimes work is kind of hilarious, at least if you're me.

that feeling when the ad sales team sells ads which literally require a redesign of the entire site in order to fit horizontally, expect it to be done in three weeks during the holiday season, and understand your concerns about the feasibility of that but would still prefer to just go ahead with the new ad sizes kthx

[identity profile] darnn.livejournal.com 2013-12-14 12:03 am (UTC)(link)
just chop a quarter of each ad off

no one will ever know

[identity profile] napoleonherself.livejournal.com 2013-12-14 12:23 am (UTC)(link)
Actually, to avoid a redesign we'd have to take about 40% off of one and about 20% off of the other (they want a 300px tile ad in the left rail, and a 728px banner in the main section, and the overall design is three columns at 190ish + 580ish + 160ish + some padding between = 960). I think someone will notice.

[identity profile] darnn.livejournal.com 2013-12-14 12:29 am (UTC)(link)
Only people without adblock... and are they really even people at all?

[identity profile] napoleonherself.livejournal.com 2013-12-14 01:54 am (UTC)(link)
We have readers who answer the question "what browser are you using" with "what's a browser?".

They ain't got no adblock.

[identity profile] darnn.livejournal.com 2013-12-14 09:30 am (UTC)(link)
hahahhaha

nice

Well, have fun not having a life during the holidays, I guess... I'm sorry that your work people are jerks.

[identity profile] napoleonherself.livejournal.com 2013-12-14 03:48 pm (UTC)(link)
Well, to be clear, part of the reason I can be so amused by this process is that everyone in my department up to the head of IT is firmly in the "um NO" category. It took a design firm and meetings with people from like 7 internal teams to come up with the current design, and my boss and his boss and his boss's boss know that there's no way we're going to duplicate that effort with a couple developers and three weeks. Especially since the ad-supported content is actually moving to another site in early 2014 -- that other site being the one where the ads actually fit.

(The real root of this problem is that in the summer this team was all "k we're going to move from the site Jenny works on to another site, starting January 1st", and then in the fall they were like "okay we can't do the move by January but we'll do it sometime around Q2 of 2014" and then just in the last few weeks they've been saying "WAIT CHANGED OUR MINDS AGAIN JANUARY FOR SURE", and they sold the ads based on that premise, even though the other site is, last I heard, still not nearly ready to take them on.)

So a fun time all around. I suppose the people higher up the food chain than I am aren't having as much fun, though, since they're the ones who have to point out reality over and over again.

[identity profile] darnn.livejournal.com 2013-12-14 05:59 pm (UTC)(link)
It continues to amaze me that this happens in all companies in this business, of all sizes, all over the world. (Though maybe things here and in the U.S. are just very similar for whatever reason.)

I was innocent enough to think it's just the army that functions this way back when I was in it. It felt appropriate that it should because it's the army and there's no oversight, at least not by people who know what they're doing. But no, what do you know.

[identity profile] napoleonherself.livejournal.com 2013-12-14 06:15 pm (UTC)(link)
Human nature, bureaucracy, shortsightedness, the growing inefficiency of any process the more people you add to it who all need to communicate while still doing their own bit, et cetera. I'd be surprised if there was a place in the world it DIDN'T happen.

[identity profile] darnn.livejournal.com 2013-12-14 11:16 pm (UTC)(link)
I just always thought, you know, if enough money was at stake, the people whose money it was (or the ones who stood to make the most of it) would have enough checks and balances in place. But nope, guess not.

[identity profile] napoleonherself.livejournal.com 2013-12-15 12:13 am (UTC)(link)
If everyone just involved IT when deciding things, the world would be a better place.