Okay, let’s talk about this thing I worked on, this whole “wattay laos” situation I found myself in a while back.
That Old Beast
So, there was this system at my old gig. Man, calling it outdated would be generous. It was the definition of “wattay laos” – clunky, slow, nobody really knew how it worked anymore. Think ancient database tech mixed with some custom code written before I was probably born. Everyone kinda whispered about it, hoped it wouldn’t break on their watch.
Working with it was a nightmare. You’d try to pull some simple report, and it would take literally hours. Sometimes it just… wouldn’t. Crashed all the time. Fixing bugs? Forget about it. It was like digging through concrete with a plastic spoon. No documentation, naturally. The original guys were long gone.
My Turn in the Hot Seat
Guess who drew the short straw? Yeah, me. Started with small tasks, trying to keep it breathing. I remember spending whole weekends just trying to figure out why it choked on data past a certain date. Seriously frustrating stuff. I tried everything:
- Reverse-engineering bits of code.
- Writing little helper scripts just to get data in and out reliably.
- Begging for resources to even just document what we did know.
- Trying to find workarounds so new projects didn’t have to touch it directly.
It felt like patching up a leaky boat with chewing gum. You plug one hole, another one pops open. Pure “wattay laos” energy.
How’d I Get Stuck With It?
You’re probably thinking, why put up with that? Well, funny story, kinda. I joined that company, pretty green, eager to learn. They were small, didn’t have a huge budget. The manager, bless his heart, had this weird loyalty to the old system. “It’s quirky, but it gets the job done,” he’d say. Yeah, right. More like we got the job done despite it.
Nobody senior wanted to touch it with a ten-foot pole, so it naturally fell to the newer folks. That was me. And honestly, back then, I didn’t feel like I had much choice. Needed the job, you know? Rent doesn’t pay itself. Plus, part of me thought, maybe I can be the hero who finally fixes or replaces this thing.
Spoiler: I wasn’t. It was just too entrenched, too messy. Management wasn’t keen on the cost or risk of replacing it. So, I just kept patching. Kept dealing with the late-night calls when it inevitably fell over. Colleagues would give me that pitying look. “Ah, you’re on ‘wattay laos’ duty today?”
Moving On
Eventually, I managed to build some layers around it, isolate it a bit more so it wouldn’t take down everything else when it hiccuped. That helped. Reduced the panic attacks, at least. But it never felt like a real solution.
Honestly, wrestling with that “wattay laos” system day in and day out burned me out. It was a big factor in why I started looking for something new. Found a place eventually that actually invested in, you know, technology from this century. It was such a relief. Sometimes, you just gotta recognize a lost cause, a real “wattay laos”, and move on for your own sanity.
