Thursday, January 06, 2005

Snakeoil Down My Throat

So I working on a fun product. It is trying to look like an improvement, but it is more or less Snakeoil. Snakeoil is something to make you feel good about your audio equipment, but it doesn't improve much. I would like to create something useful. Tools, not toys, you know?

But what's more, we are running on a tight schedule, the hardware isn't finished, the algorithm isn't finished. Three companies in three countries are involved, two project/product managers. People I have never met. There is no clear spec. Everybody thinks the other party is the expert. I'm supposed to make the UI and maybe even port the MATLAB code to C. I should use a new UI and audio I/O framework for this. I have no experience in porting MATLAB to C. Neither seems to have the guy, who has written the MATLAB code. Everybody wants to be involved. Nobody wants to make decisions. "No, don't ask about this, make a decision", but then "How could you make a decision without asking me". And we want to ship end of April. But it isn't even clear if we want to give this project the green light. We have started it, but we might stop.

Since September I'm motivated as piece of rock. I hate my boss. I haven't written much source code since June 2004. At least not much DSP or C/C++ code. And the circumstances give me no warm and fuzzy feeling. And I fear this will be my first project to fail. Be totally late. Only cost money. Never make it to market. And maybe my last project for this company...

1 comment:

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