The Journal of Joe The Peacock. Yay.: Why I don't keep a resume

6.11.2008:

Why I don't keep a resume

10:27 PM

There are a number of reasons I don't actually have a resume. For instance, I don't really need one. But if I did, this is the reason I wouldn't keep one anyway:

This is an unnamed site I worked on in 2006. I did the design. I led the UI development team and the CMS development team. We did a good job - a really good job, in fact. I gave them strategy for deployment. I gave them tips on building and maintaining a community.

We handed it over to the client, and it was slick and beautiful. Two and a half years later, and... Well, let's just say that, when we finished, absolutely did NOT look like this:

click image for full-sized bashing goodness

They have completely butchered a solid design. And anyone who judged ME and MY work based on the 2008 state of this site would scoff and move on to the next resume.

And that, my friends, is why I don't keep one. The ever-changing nature of sites after I deployed them results in material that does not represent what I do. In some cases, they vary slightly. In others, it's like they took my designs and comps and handed them to 4th graders to cut-and-paste magazine clippings all over.

God.

Just... God.

**Update**

For the record, yes, there are 28 affiliate (city) sites for [UNNAMED SITE], and I did them all. They run off the same engine.

Also, those who were at the Vegas book signing and heard the "performance"... this MIGHT be the subject of the story that caused the legal hangup a few weeks back... Maybe.

Labels: Joe is a pompous ass, Joe's life, sometimes I do design work, technology

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4 Comments:

Edward said...: This post has been removed by the author.; 6/12/2008 12:04 AM
Stewart said...: I happen to know the web news producer for UNAMED... this is super funny for me, even if it makes you feel like your not art has been vandalized. In his defense, he is not a web designer, but just a news guy, so this is bound to always be a problem any time you hand over a design. Just so you know, he does not like management of UNAMED either.; 6/12/2008 9:46 AM
JtP said...: See, here's the part that upsets me:

The way the system is built, the news producers and editors use a system on the backend (CMS) to post items to the front (UI).

The UI was built to accept anything and everything the CMS could throw at it. You choose a type of story, and it picks the appropriate tag. You promote an item to Alert or Breaking, and it slaps it in an elegant scrolling bar.

When [UNNAMED] inherited the system in total, anything they could write, video, or photograph would be posted to the UI through the CMS and look NICE.

Over time, the system has apparently been butchered and hacked on the UI side to incorporate new news types, new tags, and wider / more "noticable" news alerts, to the point that content areas became deformed. To compensate, they changed the space allocated before the >>More section, the space between modules, the toolbar at the top...

Basically, this is the same as expanding your house by nailing unfinished 2x4's to the side and calling it the bonus room, or painting JUST ONE BEDROOM on the OUTSIDE of the house a different color, so it makes more sense to the people living INSIDE (Oh, that's the new storage room, and all our storage looks like the garage, so yeah, we painted just that part of the house grey).

If it comes up, let your web producer friend know I don't blame any of the CMS users for the plight of this site. I know a lot of the folks running the department in charge of this site at [UNNAMED], and they probably know how I feel (and if not, they'll read this, and know for sure). And I think they agree with me.; 6/12/2008 9:58 AM
Matt said...: Your Skitch URL doesn't, like, give it away or anything. :-); 6/12/2008 4:59 PM

The Journal of Joe The Peacock. Yay.

6.11.2008:

Why I don't keep a resume

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