CECS finally decided to bite the bullet and overhaul the soul-destroying nemesis better known as JobMine. They admitted that it would not be an easy task, and it would take some serious man-hours and funding, but they committed to doing it and the students of Waterloo rejoiced! Promises like having a system that won’t crash every term the night before job applications close, a matching algorithm that wouldn’t screw over half of the student population, and being able to upload your resume without having half of it being translated into Bork! in the process. Just when the terrible CECS-student relation was about to start changing for the better, CECS bailed and pulled the rug out from under all of us by canceling the Waterloo Works project completely with little explanation.
Anyone with mild knowledge as to how to operate a computer can attest to the social media projectile vomit that came as a result of the cancellation. People are straight up outraged by the fact that it was canceled with absolutely no notice, and students are wondering where $2.7 million of our money went exactly. Although it appears like CECS might have royally pooped the bed on this one, The Tin Soldier has gained access to some meeting transcripts that tell a slightly different story.
Records from earlier meetings in 2009 showed signs of hope amongst the unidentifiable CECS employees. “This will definitely turn the co-op system around, and stop all of the students from hating us so much,” one voice recalls. “Make sure that the developers are open to feedback; the students should have as much constructive input as they can,” explains another. Filing through these records is almost like recalling the most picturesque dream you ever had – almost all of the cries of the student population were finally being answered, and by CECS of all people. As time progressed, things slowly started to change.
Similar records found from around August 2010 paint a slightly different picture. “Oh dear Christ, what have we gotten ourselves into? This was only supposed to take a year, and we’re nowhere close to being done,” recalls a distressed committee member. “They just want so much, we have to change everything! A usable interface? What the hell does that even mean! You told us that we’d just be cleaning up the system you guys already have,” explains what appeared to be a frustrated developer. “I don’t know what to do. If we don’t deliver a system, the students will gang up against us and kill us all! If we delay too much longer they’ll start to get suspicious. Just keep running beta testing with the Architecture system until we figure out what to do,” concludes a similar voice from the previous meetings. Subsequent recordings and transcripts from meetings around this time depict the same bleak feeling – we had yet to discover it, but almost all hope regarding the Waterloo Works project had been lost.
Not much improvement had been made by the beginning of this term, the scope of the project had spun out of control, and too much money had been spent on Jolt Cola and not enough on additional servers to help with the scalability aspect of the project. Then finally, a glimmer of hope in a recording of a meeting on February 24. “I’ve got it!” proclaimed one of the Committee members, “We’ll just cancel the project without any warning!” “Won’t this enrage the students? Isn’t that what we’re trying to avoid?” asked another. “Yes, but no, but exactly yes! We’ll do it suddenly, and catch them off guard. There are enough tech-savvy people here, if we get them good and mad enough, they’ll just go ahead and build their own system! It’ll have all the bells and whistles they can think of, it will be perfect! Then, we’ll get them to sell it to us for a fraction of what this giant chunk of garbage is costing us now!” A silence falls over the room. Another member pipes up, “Then they can’t complain about it because they made it themselves. It’s genius! Quick, pull the plug on this thing – there’s no time to loose!” There’s a rustle of activity and then silence afterwards on the meeting recording. Although it’s unclear of what exactly happened, it was announced the following day that the project was cancelled. The beauty of this flawless logic never ceases to amaze me. Another lesson from the department focused on developing the students of Waterloo as well rounded employees on the importance of outsourcing everything you possibly can. It’s how Waterloo Works!
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