由 admin Alright, a few of you have been asking about my time with the whole Foshan ’95’ and ’98’ business. It’s not exactly the kind of story you tell at a fancy dinner, but since you asked, I’ll lay it out. It was a real piece of work, that whole period.
The So-Called ’95’ Kick-off
So, I got pulled into this Foshan operation. The initial brief, what we internally started calling the ’95’ phase, sounded straightforward on paper. Boy, were we wrong. We landed, and the first thing I noticed was the chaos. Nobody seemed to know who was in charge of what. My job was supposed to be streamlining things, getting a new system up and running. But the old setup? A tangled mess of wires and wishes.
We spent weeks, maybe months, just trying to map out what was even there. I remember crawling under desks, tracing cables, trying to make sense of documentation that looked like it was written in another language – and I don’t mean foreign, I mean just plain confusing. We were basically trying to build a new engine while the car was still running, downhill, with no brakes.
- First step: Figure out the existing mess. That alone took ages.
- Second step: Try to install the new ’95’ protocols. Constant pushback from the old guard.
- Third step: Actually make it work. This involved a lot of coffee, late nights, and shouting. Mostly at inanimate objects, thankfully.
The resources were a joke. We were promised a team; I got two interns who were greener than the local vegetables. Not their fault, bless ’em, but it meant I was doing the work of five people. We got it sort of stable, the ’95’ setup. But it was held together with duct tape and prayers.
Then Came the ’98’ Upgrade Fiasco
Just when we thought we could breathe, management came up with the brilliant idea of the ’98’ standard. “It’s the future!” they said. “Seamless integration!” they promised. What a load of bull. The ’98’ was basically a whole new beast, and it wasn’t compatible with half the ’95’ stuff we’d just bled for.
So, we started all over again. This time, the pressure was even higher. Deadlines were insane. I practically lived in that office. My diet consisted of instant noodles and whatever stale biscuits I could find. The ’98’ project involved even more complex coding, more hardware that didn’t want to talk to each other. We’d solve one bug, and three more would pop up. It was like playing whack-a-mole, but the moles had PhDs in sabotage.
I remember one particularly bad week. The main server for the ’98’ system crashed right before a major demo. We were up for 48 hours straight, fueled by sheer panic. Found out later a cleaner had unplugged it to plug in a vacuum. A vacuum cleaner! That was the level of absurdity we were dealing with.
What I Really Took Away
You know, that whole Foshan gig, the ’95’ and then the ’98’ grind, it taught me a lot. Mostly, it taught me that fancy project names and buzzwords don’t mean a thing if the groundwork isn’t there and the people in charge don’t have a clue. I saw so much wasted effort, so many good ideas get buried under layers of bureaucracy or just plain incompetence.
It actually made me quit that company not long after. I was burned out. I remember sitting in my tiny rented room in Foshan, looking at the ‘Project 98 Completion Bonus’ – which barely covered my extra food expenses – and thinking, “There’s gotta be more than this.” It pushed me to look for work where I wasn’t just a glorified firefighter for other people’s bad decisions. So, in a weird way, I guess I should thank that Foshan mess. It was a tough lesson, but one I needed. Now, if someone mentions a ‘quick and easy upgrade,’ I run for the hills.