So, I started a summer job last Thursday. On paper, it sounds tech-y, but in practice it's basically data entry: I
1. Look up a product's vendor number on our site,
2. manually query the vendor for specs on it,
3. copy and paste the query results, with excessive formatting, to our site, and
4. type (not copy) various keywords from the specs into a form so our site's internal search engine can find the product.
I then repeat . . . two hundred and fifty times, so far, over the past two days. Obviously, this job kinda sucks. I was told in advance that it sucks, and I'm overqualified, but I took it anyway because it means more cash and a chance to put something tech-related on my resume. Mind you, the company in general is not poorly run; they seem to be growing very quickly, and moving a ton of product. But up until now, the boss (it's a small company) was forced by default to be the tech guy, and as you might guess, he's not very intuitive with this stuff. But now, I'm wondering, "can I make this into an opportunity to help the company, and convert my crap job into something that will give me extra practice at a meaningful skill?"
Specifically, I'm thinking, would it be possible to get a dump of the vendor's database at anything like a reasonable price, and set up a cgi server on our end to automate my job? Is that the kind of thing that's "done"? The trick is that, at present, I know jack **** about php/perl/whatever. Is this something I could learn quickly, then jury-rig a free cgi engine to do the work for me? Ideally, we'd just about gut the existing company website; our product information contains considerable errors (I've been writing them down as I go, three full pages so far), and the site is cluttered as hell (I'm making it even more so). But I know that's beyond my level at this point. It's a small enough company that I might be able to leverage my position into a better job by the end of the summer.
Alternatively, I can keep my head down, do the stupid work, and move on. I passed my second Cisco test last Monday.
1. Look up a product's vendor number on our site,
2. manually query the vendor for specs on it,
3. copy and paste the query results, with excessive formatting, to our site, and
4. type (not copy) various keywords from the specs into a form so our site's internal search engine can find the product.
I then repeat . . . two hundred and fifty times, so far, over the past two days. Obviously, this job kinda sucks. I was told in advance that it sucks, and I'm overqualified, but I took it anyway because it means more cash and a chance to put something tech-related on my resume. Mind you, the company in general is not poorly run; they seem to be growing very quickly, and moving a ton of product. But up until now, the boss (it's a small company) was forced by default to be the tech guy, and as you might guess, he's not very intuitive with this stuff. But now, I'm wondering, "can I make this into an opportunity to help the company, and convert my crap job into something that will give me extra practice at a meaningful skill?"
Specifically, I'm thinking, would it be possible to get a dump of the vendor's database at anything like a reasonable price, and set up a cgi server on our end to automate my job? Is that the kind of thing that's "done"? The trick is that, at present, I know jack **** about php/perl/whatever. Is this something I could learn quickly, then jury-rig a free cgi engine to do the work for me? Ideally, we'd just about gut the existing company website; our product information contains considerable errors (I've been writing them down as I go, three full pages so far), and the site is cluttered as hell (I'm making it even more so). But I know that's beyond my level at this point. It's a small enough company that I might be able to leverage my position into a better job by the end of the summer.
Alternatively, I can keep my head down, do the stupid work, and move on. I passed my second Cisco test last Monday.
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