Archived Serious question regarding the Target IT department and...

[Riffraff]

[the Target IT department and] any teams operating outside of the stores involved in the shipping and ordering processes for stores (DC warehouse grunts excluded).

Do they have hired cats who's job it is to walk across the keyboard to write programming code and input orders? Or do they regularly have "bring your kid to work day" and allow their infants to play on the keyboard?

I can't imagine that some of this stuff is the result of cognizant human beings.

 

[POGgirl]

Haha... I have the same question about whoever comes up with the planograms! Sometimes it's seriously ridiculous!

 

[anathema]

The entire network is awful and so has their managing of the equipment so far. Everyone's caught between god awful payroll and god awful equipment and it's p fun.

 

[balthrop]

you know those monkeys with their typewriters trying to come up with the next play by Shakespeare? yeah we got the ones that didn't pass that interview. I kid I kid. I understand that they of the air conditioned cubicles have their own stressors but it would be nice to at least go a week with out banging my head against the wall trying to drive out the silliness that comes from corporate

 

[StaticSun]

Serious coding is typically contracted out, especially to Target Technology Services in India. A lot of the American TTS staff are integrators, UI engineers, and graphic designers. Most of the source code is done in India.

 

[unknown]

My favorite pog mistake in the last year was the toaster aisle revision about 4 months ago. Half the displays were toasters, the other half were baby stroller/seat displays.

I so wanted to just set it as stated. I sometimes wonder if the etls would even notice. Maybe Target thought we needed toasted babies?

 

[Ringwraith917]

I theorize that POG design is now done by a computer program, which doesn't have any common sense.

 

[squirrely]

I do ad prep and would love to know who types up the signs!? Some look like gibberish, some have half caps/half lowercase, some are missing words or have extra words.

 

[DoWork]

Indian code is mostly awful. I'm frequently modifying code on freelance websites originally written by Indians. Their methods are rarely optimized, and the code is documented so poorly that figuring out most code is a serious undertaking. Their code works, but horribly.

 

[commiecorvus]

Indian code is mostly awful. I'm frequently modifying code on freelance websites originally written by Indians. Their methods are rarely optimized, and the code is documented so poorly that figuring out most code is a serious undertaking. Their code works, but horribly.

A coder friend of mine who is Indian (well, Pakistani) and has worked in both countries told me the one major difference between the two that he found was that in India it was unacceptable to tell someone a goal couldn't be met no matter how stupid or unreasonable.
You had better cludge something together that works in three days because that's what the company said they wanted.
At least American designers are more likely to say it isn't possible to do in that short time unless they want to pay a small fortune.
Which is why the contract winds up in India.

 

[DoWork]

A coder friend of mine who is Indian (well, Pakistani) and has worked in both countries told me the one major difference between the two that he found was that in India it was unacceptable to tell someone a goal couldn't be met no matter how stupid or unreasonable.
You had better cludge something together that works in three days because that's what the company said they wanted.
At least American designers are more likely to say it isn't possible to do in that short time unless they want to pay a small fortune.
Which is why the contract winds up in India.

Yep. That's a downfall. I've been denied projects numerous times after saying I couldn't do it in the desired time frame, or my quoted time frame was undercut by a much lower paid Indian developer. In the freelance market, they're killing us. Slowly, though, people are coming back to European and American developers because of the maintenance required to these subpar projects.

 

[mrknownothing]

I do ad prep and would love to know who types up the signs!? Some look like gibberish, some have half caps/half lowercase, some are missing words or have extra words.

I like the ones where they spell words wrong. Totally not embarrassing.

 

[redeye58]

Had a batch of endcap signs with ampersands (&) in place of dollar signs ($), plural words with apostrophes (assorted color's) & the like.
Oh, wait....those were printed out by an ETL.
Never mind.

 

[MIRSlave]

My favorite pog mistake in the last year was the toaster aisle revision about 4 months ago. Half the displays were toasters, the other half were baby stroller/seat displays.

I so wanted to just set it as stated. I sometimes wonder if the etls would even notice. Maybe Target thought we needed toasted babies?

For the past few months the system thinks that there's a Huntington Beach toaster oven set in the middle of our target mobile planogram. We still get sale signs for it in that spot whenever it goes on sale.

I like the ones where they spell words wrong. Totally not embarrassing.

For a while we were selling a 50" Magnovox tv. Manually changed the o to an a with a sharpie

 

[sigma7]

For a while we were selling a 50" Magnovox tv. Manually changed the o to an a with a sharpie

I think you meant with a shorpie.

 

[Bullseyes]

My favorite pog mistake in the last year was the toaster aisle revision about 4 months ago. Half the displays were toasters, the other half were baby stroller/seat displays.

I so wanted to just set it as stated. I sometimes wonder if the etls would even notice. Maybe Target thought we needed toasted babies?

... Is it sad that when I show people how to use online planogram I'm baffled at why they are shocked to see baby displays on non baby pogs? I'm so use to it that my brain has accepted it without a second thought... FYI the baby displays are on almost any pog with a display.....oh, Target.