True story: LSOBot is why I quit my 17 year career in consulting.
Long version: I had my own software consulting business for twelve years. I worked another seven at a friend’s company doing similar work. I worked for companies of every size, from one person up to hundreds of thousands. I think I’ve worked for over half the Fortune 50 at this point.
Most consulting gigs (or at least, most of mine) kind of sucked. A few were good, but generally, the companies were disorganized disasters doing work that was as often as not cancelled before it came to fruition. Or we were out the door before the project was over. I always did my best to help, but over time I developed “Tyrant’s First Law of Consulting”, which is, “You can’t MAKE people succeed.” (The other two being “Projects always end,” and “You don’t work for the client” but those are stories for another time.)
That the gigs tended to suck is not terribly surprising. First, there’s a lot of this kind of thing out there. Second, the people that hired us were generally not doing great, because, well, they needed our help.
Anyway, I learned a lot and don’t regret it. But after almost two decades, I realized I was not particularly enjoying it. I had started flying with the 1st VFW somewhere in there, and made the acquaintance of Flounder and Shady, who were enthusiastic about the Hornet in BMS. They had come across some virtual LSO program, knew I was a software guy, and wanted to know if I could do something similar. I took on the project.
Well, it turned out it was the most fun I’d had writing software in a long time. Making something directly for awesome people who cared about it and wanted to see it succeed was an experience I realized I had been lacking. It didn’t hurt that it was also a somewhat challenging problem that, surprisingly, yielded itself to the collection of hacks I came up with to make it work. It was easily the most enjoyable and rewarding work I’d done in a long time.
Not long after writing it, I realized that I was missing having a job that was about actually making stuff. So I left consulting for product work, and I’ve been doing it ever since.
Anyway, LSOBot will always have a warm place in my heart as a result. I super enjoy seeing that people here still find value in it and care about it.