Does anyone takes us seriously?

[David McQueen]

First off, what a lovely series of posts.

Unlike many other programs, people come to FileMaker Pro from two sides - the IT side and the down to earth operational side. It is a testament to FileMaker that their expression "Legendary Ease of Use" has not come back to bite them. People actually do produce programs that improve the work space from what was there and you do not see horrific failures out in the open. Contrast this to some of the high end CRM programs where the company comes in to audit and see if you are actually good enough to have their program....Because they have had horrific failures that have caused bankruptcy.

That being said, there seems to be a really variable standard. People, ie customer/users judge by incremental improvements, not by any particularly objective database standards. So with FileMaker, because it is accessible, you have a wide spectrum of user and, a wide spectrum of database instances, all preceived as being an improvement.

Two expressions I use a lot:

1. FileMaker Pro is like playing guitar. Anyone can play three chords. It does not make them Segovia. Sometimes you need Segovia.

2. FileMaker Pro is the corporate world's dirty little secret. They all use it. It hides in the operational bowels of the company being used on a day to day basis by the front line. You will never see it in the annual report. They will however pump their brand new Oracle database because it does have "Ooo Factor" with share holders.

The FileMaker development experience is also different I think for most companies from other packages. Believe it or not, I think that these people really appreciate being abused. Somehow it makes them think that they are being dealt with be true professionals. A development experience that instead engages the final user during the develpment process must somehow be inferior because everyone knows god does not talk the same language as the guy on the floor.

All of this contributes to the Rodney Dangerfield Syndrome - " I don't Get No Respect"

[Tim W]

Well everyone has a story. I studied programing in college, but became an accountant. Well really I became a systems integrator, because of my extreme dislike for duplicated efforts (same or similar work being performed more than once).

When I began working with my present employer, 13 yrs ago, my task was that of employee records and payroll administration. The job was a mess with files everywhere such that even verifying that someone use to work there was sometimes impossible. They had hired someone to build a sales database and had copies of filemaker lying around. I grabbed my copy and began to learn how to solve my problems with it. My little Database got the attention of my boss, the next thing I knew my boss was talking to me about the sales database. It was a series of disconnected flat files and required the same information to be entered multiple times, which for me became a mission to solve.

I have moved from a guy trying to solve his needs to the designer of a much improved sales database. Now I have another accounting employee doing payroll & employee records, while I have become the database guy. I enjoy this job much more.

I have been able to get them to send me to two DevCons thus far, so I guess that makes me a DEVELOPER, right? But would not a rose by any other name smell just as sweet?? So call me whatever, as long as I like what do each day, I'm good with that.

Bottom line: like one of my old college professors used to say, "Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly" meaning skill and mental muscle are increased only by experience, effort and learning from mistakes made.

I had a strong working knowledge of our business processes and business intelligence software concepts, so adding a knowledge of filemaker seemed to grow naturally into the mix. I guess my boss' decision may seem more calculated that many might share in their story.

My story,

Tim

[amgdba]

Does anybody take us seriously?

That is so a painful topic that I believe that many of us developers have learned to segment it to a part of our brain that doesn’t get frequented and requires past life regression techniques to recognize.

FileMaker is certainly not taken seriously and it has everything to do with two things, one already mentioned, and another that I will refer to as the “bubble”.

The first is well recognized, that being the product is simply touted as:

1. Install software

2. Insert idiot between monitor and chair

3. Supply voluminous data that is not well handled in a spreadsheet

4. Create fields for data

5. Create layout for data

6. Enter voluminous (some times copious) amounts of data

7. Viola! You are the proud progenitor of a company solution to a problem

8. Repeat steps 2 – 7 for all data that is not fun to scroll in Excel

Why, with FileMaker you will become a data master, capable of creating marginal solutions which are vast improvements over spreadsheets. Accolades, congratulations, even a little note in the yearly review file will reflect the astute solution you have supplied your company.

All well and good until you figure out that the boys in IT are going to actually prove their point when you start having data that needs to link up, or need reporting that actually uses scripting, etc ad nauseam. All the things we do, as developers, are solutions to the effects after the virus incubates. Now the infection spreads and things are not well anymore, in fact, now FileMaker is “showing its limitations” and maybe it’s time to move to something else.

“Ah ha! Well just get an expert in here to “clean it up”. Why not, it can’t be expensive because FileMaker can’t seriously be anything that needs any heavy lifting like a “real” database. Well hire an “expert” for 15 an hour who can come in here and in three or four weeks fix it up and well have them add all sorts of functions since we have them here. I’ll show those over priced IT kids that their full of themselves and all this IT sh!t is not that hard and managers are who get everything done, they just get in the way with all that self important garbage they always spew.”

Two weeks later,

“What! Post an ad on craigslist and check oDesk, I know we can find someone for less. I don’t need some primo Dona in here who thinks they’re a genius just because they know FileMaker. I mean c’mon, you (translated admin) wrote the ******* thing, how hard can it be?”

It is an unfortunate truth that our bread and butter is practically touted as the “As Seen On TV” version of data management. Has anyone ever heard of Bell and Howell, seriously? I can’t count the times I have heard “File Make…, File Maker what”, and this is coming from the recruiter that is trying to staff the position and just knows the requisition number for the position. They have never heard of it, they know nothing of the developer availability, nothing of certification, no idea what it is, just that their regular client happened to ask them to fill this position too. They did some poking around on the “gig” boards and loosely made a connection between graphic design and web design and assume it’s just some other trinket in a bag tricks. Considering they never heard of it, and their client has no notion what it costs to bring someone in, the recruiter ball parked it near maybe HTML coding or some low to mid level graphic design skill, 20 to 25 an hour, tops. If that wasn’t demoralizing enough, HTML developers can be found everywhere, from homes, to consultants, and some more advanced elementary schools, so they should have “no problem” filing the position locally and regret that they cannot submit your resume if you don’t live there. I have pretty much even up on the 3 minute educational pitch as the warm body on the other end sheds the glaze from their eyes and it pours through to my side, confirming their disinterest in actually being told what reality is. After all, they’re the experts on what something worth, not some near do well low talent shmuck on the phone who probably still lives with Mom and doesn’t have any “real” programming skills, right? I have even spoken to some true morons who could not even search the web for it and pull the website, stating since they hadn’t heard of it, it couldn’t actually be that big of a deal and they probably only had some “geek” forums since it probably was open source (disclaimer: this has only happened once, but mind you this was a vocal ignoramus, how many silent ones are lurking out there).

As for the general public, a good example is any social introduction, “Hi Robert, what do you do,” and Robert replies, “I am a PMP certified Project Manager currently working for IBM, what line of business are you in.” At this point you resist the urge to release an exasperated sigh and you press forward, “I’m a certified FileMaker developer.” “HAHAHA… that’s funny…,” uncomfortable pause as Robert takes another swig of Whiskey, “…so what, you write software in all sorts of languages in general? Make files? Are you one of those genius gurus types that write machine code too? Wow, that’s impressive,” spoken with true respect, and another pause as he turns to his friend, “File maker developer, that’s funny, I like this guy.” (disclaimer: the names have been changed to protect the people I’d like to strangle)

Our beloved Advisor Media trade publication gives us credibility right? Go to Barnes and Noble and hit the rag rack. Business Advisor, Computer Advisor, Cooking Advisor, DataBased Advisor, E-Commerce Advisor, Education Advisor, IT Advisor, are likely to be there, but I have yet to EVER encounter a copy of FileMaker Advisor, EVER, anywhere, other than my desk when it got dropped off by the receptionist after picking it up in the mailroom. Hell, I remember seeing FoxPro Advisor 5 years ago, when advisor still had a myriad of offerings, in a Barnes and Noble, but no FileMaker. Ever see a FileMaker title on the end of the shelves, “promo” real estate as it were, where you walk between the aisles? Once, only once, did I ever see one. Now you really want to feel like a loser, I mean really like a total joke, visit in the following order:

www.advisor.com

http://my.advisor.com/pub/FileMakerAdvisor

Notice that the main page of Advisor Media prominently portrays “Boomer Advisor” and “Senior Solutions Advisor”. Further hunting and pecking will quickly draw the eye to the top of the page where one is now proffered the “entire” series of available publications from Advisor Media, in order:

Boomer Advisor

DataBased Advisor

FileMaker Max Advisor

How-To CDs

Share Your Advice

Buy Subscriptions & CDs

Help

FileMaker Max Advisor is sandwiched somewhere between DataBased Advisor and How-To CDs. I need not say more.

The next link takes us to our only trade publications home page where it is now given an endearing and whimsical spin on its title, as if to say FileMaker Advisor simply is not worthy of the gravity implied by the product name alone, it is now tagged with the word “Max”, like perhaps gaming platform publications use to market the brand better to audience (as if there were a lot of us anyways). This belittles the product line and further aids in degradating the reputation of FileMaker. For mercy’s sake, PlayStation even has a magazine titled just PlayStation. But wait, it gets worse, read the side bar where the great news awaits that the Advisor publication is only available electronically now, and no longer in print. Remember the Boomer rags? Yep, they’re available in print, but not FM Max. This is called a GIANT STEP BACK and does not bode well for any industry recognition for developers. There is prestige in still being in print media in a world where content is freely available electronically. We had a trade publication, key word had.

“It’s workgroup software, for knowledge workers.” Yeah, I have a couple 100 acres of prime real estate just east of the San Andres fault for sale cheap. One day it’ll be beach front property, buy now while it lasts. Seriously, knowledge workers are busy applying their knowledge, not normalizing data structures and filtering and sorting portals. Sure, I have met a genius or two that wrote great solutions for their cronies who also jumped in. Did I mention they have PhDs in multiple disciplines and really don’t contribute to the daily activities of the operation, rather acting as individual contributors responsible to upper management, acting more like pay rolled consultants? People who have to do the real work, not just performing a few complex mental gymnastic functions a day, simply do not make good FM developers, but again, it’s touted to be the end all of power and capability. Give an MBA FileMaker and, well…, never mind an MBA, give a knowledge expert FileMaker and they will have more to worry about once it gets shared and served and they have to start scripting. This will eventually be a burden that well educated and generally astute individuals will learn to quickly pawn off on some poor dufus who is over ambitious and wants to prove themselves in the organization. The original author is relived to have done away with the demon spawn they engendered on their desktop and will claim they simply do not have time to help in further maintenance and development of the app, “after all, that’s why we got someone to take it over right?” Dufus is proving quite incompetent at picking up the poorly planned and designed tool created to meet some immediate needs, which later grew into some frankenstein electronic swiss army knife. Being well educated, but not well versed yet in politics, they have only one escape route, the evaluation report. This will excuse them of their ineffectual performance by high lighting the draw backs and limitation “inherent” in FileMaker, but alas, have no fear, they have already started down a path of consulting with the IT department on how to move this to a “real” platform. They will spearhead the initiative and blah, blah, blah. End result, FileMaker gets kicked in the can and we look like clueless cannon fodder in a world full of SQL developers who write real databases. I have also had these conversations, “Yeah FileMaker, never again, it fell apart on us and we should have just done it right the first time, in SQL, or bought something.” The key issue is correct, it should have been done right the first time, but that has nothing to do with FileMaker or SQL being the selected platform.

Again, perception is reality, and the marketing is setup for other to perceive that it is just a magic wand that, “ah la peanut butter sandwiches”, will hocus pocus you to greater heights and solve world hunger, all from your love seat in your pajamas, between tweets and headlines from your favorite left leaning or right leaning 24 hour news channel.

Now about the “bubble”,

The bubble is well known to long time developers. It is the “sweet spot”…? Well, it’s great for moving boxes out the door, but does nothing for the longevity of the products reputation. It has locked us into a range that is a more and more neglected area in serious companies as they tighten their belts, and leaves us to cope with mom and pops that want their 50,000 record corrupted table fixed for 15 an hour and they have a max budget of 3 hours allotted. Sure, there are some good FileMaker jobs out there, I had 4 of them, full time, 6 digit compensation at one place when you summed up benefits as well. There are some customers that respect it and know you area valuable asset, but they are far and few in between, or we wouldn’t have this thread. The bubble is what has made the difference in between greatness and obscurity. I have said this many times to many people, in many capacities at FileMaker, at third party plug-in developer companies, and anyone who asks, there needs to be a enterprise class server that can handle a much larger user count. An enterprise offering would immediately be a game changer for all of us. It would slap a label on the profession as a real contender in the information management field and we could actually start making some money. Imagine the ability to take the file you developed for Marty’s Sandwich Shoppe at the corner of 1st and Jefferson, and scale it to a nationwide franchise when Marty hits upon the idea of selling his secret sauce to interested clients. The real power of FileMaker is the rapid turn around time on development and limitless flexibility in so many aspects. Imagine being able to write a small system for a start up and as they grow, the app grows, but neither can ever outgrow the other, they both scale. Cost of ownership is premised on user count, not development needs. One person with the knowledge can write the entire application suite to run an entire company. Welcome to FileMaker Server Enterprise, where Oracle and MSQL developers can kiss our grits as they make projections of months and years for project implementations while we are already spec’ing the solution and expect to have a beta test ready in 6 weeks. Scalability in FileMaker could theoretically spell the end of classic database platforms. No more SQL expert, and C# expert, and web (ie, HTML, Java, ASP, .Net, XML, XLST, SOAP, AJAX, CSS, Joomla, on and on and on) expert mix that requires a project management team just to keep the developers on the same page, while the real project managers actually try to get something done in timely manner. Either you know FileMaker or you don’t. Gather as many as you can that know it and slice up the pie, set standards and lets hook up in a week to see if there is anything left to do, otherwise lets plug it in and test. Might sound overly simplified, but to me it doesn’t. That’s what we do with FileMaker now, just far smaller in scale.

Just stop and think about an integrated data, logic, and presentation layer app the runs as easily as FileMaker for a 60.000 user based international banking operation, or vehicle manufacture, or pharmaceutical company. It would spell the end of many a project manager’s career and it would end up saving untold quantities of money. And all the developers could understand all the aspects of the environment inherently, as they are trained in the same app. No farmers on different sides of the fence playing “fair” while passing the buck. Oh wait, that’s just a pipe dream from some one choking on smoke trapped in the bubble. I could go on but there is no point.

We won’t ever be taken seriously and I have come to terms with my career choice and resign myself to it. 14 years is too much just throw it away, but it definitely forces me to look in other places too, and that is a shame when the potential is so great and it really is what I enjoy doing. So laugh and drink and be merry and be real, we are nothing but bubble wrap surrounding a product that that simply could care less if we existed or not as we are definitely not part of the core marketing strategy and not needed for the company to continue selling boxes. That is not a rapprochement either, we could do something else if wanted to. FMI hasn’t sent anyone to my house to rough me up when I start talking about different venues. We need new careers if we want to be taken seriously, or just be happy doing what we do and forget the rest.

[VincentO'B]

Wonderful starting post Comment, made me laugh.

I too got pushed into developing FM by my employer, something I loved doing and spent years building a massive system for peanuts. I soon realised that the FM manual although technically Ok couldn't teach me how to build a complex relational database system so I spent many hundreds of hours reading about relational databases, Edgar F. Codd, Normalisation, blah blah and learned a huge amount lurking in the background of this site for many years, for this I thank you all.

I enjoyed it so much that I went to university as a adult to study Information Systems but I am afraid as far as database technology goes I was way ahead of my tutor by this time, in fact I ended up explaining to the rest of my year everything that the tutor had failed to get across during classes, I was probably just unlucky in my choice of university!

I think that the only thing I learned re. databases was that it is an art and not a science, no matter how much you know technically a touch of artistic creativity will make all the difference (and I'm not talking about rainbow coloured layouts.)

I would urge anyone starting out with FM to learn a little about other database technologies, look at their software, manuals, forums etc. because if you only read FM's literature you will miss many things.

I agree that FM's marketing blurb can sometimes make it look like child's play to build a large RDBMS when it most certainly is not, when a manger once asked me to try and attempt to do something ridiculous with FM I responded that I was about to get it to dig a swimming pool and that his request was next on my list, not sure if he got the joke .

Anyway that's my 10 cents worth.

Have a nice weekend.

[VincentO'B]

Sorry my post should not read in response to LaRetta but I can't change it

Vinny

[Lee Smith]

Hi Vincent,

You don't need to change your post, you more or less did address it to comment by using his name in the post.

FYI, if you use Quick Reply, the Forum automatically assumes that you are replying to the last Post. If someone else Adds a Post before you can hit the ADD POST, you will end up looking like you are Replying to their post instead.

If you use the Reply Button in the Post you are replying to, then your post will reflect properly the name of the person you are replying to.

To change your Reply now, you would need to delete it, and create a new post using the Reply button in the body of the post you intended to Reply to in the first place.

HTH

Lee

[Ashton]

I don't know if it's so much that people don't take FM seriously, per say. Most managers and business owners don't know what FileMaker, Access, MySQL, etc. are to begin with, so its not like they could discriminate against one or the other. Most of them won't even know what a database really is for that matter. Figure that from their point of view, a database is a database; it's all the same to them no matter what name it comes under. All they do know (or most likely, they happened to have heard) is that apparently it's something their organization needs. Very few will know (nor care to know) the nature of the work, so they can't be expected to respect or appreciate the dedicated time/effort/skill it takes to do it right—"just get it done" will be their mentality. Also consider that many of them downplay and marginalize other peoples jobs as being "easy", while sensationally bemoaning how very serious, difficult, and exacting their own job is. "If I didn't have to take time out of MY busy schedule, I'd do this myself. Instead I'm stuck paying some guy to play at his computer all day" is what they're thinking. Which is really an attitude ubiquitous to any and all professions; even more so when you're dealing with people whose primary emphasis is the 'bottom-line'. For instance, our local newspaper tried to outsource their art/graphic design department to China lol, their rationale being that "anybody can build a car ad" (quoted verbatim). That experiment didn't last long. Similarly, when the receptionist mentions in passing that she "used FileMaker before" and then suddenly finds herself tasked with building the company database, I'd surmise that whoever appointed the task most likely did so because they perceived it to be a cost-cutting opportunity—and not because they don't take FileMaker seriously. "Why let some IT jerk fleece me when I can just have the receptionist do it for 1/10th the cost? Anybody can build a database."

[comment]

Most managers, I think, are not looking for a "database" but for a tool to do a job. However, you don't hear many stories about a summer intern being asked to develop the company's ERP in Oracle.

I suppose that the hype about the product's "ease of use" (and the fact that it is at least partly true) play some role here. But just because a tool may be easy to learn, it does not follow that the task at hand is equally easy to accomplish. Anyone can learn to play three chords on a guitar - that doesn't make them candidates to replace Clapton on a gig.

[Ashton]

Right. I'd imagine there's many people who got lured by its vaunted ease of use, bought a copy, found out there was a lot more to it than the slogans implied, and then ultimately gave up on it. Some of the thread replies attest to that sort of thing too.

I know FMI keeps flirting with casting FileMaker in the image of being an everyman's "pro" database software, as if it were essentially Bento on steroids even. While nothing could be further from the truth, unfortunately this is probably the exact impression more or less that developers in other database platforms have. So yeah, from that angle I agree that their marketing does a major disservice to their credibility.

[aholtzapfel]

I find I spend most of my time figuring out what SHOULD be done rather than doing it. Doing it seldom takes much time but deciphering requests and delivering what is wanted (not what was asked for)is the hard part. If I delivered what was asked for, I would have lost my job years ago.

[Oyseka]

Personally, I thank heavens for the bosses, because without them I would not be doing FM development and I love it.

Living in a small rural area with the nearest FM developer being 480 Km away is great, they want to charge an arm and a leg just to come and talk to you and when they do get here they find out how technically challenged the area is. Three months ago I went to see a guy who needed a solution but did not know how to use a mouse.

Nearly every business in the area uses one accounting package, because their auditors told them they had to and while it certainly will keep your accounts for you it is fairly complex and designed for accountants not business owners, not one of the owners I know knows how to use it, they employ someone to "Keep The Books". So if anyone needs information they have to ask someone else, and heaven help if the employee is on holiday or of sick, you just have to wait. FM is a master in those situations, you build it so the owner/manager just has to push one button to get his data in exactly the way that that they want it.

While I am by no means expert in FM I have built solutions that not only serve the owners of the businesses that I have worked for, they add control to them and that gives power.

There are also the side benefits, I designed a very simplistic point of sale system for my local bar seven years ago which I maintain free of charge. I put the same system into another bar and a restaurant a few years later and I now eat and drink for free at those places.

In the kingdom of the blind, the one eyed man is king.

Lets hear it for the bosses.

[Charity]

This the funniest post I have ever read on here or on any of the forums. What is sad is that my boss did not task me to do this. Instead, I came up with the idea and decided to do it on my own and I have no experience or training and I will not get paid for it and I have not even finished high school, LOL. Now how dumb does that make me? :tongue3:

[Rick Whitelaw]

All very interesting! I've heard of similar stories of assumed competence. I came to FMPA via a different path. I run my own business. I'm an Orchestra Contractor. I started seeing the need for a software package that could handle aspects of my business. There really didn't seem to be anything out there, so I started exploring FileMaker. My knowledge of FM grew parallel with my knowledge of the business. As I expanded the services I provided I expanded what my software could do. But here's the rub. Although I consider my software to be excellent and it does everything I want, I've worked on it for five years to get it to that point! Although I've developed a successful solution for myself, I would never consider entering the market as a developer. One last point: knowing your needs is half the battle, and needs change and expand.

[Lyndsay Howarth]

Back in the early '90s I doing classroom-based training. I had a woman who was a couple of weeks off retirement and was essentially from the typing pool who was booked for a whole week of training with Intro to Mac, MS Word Intro, MS Excel Intro and a 2-day Pagemaker course. She struggled along and midway thru day 4 i found her in the Ladies room in tears.

This kind of ignorance on the part of management is a really false economy. They would baulk at spending $20k on an experienced consultant to deliver a completed project within a few months yet pay someone $50k pa to do the same thing over 2 years. Crazy!

- Lyndsay