Alright, so you wanna know about my time as an “inplant”? It’s one of those fancy words they throw around. Sounds like you’re being surgically inserted into another company, doesn’t it? Well, it’s not quite that dramatic, but it’s an experience, that’s for sure.
Getting the Call
It all started pretty normally. Boss calls me in, says, “We got this big project with Acme Corp, and they want someone on-site. You’re up.” Just like that. No big discussion, just “pack your bags, you’re going in.” My job was supposed to be smoothing out the integration of our new software into their ancient systems. Sounded straightforward enough on paper. Ha!
First Days in the Trenches
So, I show up at Acme. They give me a desk in a corner, felt like I was in timeout. The first week was mostly trying to figure out who was who, and more importantly, who actually knew anything. You’d ask one person a question, they’d send you to three others, and you’d end up back where you started. Standard stuff, really, but amplified because I was the outsider.
The biggest hurdle? Their way of doing things. Everything was paper. Forms for forms. And the meetings! Oh, the meetings. We had meetings to plan other meetings. I swear, half my time was spent just sitting there, nodding, while they debated the color of a button for an hour.
The Actual Work… Eventually
Once I got past the bureaucracy, or rather, learned to navigate around it, the real work began. My main task was to get our shiny new software talking to their, let’s just say, “vintage” database. It was like trying to connect a smartphone to a rotary dial phone.
- I spent days just mapping fields. Their “customer ID” was our “client number.” Their “order date” was a string, ours was a proper date. You get the picture.
- Then came the testing. Oh boy. They had their own QA team, bless their hearts, but their idea of testing was… different. They’d find bugs that weren’t bugs, and miss the glaring ones.
- Lots of late nights, fuelled by bad coffee from their breakroom. I remember one evening, trying to explain a simple API call to one of their lead developers, and it felt like I was speaking a different language. Turns out, I practically was.
I had to become a translator, a diplomat, and a tech guy all rolled into one. I learned pretty quick that just being technically right wasn’t enough. You had to get them on board. That meant a lot of explaining, a lot of hand-holding, and sometimes, just doing it myself when no one else would.
What I Really Learned
You know, going in, I thought it was just about the tech. Get the systems talking, job done. But being an inplant, you see the guts of another company. You see how decisions really get made. You see the politics, the little kingdoms people build. It’s an education you don’t get from a manual.
My big takeaway? People are people, no matter the company. Everyone’s got their own pressures, their own ways of working. And sometimes, the biggest roadblock isn’t the technology, it’s just getting everyone to row in the same direction. It also made me appreciate my own team back at the home office a whole lot more. We weren’t perfect, but at least we mostly spoke the same language.
The Aftermath
Did we get it done? Yeah, eventually. The software went live. It wasn’t pretty, there were bumps, but it worked. I came back to my regular desk feeling like I’d been on a long, strange trip. It was tough, no doubt. Frustrating as hell sometimes. But you know what? I wouldn’t trade the experience. You learn a lot about yourself, and about how the “real world” outside your own little bubble operates, when you’re thrown into the deep end like that.
So, yeah, that was my “inplant” adventure. Not as glamorous as it sounds, but definitely a chapter in the book.
