Yes this is YACAW(Yet Another Complain About Work) post. What I'm really looking to get out of this is opinions.

I'm having personal issues with my employer, I work in a Tech Support department, and a very important tool in Tech Support is References. Without these, life can be a pain, unless you know 30,000 + numbers, and who they belong to :). We have references in Excel, Access, and also have a Utility on our Sun Boxes written in C/C++. The program was written by a guy who now handles our Network Security, and he simply doesn't have time to update it, in fact, it hasn't been updated since 96! So I wanted to come up with something to help the department, I wrote a program in Perl that does essentially the same thing as the one in C, only its much more up to date(it even has a secret game that the managers would never know about :-) ) I have been testing it myself, and it works beautifully, and was thinking about making up a presentation and showing it to the managers.

Here is my dilemma

Maybe I'm just being crazy, but I'm sure some of you will understand where I'm coming from.
I have given up my programs/ideas, to the company, for the company in the past, and have not seen desired results.

The person that wrote the previous utilities saw little or no recognition, and his code has been used for 8+ years now. He made this stuff, and left it to collect dust and be exploited by the hands of end users without a clue, free of charge. Now I'm not saying that I want to charge the company for using my stuff, not at all, because this is needed so bad, its not even funny. I suppose what I'm saying is, how can I avoid this fate? I'm not a "Programmer" as far as job titles go, nor was the man that wrote the other utilities, but if our "Reference Specialist" were doing there job, we wouldn't have to worry about this.

I suppose what I'm trying to say here is this:
Has anyone else here been in a similar predicament, where they have something in there hands that will make life easier for and entire department of well over 100 persons, but fear to let it go and watch it be devoured without so much as a thank you. I don't want to be left feeling like a fool for being the poor sap to come along once in a great while, make things nicer for all, then be forgotten in the shadows.. I realize that this is essentially the idea behind open source, and I would be happy to give this away to perfect strangers, but this is for WORK, and believe me, if they thought this was good enough, my employer would more than likely turn around and sell it.

Anyone understand what I'm saying?? Wish to comment??

-- Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of defyance.

In reply to Greediness, or Paranoia? by defyance

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