write.as/jonbeckett

While most think we sit in darkened rooms, surrounded by junk, typing gibberish into screens full of gobbledegookwe do, sometimesthe reality is somewhat different.

We spend days sat in meetings with clients who don't know what they want, trying to persuade them to do things our waythe way that works. We then spend the pitiful amount of time left thrashing code together to a budget, which the client expects to be bug free, and work like magic.

We then travel across the country before other people have dragged themselves out of bed with our best business clothes on to show our face on client site and experience genuine fear from the internal IT staff.

We always arrive on-site paranoid that we will be found outthat somebody there will be the snotty nosed kid from school that seemed headed for the CIA, or MI6and we are always astounded at the skills gap between ourselves and the clients.

After perhaps spending a number of nights in a hotel, watching ripped movies from hard drives, and enduring meals with co-workers, we slump back onto a train home and rejoin the rest of the gravy train.

And then we do it all again.