Slashdot Mirror
Sharing IT Problems with Executives?
dicey asks: "Later this week all of the IT department at my company (50-80 people) is having a dinner with the company President and VP/CIO. One major reason for this is so that they can get a better understanding of what is going on in IT and how it impacts the company overall. Ideally, with the ideas and sharing, these guys will have a better appreciation for us, adjust our budgets appropriately, and help us in our business.
However, many of us are wary to speak about what is going on because it will inevitably reveal problems with the company. We are worried about what we discuss coming back to our directors ultimately to bite us. I am curious what my fellow Slashdot readers have done in similar circumstances, where there is a great chance to let someone high up in your company know of problems so that they can be rectified, but whereby revealing them you may get hurt in the process."
Isn't that what managers are for? It's not your job to inform CxOs that there are problems. Alternatively .. if you're looking to get into management, this could be your chance.
At a large company that I worked for in the past, we had the opportunity to give criticism to the higher ups about all the things that we'd like improved etc. You know that manager of yours that in one way or another always blames his director for the hardships bestowed on your group? Well, we mentioned that during the surveys and meetings that we had. "If only the director would do this.. or that.." Well, one member of our group who'd been around for 6+ years at the company warned us that this was all a sham; not to criticize anything. Well, it did. About a week later the manager called us all into a meeting and while even shedding a tear, he told us that we were all ungreatful and that we'd get no more perks from him with him pulling his weight to get us things. 3 people quit shortly after. Tread VERY lightly and don't place blame on any singular management entity.
A carefully considered, previously agreed-upon statement would be fine, but I would cringe at anyone who would speak "off the cuff" to management. If you can approach them in the right way, you may well end up with what you need. Or at least what they think you need. Anyone in your department who has a deep-seated need to impress the brass should be given the wrong location and time for the dinner. Best of luck!
"Never pet a burning dog."
Just smile, nod and enjoy the free food. Sure, it would be nice to try and let the executives know the problems you are facing, but as the Dispair poster says, "Sometimes the best way to increse moral is to fire all the unhappy people." You aren't unhappy are you?
Seriously, you, and a large portion of the staff should discuss the idea of all suggestions being given to the exec anoymously. Try to find someway to disassociate the idea from the person. Granted this isn't perfect, but it might help some.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
The right thing to do:
Be open and honest with the PHBs. Don't sugar-coat anything that much, and if your honest assesment of a problem doesn't please them, then you may want to start looking for another job.
The normal thing to do:
Suck up to them and blame the problems on others. That way you'll get a pay raise and your co-workers will not be held in as high regard.
I would like to think I'd do the right thing in a situation similar to yours, but I honestly don't know if I could risk my job because of an execs stupidity.
Karma: Meh (Mostly from meh.)
Send out an email to your IT staff, avoiding the managers. Let them know that a box will be made available at some accessable point, where anonymously _typed_ papers can be dropped off.
Encourage folks to not only write down the bad stuff, but write up good things as well. And always give examples and suggestions with the bad. But make sure that the examples focus on the issues, not specific people.
Deliver the box to the VP/manager/PHB and tell him it was done this way to prevent personal bias influencing the issues.
Support FSF: Stop thinking with your wallet, and think with your imagination. (cc/non-commercial)
I agree... but for a slightly different reason.
The upper management should routinely meet with all the various departments for the reasons you gave.
A lot of the problem has been that upper management has treated the IT department more like a service department than a productive part of the company.
At least where I work the trend is changing. The "top-floor" guys often meet with us over drinks or dinner. This is after we stepped up and saved them an assload of money by building a project in-house instead of buying a similiar service.
The upper level "shirts and ties" guys are learning that IT has to be part of the system now. IT requires too much financial support not to listen to the experts.
AC
As others have posted, this can be a very tricky situation to be placed in. My old company had something similar for a few non-IS departments, and it resulted in "restructuring" whereby the ones who raised issues were "restructured" out of their jobs.
My advice would be to place the ball firmly in the CXXs' courts. If the corporate-level people are committed to change, digging out the worst problems and solving them, they shouldn't balk at the suggestion that this be an ongoing arrangement.
In other words, if someone were to stand up at this meeting and say, "Hey, I think this is a great opportunity to solve some issues that impede our progress. Will there be some way for us to get you suggestions beyond this meeting?"
If the Cxx answers, "No, this is pretty much how we want to handle it - one meeting," I'd say their motives aren't what they want you to believe they are. If they like the suggestion, however, and suggest that there could be some informal gathering or way of identifying such issues, I'd be more trusting of their motives.
Just don't allow them to leave it at a "planned" stage without followthrough. Ask for specific dates, times, etc., to identify responsible parties, and ask how these sessions will be structured.
When the second or the third such meeting rolls around, and it looks like things are getting attention and respect, *then* I'd feel better about speaking up.
- Jack
necessary for corporate expansion (i know there's a joke here somewhere), but not discussed in mixed company (boardmembers, clients, etc). okay, maybe i'm stretching the analogy, but IT is important, and a smart managment group will recognize this.
IMHO you shouldn't go into the meeting airing departmental dirty laundry, and don't use the opportunity to settle any political scores. do realize that the IT department is an important corporate entity, leverage that fact, and don't be afraid to be a little political.
maybe the group of you should all meet before hand and come up with a list of things you've accomplished as a dept, things you'd like to accomplish in the next year(2 or 3 years even), and list the reasons how these improvements can help save/make money for the company.
if you play your cards right, you might even find yourself being the big swinging dicks of your company...
three can keep a secret, if two are dead - benjamin franklin
I hate to be a dick about it, but this sounds eerily like what has been going on with the Finance community. Not reporting correctly. This just sounds like deceit plain and simple. People in the financial world are going to jail for not reporting correctly. Granted, your situation may not be as serious, but it certainly could be and not being honest and up front isn't going to help things one bit when a poorly built house of cards comes tumbling down. It's a bitter pill to swallow, but in the long run, honesty really is the best policy. A lot of cliches? yeah, but they are cliches for a reason.
Another poster wrote "get your resume ready". I agree. Hiding things won't make them any less of an issue later. In fact, I think these things have a way of getting bigger and worse.
Co-founder and designer at Music Nearby: http://musicnearby.com
I want to say first that it depends upon the culture of your company. You also don't say at what sort of level you work in the company, so I'm assuming at least several levels down from the management.
If you are peopled by weasels (is that possible?) then the best advice is always to watch your back.
If your company is hugely political then politics is valued and it's best to approach it like that.
On the other hand, the fact that your management is meeting you at all suggests that you are working in a well-balanced company. If that's the case you should speak the truth when asked, without dumping anyone in the muck; that's a good way to make enemies. You should be polite and only discuss major points.
Your management has a different view on the company from you. They have to take the whole company into account, and you are naturally most interested in your corner. Having a bitch about the cubicles in the IT area won't win bonus points, but if you talk about how the sales people don't have good enough kit for their jobs you will. So - focus on what are problems for other people, and how to solve them.
Don't expect your management to do everything you suggest - and don't get despondent if they don't do the things that you think are most important. They have to prioritise across the whole company and should be giving weight to those areas that will bring the biggest benefit to the whole company. This doesn't mean that they didn't hear what you said, and didn't want to do anything. It may simply mean that there are higher priorities at the moment.
Do talk to your management as if they are people and not uber-gods. Try to avoid geek-speak. Do dress smartly - even if you wouldn't normally - it will reinforce your point of view. Don't drink much - you don't think as well - even though you are convinced that you do.
Hope that's some help.
Jeff
If your company is having problems and you don't feel safe doing your duty and informing the higher ups, you need to start looking for a new job. In the meantime, don't rock the boat.
I was caught in such a situation... and the end result was that my boss tried to fire me for a failed upgrade project that in reality, he was the one that was making impossible. (Before my hiring, he was hired to bring in SAP, and then the project was canceled. He was offered the chance to leave, but instead stayed hoping he could re-sell the company on the project later.
When my boss tried to fire me, the company got caught in a huge bind. See, the owner, who usually jokingly would tell employees to work harder had spent the afternoon of what turned out to be my last day telling anybody who was arround when she and I were in the same place that I was a "hero". It was a shame she, my boss, and I never were in the same room.
The writing on the wall that I was going to be fired came when I noticed my Admin account had been demoted to "Power User" meaning no longer had root control over the server I was responsible for. My boss telegraphed it when he and his #2 of the department stayed later than me, and told me to not think about work over the weekend.
So, knowing the game was over, sent e-mails documenting every flaw in the system and how I thought they got there to my boss over the weekend. He confirmed everything by calling me late Sunday night, just as I was planning to go to be, with a yelling-into-the-phone rant. It was clear he was trying to fire me... but he never got to the point until I said "You're going to fire your second admin in six months. Your nuts." and hung up. He told me not to come into work, but never got put "you're" and "fired" into a declative sentance.
To make a long night's story short... the next morning the company had a lot of explaining to do to a lot of people. I couldn't have gone from "hero" to "fired" without a good reason, and they couldn't replace their IT Manager on sudden notice.
I had to be out the door, but I had one of the nicest exit meetings in recorded history. I was given the full severance that the company handbook called for, and I was actually given a bonus week's worth of pay as recognition that although I was salaried, they had given me far too many hours of unpaid overtime for which I was due time off that I was never given a chance take. The finance manager / HR guy was extremely nice to me, and assured me that the company would not contest my unemployment claim. In the end, between severance and unemployment, I was handed a golden parachute worth close to $10,000.
But, my biggest surprise came when I asked the HR guy if on the way out I could have permission to say a few words to the front desk secretary. She was the stereotypical young blonde in looks, but she was defintely not dumb. She and I had bonded when my boss was ignoring her repeated calls to the tech support voice mail, and I was the only responsive member of the IT department... we had never contacted each other outside of business hours, although I'm sure some people thought we might have.
I thought I would just say a few words to her as I walked by the desk to make a proper goodbye to a friend, but she led me into the same meeting room to talk for about a half hour. I could tell she had prepared with the HR director to talk to me, and reassure me that the company still respected me, and that this was for my own good that I was being pushed out. I asked her why she had stopped calling the tech support line, and she revealed to me that she had talked to the owner about the tech support problems, and the owner's husband was tasked with making some way out requests to the IT department to see how they'd be reacted to. For example, when the owner's husband asked me if we could install a recent-vintage LCD front panel to replace the bulkly CRT on the front desk, I said that was a great idea, but I had no control over the IT spending. The #2 said that it wasn't
A good admin/support person should have the ability to at his desk and goof off on his computer. When caught doing so, and asked what actual work I was doing, I point to the support hotline phone and the fact that it isn't ringing. If nothing was broken and my routine maintainance was up-to-date, the only reason why I have left to not call it a day the day is because I need to be on call in the hopefully unlikely event something causes that phone to ring.
I'm not sure how true that is.
It seems to me right now if you cut the IT labor force in half, half being the people who were truly qualified for the job they had in the dot com era, and half that wasn't. (Its probably more like 2/3 in that bucket, but whatever), 10% of the former group is finding jobs with no problem, and 10% of the latter group isn't.
The really good developers I know who have gotten laid off in the last couple months haven't been having and problems finding new work. I have a couple friends who have commented lately about how they expected it to be hard and in the process of looking started being a lot more picky, because things weren't as bad as they'd heard.
Maybe some parts of the country are different... this is the metro Boston area...
This happened to me. My immediate manager was (figuratively, of course) pissing all over every bit of work I tried to get done - and when *her* manager wanted an explanation for the problems, she made it out as my fault. So, the next time it happened I bypassed my manager and made my case directly.
The result? Within a week, I was fired from a project I'd given two good years of solid work to. Because I'd been documenting the *real* cause of the problem(s), there was nothing of substance to pin on me - instead, the dept. directors mumbled something about a "high priority task" that needed the attention of someone with my "unique skills."
The "high priority" task turned out to be a bunch of busy work - the kind of stuff any intern could have done, for a lot less money. And, I was required to give up my office and sit in an open area to do it - I didn't even have the luxury of cubicle walls.
The next project was *completely* outside my area of expertise - it involved a lot of Flash, and I'm mostly a Perl guy. When I managed to muddle through that one - once again leaving them without a legitimate reason to fire me - I was informed that my next assignment would be to find a way to use Microsoft ASF from within Flash.
At that point I decided to quit fighting the inevitable. I loved my job and didn't want to give it up, but a handful of people had developed an irrational dislike for me, and were in a position to do something about it. I'd begun to imagine myself sitting in a basement storage room mumbling about a stapler, and decided to leave before it came to that.
Even *that* wasn't the end of it. I'm now getting rotten references from my ex-employer. I've been unemployed for over two years now. My employers before that one were all dot-coms that either imploded or eaten by bigger fish. In essence, I have no good references.
Basically my career as a professional programmer is finished, and I'm wondering what to do next. Chef school is looking pretty good right now.
Don't cross your managers. Just don't. You might think they're your friends right now - but they're not. Their friendship is not real. It's their job to get you to trust them. If they feel a need to fuck you over in order to protect their own asses, they'll do it in a heartbeat. There might be a few who have a soul, and you might be working for one of them - but are you willing to gamble your entire career on that chance? Learn from my mistake, and don't do it.
(Posted anonymously for obvious reasons...)
My advice? Keep your mouth shut.
Of course be careful. But there are many ways to play this. A conservative strategy is of course the safest, but it isn't necessarily the best. You have to decide what you want out of the encounter. Do you really want to spend life pussyfooting around because you might offend somebody powerful? That's no way to win respect, certainly not of senior management.
This is a chance to get noticed, and it could also be a chance to kick your career up a notch, if you are interested in that. If you just want to get through with this, then don't get noticed. If you want to change things then do get noticed.
The key in any kind of encounter like this is to understand what the other person would like to get out the encounter. Management has two functions: providing direction and removing obstacles. Basically, management ideally should be 90% shitwork and 10% leadership. Most managers know this but being human would rather spend 90% of their time doing leadership and 10% the other stuff. In other words most managers are lousy. It follows that any shitwork you can take off the boss's plate automatically makes your life easier. I'm preaching the gospen of win-win here: You should not be thinking how management can make IT's life easier, how to you each help each other get what you want?
So, what to do if you are sitting next the CEO and he starts chatting you up? It's not about what the CEO can do for you, it's what you can do for the CEO. That means knowing him probably better than you do and, harder yet, taking him (or her) more seriously than you probably do now. What are his pet issues? Conversely, what tare the things that he's spending his time dealing with he'd rather not be?
On the other hand, you can't ignore the leadership side of the equation either. What are easy ways this guy can become a hero to IT? How can he kick himself up a notch against his peers when it comes to bragging rights? What is is vision for the company and how to you fit in? That means, study the business plan, yes, even take the mission statement for a few minutes if you can manage it. If there have been press releases or if he's been quoted in the trade press know what he's about. Study the company wide internal memos. If the boss is fixated on stuff that seems superficial, remember he has to sell the company to the world, and the world is fixated on superficial stuff too. Reorient your perspective for a moment and put yourself on his side.
Of course, you may not get the chance, given the numbers, but it pays to be prepared, and have a plan. This really is too much advice to put into effect in a brief encounter. It's a lot like a job interview -- you might get lucky and get everything you need out the first encounter, but what you want to ensure is that you get asked back. That means studying the opportunity, having a rough plan of where you want to go, but being flexible to follow the boss's lead.
Or you could run like hell, which is perfectly legitimate if you'd rather keep the status quo.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I agree with your points, but you are forgetting exactly how much management subordinates/discredits/undervalues/detests/fears us.
"IT provides a service. We know that the service must be worth something, but we understand nothing about it. If we cannot understand it, then it cannot be important, but everybody has an IT department so we better have one. But it is filled with inexperienced children who have not spent their life climbing the corporate ladder, so they cannot understand the "complexity" of the business and how it needs to improve. But we have to have them, and they make almost as much as we do so we better smile when they are around. Please, please don't let them say anything because I will feel stupid because they know all this jargon that I do not. But they do not understand business as well as management and we set the rules so we are on top and my life is worthwhile. Just do not let them speak."
The big issue is that all computer technology is just magic to management. Computers seem to help the business, but the effects usually cannot be quantified until after they are deployed. So why do it? Because all the management magazines tell them that some other company used software for something and is now saving tons of money.
We save them when they have lost that important file, but they know they would not have lost it if it was on paper. Almost everything with computers means they have to learn something new, and they hate that.
The other side is that we are often closely involved with many parts of the business. We hear the complaints from the whole company. We may not know the big picture, but most working IT people could quickly pick 5 tasks that could be cheaply improved by technology in completely non-IT departments, because they know what is frustrating the employees.
I posted a story about trying to sell a business process improvement. I believe I did it on their terms. I reminded them how many people were required to fix the bad data. I demonstrated how this system was better. I talked about how the related processes would be integrated to improve accuracy and reduce the cost across the enterprise. I did not talk about technology other than to say the current hardware could easily handle it. I got some excitement from them, but lost because THEY CANNOT JUDGE GOOD SOFTWARE FROM BAD SOFTWARE even after they use it.
I am in a special position here. They are not my only client, but I worked almost 1000 hours last year FOR THEM, and they spent more for my services than for the 60-hours-every-week IT manager (including all compensation.) I probably cost them as much as his boss, the decision-maker. I am the high-priced outside expert who has an unbroken record of delivering better than they require before any deadlines and always staying under the budget. I do business strategy consulting at other companies. They should greatly respect my opinions, but I am still "just an IT guy."
And it does not help that I look young. The white hair keeps going away when I do not work. I almost wish it would all turn white so I would look older. The "decision-maker" is only 10 years older, but has a full head of white hair. Maybe I should dye (bleach?) mine.
If you really want to get a suggestion to management, have a salesperson from another company contact them and tell them that this idea is incredible and all the other companies are doing it and they need it too. He will get much more respect than any employee, and has much more credibility than any nerd.
I spend my life entertaining my brain.
In case you haven't heard: the IT economy ain't doing so hot. Getting a new job isn't quite as easy as you are implying.
That's why he said "you need to start looking for a new job", not "you need to tell your manager to take this job and shove it, and walk out the door".
As a senior, but not executive, manager: Good IT person -- speaks clearly, does not attempt to confuse me with jargon unnecessarily, presents well reasoned arguments for decisions, does not sigh with exasperation when I do something stupid -- emailing a 50MB file to 100 people, say -- but does let me know that it was uncool and tells me not to do it again, suggests software purchases that will save time/money for the company, prioritizes repairs/upgrades based on project schedules. Bad IT person -- acts too possesive to systems, treats people below my management level like they are morons while fakely cow-towing to me, tries to confuse people with lots of jargon which makes no sense, constantly talks about how much work they do and how fucked we'd all be without them, makes repairs slowly if ever, makes caprecious policies, constantly complains that if he just had x, y, or z, his job would be much easier, plays favorites. It's easy to tell if someone is good or not in an interview by asking a lot of questions. Identifying someone's abilities regardless of their social skills is a very important job skill if you hire tech people. Perhaps #2 is more of a problem w/ IT at non-tech companies.
But it is filled with inexperienced children who have not spent their life climbing the corporate ladder, so they cannot understand the "complexity" of the business and how it needs to improve.
Your response proved just how correct "they" are in their assessment. IT folks have RARELY "climbed the corporate ladder" but since they've conquered minor technological feats noboby else knows about they act as if they themselves put the man on the moon.
I work with/in/around IT, design websites for advanced functionality, and primarily produce highly technical and difficult scientific content. And I'm in B to B sales to Fortune 50 companies, working with their marketing teams to develop solutions to their needs.
Believe me, they "get it" more than you imagine. They drop major dollars annually to develop novel technologies across the board. Integrating systems, driving sales, delivering content, aggregating data, they do it all as part of their daily lives. And they deal with internal "childlike" IT departments who cop 'tudes and don't deliver on anything that they don't want to. Marketing teams with ultimate culpability to their management, who's heads can roll on a dime, don't appreciate the 'tude from the IT bozo down the hall who refuses to post a presentation to the intranet site and whines that nobody appreciates their skill at hiding prOn on the team servers and p2p trading all day at work. Realize that most of the time, IT support leads with one word... No. Marketing teams have enough barriers in their day, and the bullshit barriers of corporate IT departments result in... hiring consultants who will do it. Or be fired. Just like your marketing team members.
I deal with these "IT children" daily. They never realize that I can out-geek them, and when they whine that "it can't be done (read... I'm too busy reading the Onion)" I throw my laptop on the screen and do it right there in front of them and their manager.
As far as your putting together a program "on their terms" and not gaining acceptance... quit your whining. Too many IT folks are judged by a jury of 1 or 2 of their friends on the "coolness" of their solution. You haven't done it on their terms until you've faced 1000 rejections and finally provided them with what they want. I do this day in and day out. Proposal, proposal, proposal. A 25% sale rate on proposed solutions is exceptional for the best out there. Don't forget, you're proposing in a competitive environment. Deal with the fact that someone else will have a better idea, or a cheaper development process, or whatever, than you, and you will not win them all. Far from it. Proposing one thing and not hitting on it is like buying a lottery ticket and crying that you aren't a millionaire.
So you consult. Do you propose the solutions day in and day out, or is there a sales person sitting above you, proposing the ideas to the client? Do you understand what the content will be for the widgets you design? How the client will use them? What legal trouble they can get in if you put something stupid in the functionality (every company has some regulatory group to deal with). When you client asks for a "dashboard", do you cringe? Or rise to the challenge?
And when it comes to IT, your customers know what they want... they want the elegant solution. Even the 60 year old manager in a Fortune 50 company is now tech saavy enough to know what a crappy solution looks like. Functionality should be so elegant that it disappears into the background and moves the user on to their next task immediately.
So stop whining, stop insulting your perceived audience, and start perservering. Understand what an entrpreneurial spirit is like, refine your ideas with the understanding that you're not as brilliant as you think, and start understanding that human communication and interface underlies all programming solutions... so start dealing with people and understand teamwork. You'll possibly find a voice with your management that doesn't make you sound like sour grapes or run the risk of getting fired for shooting off a damn fool mouth.
Had a nice chat with my manager once... to set the stage, I worked IT at smallish printing company with aspirations of being the next iPrint (and we all know how well THAT turned out).
One of my tasks was to take all the customer jobs (our bread and butter) and put them online so Joe Q. Nobody could surf in, look at his stuff, reorder, etc etc. That system barely worked but thank God, customer satisfaction was not my responsibility. My !@#$ worked.
The customer jobs were all tiff scans, big files, with a suitably large database, so it meant we kept running out of space on the server. This was a huge headache. Drives were not cheap then.
Anyway, so one day me and my boss are offsite visiting a client and his cellphone rings. It's his son, who is sort of the assistant manager. While we have been away at the client, Son has been playing with the server and found out what's taking up all the space! Tiffs! And they're in the process of being deleted even now! Our problems are solved! Boss presents this to me smirking like an idiot. Yeah, what do I pay you for?
Then I told him, the Tiffs are all his precious customer jobs -and then I had to very carefully explain the entire scanning and archiving process including where tiffs fit in because the jerk didn't believe me. Like the time he didn't believe me when I told him the new genius he just hired was surfing kiddie porn at work. Finally, he got the hang of "tiff" and went through about four shades of white before calling back to shop to see how much damage Son had done.
Son was still trying to figure out how to use the server and hadn't gotten around to deleting anything.
I quit a month later and vowed never again discuss technical stuff with a manager or interfere when said manager is about to do something dumb like delete all the client data.
I was not put on this earth to keep dumb people from doing dumb things, and neither were you. Next time you feel like you have to get involved... DON'T DO IT!!!
Our European owned Bonds company has just been bought by an American bank. Mr Important Boss comes over, speaks to everyone in the office except IT. He then stands and gives a speech about how wonderful it is to be trading electronically, and how our systems put us at the forefront of blah blah... He says 'Are there any questions?' I ask 'Why is noone in your bank talking to us about our planned systems migration?' He says 'Who are you?' I say 'I'm one of the guys who makes this amazing electronic trading possible' He says 'From a management perspective, I can't say what will happen over the next 3 months with you guys' I say 'In that case, we cannot guarantee that your systems will be working in 3 months...that's not a threat, it's something we said to you 2 months ago in a report we wrote' He says 'Next question....' Basically, they don't give a shit. Most are so old school or elitist that IT is nothing to them....how can we understand their business as well as they do? We're an overhead after all...a cost centre. Having contracted at other City firms, I can say that it's the same for many IT departments.
I agree wholeheartedly that this is how it SHOULD work. But it is of course not how it DOES work...
As I always say - if a month goes by and nothing goes wrong with my systems, I get little recognition. If one day the servers die, and everyone is panic stricken, and I sprint down the hall, have to make 500 changes to get things working again, and then restore service in a couple of hours then:
1. Everyone realizes from the downtime how critical the system actually is - and consequently how critical I am.
2. Everyone realizes that I'm a miracle worker.
3. Everyone is thankful and it looks good at my review.
Yes - it is dumb. It is better for systems not to go down at all. But then you're not needed, and funds are hard to obtain, etc...