Slashdot Mirror
The Perils of Ramming Products Down IT's Throat
snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Paul Venezia takes issue with the all-too-familiar practice of management dictating IT solutions to admins savvy enough to know the fiat revolves around far inferior products, in this case Nissan North America's embracing of Microsoft's Hyper-V. 'Very rarely do unilateral decisions by CIOs make for solid IT infrastructures, and they are generally at odds with what the admins on the ground are communicating,' Venezia writes, noting that upper managers who succumb to vendor tricks face a far worse fate than an infrastructure based on inferior technology — one devoid of the kind of expertise necessary to make the best of their flawed purchasing decisions. 'If continuously faced with the specter of having to implement and support clearly inferior products due to baffling, uneducated management decisions, top-flight admins will simply head elsewhere.'"
'If continuously faced with the specter of having to implement and support clearly inferior products due to baffling, uneducated management decisions, top-flight admins will simply head elsewhere.'
Yeah, because the job market is just that good right now.
If you had read the entire article, you would find that they are going to run vmware inside the hyper-v instances, so everything will work out in the end.
This sounds suspiciously like a whining threat, rather than a fact. How does the author know what fraction of admins leave in a situation like this?
Sure, many admins probably consider leaving when crap like this happens. Heck, I consider leaving my job whenever a purchase takes too long to go through.
But this summary sounds like a barely veiled threat to upper management: a claim that if you do this, your good admins will leave. I want evidence for such a claim before I believe it.
Pity the poor admins - having to actually [shudder] do what their boss wants rather than having the boss catering to their whims and biases.
There's a lot to be said for product familiarity. A lot of IT shops would rather live with a product's shortcomings than use unfamiliar technology,
VMWare is not ready for the desktop^M^M^M^M^M^M^M virtualized server!
Just like every other industry that has to buy products, rarely do the experts have much say in which products would work the best.
How can you hold authority when you have to get the workers to make the decisions for you? Today it's which widget to buy, tomorrow it's how many hours they have to work, and next week, they'll be supervising themselves!
So here, employees, make the best of this Z-brand Widget that doesn't fit your needs at all. We bought 10,000 of them, and so help you if you don't use every single one of them.
Did I mention that Z-brand sent us managers to Vegas for a few days? Of course I didn't, because workers shouldn't know what goes on elsewhere in the company!
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Typical Slashdot. A joke only a technically educated person would understand.
I know this is on-topic, sorry for that, but here is a quote from the article: "According to Burton Group, VMware and Citrix XenServer are the only two enterprise-ready hypervisor platforms on the market."
What will we do until the old codger managers with no technical knowledge, and no interest in learning, retire or die? The problem gets worse every day. When I say "old", I am not talking about chronological age, I'm talking about mental disability.
These links are all just speculation and fluff. There's no news in any of the articles. Don't waste your time RTFA.
FYI
So this is just some guy's opinion, right? Just like the hundreds of opinions that will undoubtedly fill up the page below this one of mine?
"Many places are Microsoft-centric, but exactly zero are 100 percent Microsoft." By which he means... "They may run Microsoft products on the servers and desktop, but there's absolutely no way that they are using solely Microsoft applications and products in every part of the infrastructure, from the switches to the firewalls."
Well bra-vo. Golf clap.
Quoth:
> to know the fiat revolves around far inferior products, in this case Nissan North America's
Fiat in the same sentence as Nissan?
scnr
theCoward
Personally, I wouldn't work for ANY company that dictated IT solutions to its IT people.
You either trust your engineers, or you don't. It's as simple as that. You went to school, learned, practiced, gained experience, and work doing what you do for a living so you CAN be trusted. An employer that doesn't understand this is probably doomed to fail anyway. Thats what happens when people don't trust engineers. Bridges fail, cars catch on fire, foam falls off of solid rocket boosters, and yup, IT solutions fail to solve problems.
At my work the sysadmin refuses to upgrade from SQL Server 2000 Standard Edition (which had its support discontinued several years ago, though he still hasn't installed the latest service pack from 2004 or so), despite the fact that we have a budget (and need) for a high end clustered system with a nice pretty SAN. The execs are now pushing it because we're getting deadlocks constantly, but the admin insists that if everyone would stop using the database to do anything, we'd be fine, and refuses to upgrade.
His whole rant is based on the "fact" (assumed) that Hyper-V doesn't meet Nissan's needs. He has no idea what Nissan needs. He has no idea if Hyper-V does or does not meet those needs.
VMWare is indeed very mature and full of features, some of which are missing from Hyper-V. Now let's pretend we aren't snide little commentators and dig in more. What does Hyper-V have that VMWare doesn't? Like... an affordable price? Like...being built into and integrated with Windows Server 2008 very well?
Worthless article picked for SlashDot solely because the author makes nonsensical rants against a Microsoft product.
A more insightful article might have been about IT and IT pundits sometimes like to pretend _they_ are the business. Your boss will set certain parameters for you to do your job. Now sometimes they may just seem TOTALLY CRAZY, I mean like "don't spend $50 million on a virtualization solution, instead spend $10 million on this other product we've got a deal for with Microsoft to get much more cheaply". Crazy to save money though, I know. It's all about the admins and their expertise, right
What is really unfortunate is that IT disasters that the rest of us could really learn from, seldom see the light of day for fear of legal action, career blight, or the taint of guilt by association. Every once in a while I think about what I'd put in an "anti-case-study", the stories we admiins could tell.....
There are a million "Hyper-V versus VMware versus Xen" articles on the web, take 10 minutes and read 4 or 5 of them, hell, take half an hour and do some in-depth surfing :-) First out of Google for me was this little gem from the 360 blog:
VMware versus Xen versus Hyper-V.
The author doesn't even have to be in IT to know this. It's been endemic in human affairs since about the end the Neolithic and probably earlier. In Britain you've John Ruskin complaining about cheap goods driving out quality in the 19th century. In the Old Testament you have the Hebrews being forced to make bricks without straw. Look what happened then; the Hebrews left. In the 19th C. labor unions formed; the language gained the term Luddite. In this century I expect that instead of leaving they'll just expose the CIO's extra-curricular pecadillos on Youtube, or perhaps photoshop some if the guy's just stupid but squeaky clean.
"You either trust your engineers, or you don't. It's as simple as that."
When it comes to IT, "Engineers" (forgive the quotes if you are actually an honest-to-goodness Engineer) sometimes CAN'T be completely trusted because they suffer from any of the following:
- AIHIAH syndrome - pronounced "eye-eye-ah" ("All I have is a hammer" - java/visual basic come to mind)
- "I've Seen The Light!" (religious worship of open source to the exclusion of everything else)
- "Sure I tried it, it don't work." Failure to actually test alternatives to his/her "preferred" solution.
So while you might be comfortable having somebody like this maintain the existing environment, they probably shouldn't be entrusted with decisions about the future.
Of course some IT folks are talented, open-minded, and diligent about testing alternatives. Treasure these. But don't automatically grant this kind of trust to every IT person.
"Just put it on the cloud. I saw an IBM commercial last night that said this would solve all of our remote access problems."
LEAF or no LEAF; I will stick to The Germans and their crazy Linux-based systems. You can't compare the two anyway.
'Nuff' Said...
It's fun to watch a coin land on its edge, and about as likely.
On my planet, it works more like this: the CIO and your manager were frat buddies (whether that's a coincidence is left as an exercise for the reader) and one day when they're playing golf the subject of you, and what a disobedient little asshat you are[1], comes up. Your job goes to India, and by Newton's laws you go out the door.
[1] HR would express it as having a weakness in interpersonal skills, an inabilty to see the big picture, and reluctance to be a team player. No matter, you're fired anyway.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Wow, did anyone read the article about the Nissan migration? Where do you get that it is inferior or ill-fitting tech, or that it was forced. Sounds like they are a MS shop and want to stick with MS products with a familiar interface. The real issue is forcing virtualization onto this type of production environment, not which virtualization product to use...
fiat revolves around far inferior products
The Italians are gonna be pretty miffed when they find out you called their cars inferior!
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
The interesting thing admins forget is that they do not pay for the product. And they do not get paid or taken out for dinners to buy the product. For Admins that are disgruntled with the product purchased I bet the company can find another 100 admins to replace. Well in all fairness all CIOs are replaceable too. I have seen it happen. If you cant buy them, go by them...
"... who cares?"
You can always be philosophical:
Hyper-V R2 is the Zune of virtualization. Someone needs to write articles about how it isn't so bad, really, like they do for the Zune MP3 player. Vista is the Zune of operating systems. Steve Ballmer, who has little technical knowledge, is the Zune of CEOs. It's a company-wide concept at Microsoft: You don't have to be good to make money, just tricky. That's my opinion, but I'm not the only one.
but taste a little fishy
He who has the gold makes the rules.
The boss makes the decisions. Full stop, end of sentence.
It is not your place to do what you think is best for the company, you are paid to shut up and do what you are told.
When I want your input, I will take my foot off the back of your head and ask you for it.
You are more than welcome to quit and find somewhere else to work. I have a stack of resumes on my desk several inches thick.
The Magician of the Ivory Tower brought his latest invention for the master programmer to examine. The magician wheeled a large black box into the master's office while the master waited in silence.
"This is an integrated, distributed, general-purpose workstation," began the magician, "ergonomically designed with a proprietary operating system, sixth generation languages, and multiple state of the art user interfaces. It took my assistants several hundred man years to construct. Is it not amazing?"
The master raised his eyebrows slightly. "It is indeed amazing," he said.
"Corporate Headquarters has commanded," continued the magician, "that everyone use this workstation as a platform for new programs. Do you agree to this?"
"Certainly," replied the master, "I will have it transported to the data center immediately!" And the magician returned to his tower, well pleased.
Several days later, a novice wandered into the office of the master programmer and said, ``I cannot find the listing for my new program. Do you know where it might be?''
"Yes," replied the master, "the listings are stacked on the platform in the data center."
-- The Tao of Programming
until you read the referenced Nissan article, and realise that maybe the "good relationship with Microsoft that we leverage and utilize" was worth more to them than filling the feature gaps in Hyper-V vs. VMWare/XenServer. It's even possible that the MS "good relationship" discounts they're most likely enjoying are what allowed them to move forward with the project in the first place. If either of those are the case, then how can you fault the CIO on this decision?
body massage!
If by IT you mean your mom, then I can attest to the perils of ramming products down her throat. She's a biter.
Bow-ties are cool.
Now fully functional junk can be shoved down their throats.
Uh, uh, exqueeze me, but the linked-to article about Nissan describes a situation where IT staff are happy about their situation. If you're going to push an hypothesis, can't you do better than to provide sham support?
I like how near the top of the article he practically answers his own question:
"Ah -- reading between the lines might make it seem that Microsoft sweetened the deal substantially. I have no direct knowledge of this particular situation, but it's not far-fetched to believe that Microsoft probably gave Nissan oodles of free licenses and support in order to get the company to run Hyper-V in production. It's a good thing, too, since it simply wasn't an enterprise-grade hypervisor then and isn't now. I can only imagine the hoops those admins have to jump through to maintain that infrastructure."
Did, for example, someone find a feature that VMware had that Hyper-V did not, but then after negotiation they find a scenario that Hyper-V didn't do, and then offered to make it up with a workaround and $500,000 in licensing? That's a perfectly common practice in most software shops and perfectly acceptable from a business standpoint. And who said the Admin would not like hyper-V if it meets all their needs? I use outlook at work, seems to work just fine for what I need.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Phil D'Antonio, Nissan's manager of conveyors and controls engineering, is a PHB
Evidence:
(1) Rather than go with a superior solution, he is going with an inferior product delivering subpar performance and gigantic potential production impacts because he has a cozy relationship with Microsoft.
(2) He is running Windows operating systems for SCADA style infrastructure.
Remember: the first responsibility of any subordinate is to make the boss look good.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Once when I was leaving a job (because my family was moving) I had plenty of lead time to give notice, and, among other things, I was asked to draft the job description for my replacement. One of the things that I put in that was, "never leave the boss alone with a salesman." My boss chuckled at this, but somehow that bit did get cut from the final version.
Prime numbers are exactly what Alan Greenspan says they are -S. Minsky
As someone who currently uses VMWare products along side Hyper-V, if you are willing to walk out of your job because of this, you either are in an extremely specific situation that is so tailored to VMWare that it should take you all of 30 seconds to prove why only VMWare is an option ... or ... you're just a whiney little bitch.
VMware and Hyper-V while certainly different, they aren't so much so that there is any reason to walk out other than throwing a temper tantrum cause you didn't get your way. They both work, they both do the job they are supposed to do. They both have stengths and weaknesses, but neither of them has any strength that can't be accomplished indirectly with the other, and no weakness that can't be overcome indirectly.
If you're willing to walk out because of this choice, you probably don't have the skills to just walk into another job right now. Neither of them have a feature you can't do with a (sometimes hefty) script on the other.
So go ahead, walk out, they probably won't be that upset. Perhaps you should just accept that you don't always get your way, and its called 'work' for a reason.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
About as much as there is for top-flight Fortran programmers.
However, in a field that depends so much on innovation it can be argued that being "top-flight" means necessarily keeping abreast with the technological evolution. A truly competent buggy whip maker, longbowman, or flint-knapper would become an accelerator cable maker, musketeer, or blacksmith when he noticed how the times were a-changing.
You missed the point. They gave good reasons for their decision, very good reasons. It doesn't matter who said it.
You may want to read the article. With Microsoft's product, the entire assembly line must be down for 15 minutes. That's a huge issue.
We run VMWare ESX in cluster mode with vMotion. We also have Citrix's XEN on a couple of boxes. We also have Microsoft's Hyper-V. Each has their pros and cons.
I'm not sure why using Hyper-V is a horrible decision. There are some excellent benefits to using it. For example, if you purchase 2008 Datacenter edition, you can run unlimited Windows 2008 guests on that one physical server. It is licensed per core, so load it with 6 way cores. You can end up with a very inexpensive solution to server consolidation, relatively speaking.
With Xen and VMWare you have to purchase each server guest a license. Microsoft doesn't allow the licensing benefits to flow into VMWare or Citrix XEN. In fact, you basically can't run SQL Server in VMWare ESX due to the insane license requirements of Microsoft. For example, if you go with SQL per processor license and give the VM Guest 1 of 20 cores on the server, you still have to license all 20 cores in your per processor license to be legal. Until recently, vMotion required each Windows Server guest to have a Windows Server license for each physical host, even if it on only one at a time.
Vendor lock in, baby.
That's quite the major feature compared to VMWare and XenServer, esp. if they already have bought the whole storage infrastructure required to support it. A few millions in SAN, HBAs and FC switches when they don't get that much more value than a host based disks.
Me I would just install the new DB in parallel with the new one, on a new set of machines; and migrate the apps one by one. They're probably thinking of upgrading in place and/or migrating all the apps at once; I see idiot admins trying to do that quite often ... and fail, obviously.
the [London Stock] Exchange will replace its .NET trading platform with the acquisition of MilleniumIT, a company based on Sri Lanka with strong backgrounds on Solaris
London Stock Exchange to dump Microsoft-based trad...
The article appears to be little more than a blog written by someone with an incredibly biased view (and pretty inaccurate one at that) on the current state of virtualisation. Why is this even on slashdot, is it just the obvious anti MS angle? I guess nissan are lucky they don't have IT people like him that dictate based on personal bias rather than technical knowledge.
there's nothing wrong with Hyper-V. It's going to what my company will be using to run multiple VMs as it's integrated into Windows 2008 and works seamlessly. Sure there's alternatives, but the company is also a Microsoft shop, so I guess I have to learn about it too.
Hyper V being built into server 2008 is what sold my company on it. We were doing a 2k8 migration already so why not just get the hyper V project knocked out at the same time without having to buy too much more software. (We did purchase the VMM)
OK, I get that it's an editorial, but it's a seriously one-sided editorial. It boldly makes the assumption that Microsoft "sweetened the deal" (presumably by providing free licenses, even though Hyper-V is already free) to get their product in use because Hyper-V is such an inferior product that nobody in their right mind would use it. Had they run the article 15 months ago, I would have agreed with them. But Hyper-V (and Hyper-V R2) has come a long way since then. It is absolutely a viable virtualization product, and close to 30% of the virtualization market is using it.
The author's claim that Hyper-V "was not an enterprise grade hypervisor then and it isn't now" is positively absurd. Microsoft doesn't just produce Hyper-V, they use it extensively for their internal systems too. And I'm not talking about for internal test systems, either. TechNet (among many other key pieces of Microsoft infrastructure) runs almost entirely on Hyper-V. Here's a video from MS IT detailing how they were using Hyper-V in early 2008: http://edge.technet.com/Media/How-Microsoft-IT-does-server-Virtualization-and-Hyper-V/
It is definitely true that Hyper-V does not have the long list of features that VMware's vSphere product does. That's to be expected since VMware ESX has been around for close to 10 years, and Hyper-V only for a year and a half. But what if you don't need all of those features? Right now Microsoft's solution covers the feature set that probably 80-90% of IT shops actually need. The other features might be "nice to have" for most customers but if Hyper-V covers all of your "need to have" features then why wouldn't you consider it? Especially when Hyper-V is completely free, as opposed to paying per-CPU for vSphere? Even if you buy all of the add-on management tools for Microsoft systems (System Center suite of tools, including Virtual Machine Manager) you're still spending far less for a Hyper-V solution than a VMware solution. Honestly, I don't know why you wouldn't at least give it strong consideration, especially when you consider the cost savings in this down economy.
I'll be honest, I've worked with a lot of techs/engineers who've pushed VMware over Hyper-V, even in cases where they've had no significant experience with either. I've always felt like there was a combination of two things at work when that happens. Firstly, VMware today is like IBM was in 1983. They pioneered this, they were the first to market, and many people still see them as the gold standard. It's easy to just choose VMware without really looking to see if anything else meets your needs, and people will pat you on the back and say "good job...you bought from the market leader." Even if you overpayed for it. But the other thing that I've seen a lot of is engineers who know that VMware is hot right now and want to get the training so that they have the skillset on their resume. While wanting to learn something new and make yourself more marketable is admirable, it shouldn't be what is driving the purchasing decisions for your company. And as much as I hate management stepping in and trumping the technical direction that engineering wants, the truth is that a lot of times it is necessary. Given the chance your engineers will almost always select the absolute best technical solution for your situation, even if it is overkill. Someone has to step back and justify the purchase. Do you really need a BMW when a Honda will do?
Now the other point goes along the lines of "being a Microsoft shop and wanting to stick with them doesn't hold water because the virtualization software and interface will be completely new no matter what solution you choose" is equally bunk. If you are a Microsoft shop, you definitely know the Microsoft Management Console (MMC). You also would know how System Center tools work. You probably also know some Powershell scripting. All that you need is an understanding of the concepts of virtualization, and you can get Hyper-V up and running in a scalable enterprise configuration. B
While this article correctly points out the problems with implementing an IT solution without significant and valued IT input; the same is true for IT driving a solution without significant user input hat is actually understood and included in the decision making process.
Too often, IT comes up with a solution that the think is cool, meets their needs, and is an abomination in the eyes of the end users. Yes, it has a cool underlying infrastructure, is easy to maintain, and has plenty of bells and whistles but unless it solves a problem, who (beyond IT) cares?
All too often, end users find ways around it and you wind up with a mess of one off apps taht IT is expected to support; leading to much whining about end users and the stupid things they are doing.
Unfortunately for IT, it usually comes down to "How much revenue did you generate?" and "Oh, you're a cost center. Let's see if out sourcing is cheaper." As one boss of mine put it, once our IT department brings in 30 mill a year in revenue they can have a say in how we conduct business. Unfortunately, the real problem - lack of communication and coordination - is never solved.
I have worked in places where IT and end users actually talked - usually smaller shops - and surprise surprise - it wasn't an adversarial relationship. They wouldn't always do what I asked, or would set something up with the understanding I was basically on my own from there out, or suggest a different supported solution - resulting in an environment where we simply got stuff done.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
There's been cadres of flint-knappers at every craft show I've been to for the last 10 years. Their pieces typically range from $10 to $100 dollars. I've seen a pretty good reproduction of a fluted Clovis point knocked out on about 30 minutes work, Even as a reproduction, that would likely bring $200-500. An unscrupulous flint-knapper willing to bury his stuff in the backyard a couple of years and sell it as real (actually, they are real, they are just not old) could pocket thousands per piece.
... over 30 yrs ago. Great way to blow off steam, till you smash a finger. Bandages and protective glasses are highly recommended. Oh, and after the Big Crash, gun-nuts will run out of AK-47s to club one another to death with long before we run out of knappable stone.
Most knappers practice it for pleasure, I taught myself about
If you want your life to be different, live it differently.
"With the current system, we do most of our planned maintenance off-shift."
In my opinion, the sentence should have read, "With the current system, we [are forced to] do most of our planned maintenance off-shift."
To me, that seemed to be the intended meaning, given the surrounding sentences. If that is true, it is VERY significant. A huge plant has many, many interlocking processes. It is difficult or impossible to stop the processes without causing expensive errors.
I also understand the subtext of that sentence, I think. He doesn't want to disagree with the foolish decision of top management because he is afraid of being fired. But the fact is that there is no "off-shift", usually. In fact, it is a huge disadvantage to use the Microsoft product. The VMWare product would be much better because it does not require the servers to be taken off-line. That was the whole point of the article.
The department head would just pick the platform (after a few vendor sponsored boondoggles) and assign
some middle manager to it. When the project failed as was usually the case at least 50% of the
time they would just fire the middle manager and move on. It seemed to work rather well, great way
to get rid of dead weight and cover the ass all in one fell swoop.
Got Code?
... is the same as the problem with Novell used to be. Novell was superior product, but but it remained expensive even when Microsoft started to provide similar product. It was way more crappy, but cheaper. VMware seems to make the same mistake, and the current economical climate is not beneficial for them.
You said, "who uses MS products pre-SP1 for production?"
... we may end up on Hyper-v in 3 years when our
support contract is up."
Then you said, "... it's very possible that unless VMWare does some major price adjustments
First you implied that Microsoft is a company that can't be trusted to release a usable first-generation product. Then you say your company may buy from Microsoft. Why would you buy from someone you think you can't trust?
Actually, Windows XP SP2 fixed more than 300 problems, if I recall correctly. Maybe it was 600. Windows XP was a lot of trouble for us until SP2. Windows ME and Vista were never fixed adequately for most users, numerous articles have said.
Given that history, why do you think you can depend on some future Microsoft product?
I once worked in a shop that had all critical functions running on Linux. From databases, web servers even email was all OSS and it ran like a well oiled machine.
New administration comes and the Admin Director is paranoid that we can read her email because of the way Qmail stores email in the users home directory. So we pave over everything, Windows Server, Exchange (Ick, poo!) and IIS.
We two systems guys realized that a) Why 'fix' what isn't broken. We had far too much integrity to snoop email, why change systems due to management paranoia and b) If we're going to put up an Exchange box, we need something in front of it to catch all the shit.
We managed to stop up the process for 9 months until management capitulated.
BizTalk is arguably the among the worst things that any computer company has ever made.
This is my sig.
I am hired because I know what I am doing, not because I will do whatever I am told is a good idea.
This might cost me bonuses, raises, promotions, and may even label me as Ãoeundesirableà by places I don't want to work at anyway, but I don't care.
I will not compromise my own principles and judgement without putting up a fight.
Of course, I won't always win, and I will sometimes be forced to do things I don't agree with. My objections will be made known.
If I am shown to be right and problems later develop, I will shout "I told you so!Ã repeatedly, laugh hysterically, and do a small dance or jig as appropriate to my heritage.
(-:
Health Insurance is NOT Auto Insurance, YOU Idiot!
I don't own an automobile. Why in your FUCK*ED-UP BRAIN should I pay auto insurance for an automobile I do not own?!
People should look @ it this way: You're paid to work, right? Ok, do a "test pilot" then, get paid to R&D it as that on your resume too because it is, what it is, & especially if you;ve been given "informed consent" by your employer, however, only after you've told them your thoughts on it: Especially if you know it can be a "money pit" type situation. Those are the worst & hurt him too. He gets hurt? You tend to get hurt (it's called downsized etc. to be politically correct about it, lol).
That's when it's important, especially then, as to when to voice them.
Keep in mind - above all else, they're thoughts, never objections though, that's key... thoughts of "look boss, i have to let you know a few things, either way I'll do it & do it right, if its doable. If its not? Well, I'll walk you thru step by step & even get a 2nd professional opinion via a consultant you hire even, to make you understand @ a true technical level why it cannot be done if need be" etc. et al...
Let them know, that it may not live up to his expectations per the hype on it, etc. et al. It's on his head, that should be understood from the start of that project. Take it then.
I.E.-> It's work, he needs you, you get paid, even if you know it blows by way of comparison to what you know would be better on a variety of grounds (security & speed are my favorites here, as well as accuracy - don't know about you all though). Either way, you get paid, so don't bitch - feel lucky & just do it!
(AND, be happy about making a buck for something you love to do hopefully)
See, this way??
It's on record, hopefully a written one also as well as verbal with witnesses (meetings are good for this much, this is certain) that you did as you were told, albeit, with constraints you noted as possibles as adverse outcomes, if say the company or client ends up with overloaded systems type outcomes, or ones ridden with errs-abends, lockups, etc. et al, for reasons of [insert here].
Once that's understood, & by all parties concerned???
Hey - Do it, & do it right & get it working (if possible) with the "turnkey solution" presented to you by mgt. ... as long as all of what I said is mutually understood & on record, you get paid, no liability in the decision on your part then. Nicest part is, if you do get it working, & working right (for what they need it for @ least?)?
You get paid, the real "bottom-line" as well as keeping the customer, your employer, happy too. He gets his custom fabricated software written by you, or turnkey solution software tool he suggested implemented by you & hopefully successfully.
Then, you do get another notch on your resume once more, & maybe ammo for a raise once you stack up oh, 7-10 of them. Attitude rating'd be good, did as you were told with informed consent & backing, & if working??? Hopefully a raise++ etc. et al too.
Your a business, in business, too. Thnk about that, & it's called the business of life.
APK
P.S.=> Treat it like a business, you are the business here too - above all else? You're a human being selling your skills, but more importantly? Your FREE TIME, which is the most precious element of all really, make it worth it & protect yourself in all ways possible, like a buisness would too when necessary.
In any event. if they say go, you try & hopefully do, but do the job, & do it right (which usually is possible too, so look @ the bright side that might come out of it & surprise you & others too)... that's also sometimes a possible too, in "impossible situations", or highly improbably or limited situations.
E.G.-> Constraints would be things like you see in Ms-Access based systems having limitations of 15-20 concurrent users on it @ any time simultaneously on its own via the JET engine for example. In small workgroups? It is good stuff though. Combine it with STORED PROCEDURES on SQLServer 2005?? Far better
Simply put, if you want to become an IT consultant, or work for a consulting firm, there are positions available, working as an IT drone, yeah positions are limited. I quit a company as a sysadmin because 1, they did exactly what this article talks about, people who don't know IT making IT decisions (like, canceling part of a server order, most notably the licenses for windows server 2008, because "we can buy those at best buy"), among other shit, such as "cutting costs" by getting rid of cheap services such as water services, and instead buying thousands of water bottles that ends up costing 5 times as much as the water service, ie, ego driven decisions. Oh and other things like getting into verbal fights with vendors and causing them to cut ties with the company, resulting in a loss of profits, and people getting axed who aren't the upper management, etc. Oh, and other people fleeing to other jobs too.
Anyway, people love to cite "in this economy" as a reason to stick with a job that abuses them. These people are more than likely the type who stick with jobs that abuse them when the economy is good. They just lack the balls to go "hey fuck this and fuck you" or they realize they can't do better elsewhere because they learned their skills from a course book at ITT tech.
There are jobs out there folks, the market just shrank a little, if you can hold your own and have good ties, you're fine.
The attitude of offering jobs to people that don't need them?
"I can't think of anything outside of the windows and office monopoly that they've really won on."
Don't worry. If MS search eventually beat Google you could blame it on MS's monopoly without skipping a beat.
... made up numbers used by way of example."
Let me guess. MBA, right?
I'm assuming one of those perils is the assault/murder chargers associated with ramming something down anyone's throat.
Help fight spam
Imaging the conversation:
"I need IT"
"Fine, what for?"
"I'm setting up a private bank"
"OK, what exactly are you going to do?"
"We're not there yet, but I need a figure for IT"
"OK, about 1M for the basics"
"That's too much"
This is setting up a bank from scratch, nobody has an idea of transaction volumes, AUM, number of branches, staff, processes, compliance (heck, not even an idea which regulatory place it will run it) - but they "need IT" and they already know that x is "too much". At that point I wished them luck - I am 100% sure they'll get a cheap bid and then play about 3x as much later through "change control" (the usual consulting trick). Not my problem, nor do I want it to be mine..
Insert
"Hyper-V" and "inferior" do not belong in the same sentence, paragraph or web page. Microsoft has had their share of shoddy products. Hyper-V R2 is not one of them. So an inept consultant chose the right product, but was unable to use it. Don't blame the product. Something tells me that this article would never get published if it was about VMWare or Xen.
I administer a hyper-v infrustructure. We just evaluated R2 with the live migration feature and there is a major problem. The CSV feature (a storage layer needed for live migration) is not supported by any form of backup software. Microsofts backup solution, DPM is supposed to support it in the next release but that isn't even in beta yet. I wish my company had gone with VMware.
The CThe CIO Magazine Impact theory is something I came up with oh about 5 years ago.
I first started to formulate the theory when I noticed that once a month the CIO would come out with these completely outlandish loosely connected sprawling technology directional shifts. The emails were epic in there goals and promises.
The yes men managers of the place would get all chirpy about how at their last job they were in charge of mentioned tech 1 2 or 3. The young freshly minted IT members thought they were in the utopia of cool development. Then there was the rest of us. We learned several survival tactics. Most common of which, the tilt head and express bewilderment when spoken directly too about the fortunes this new tech would bring. Soon followed by an urgent anything leading out of the room.
Clearly something was not quite right. I couldn't put my finger on it. But I was starting to see the pattern. Then like a sprung tree branch to the face it all became abundantly clear.
I was strolling past the CIO's domain and there it was. Rather there they were. A pile of old CIO Magazines. Like a rabid addict I rifled the pile taking in each cover and index page. It was looking at the Dallas Cowboys play book after the game. It was all there in glossy colour. Without a mm of guilt I stole half the pile. I had to leave some evidence. I went back to my desk opened the spam folder of outlook and searched for the CIO's emails.
Can you understand the moment when someone realised what the Rosetta stone was. That's is how I felt. I almost had one of those gleeful little pee squirts in my pants. I however remained composed. The theory now fully formed had to be tested.
---
So here we have it the theory.
First:
CIO Magazine has been released to the printers. A calm settles in. The flood of overly keen email subsides. We are still grieving for our fallen co-workers that have left us as victims of the previous months storm. There is nothing official in the air just some sort of genetic trigger to hunker down where it is safe.
Second:
There is no contact with the CIO now for 3 hours. No meetings, no yes bots pushing you for some stupid meaningless deliverable. You could almost split out the back door and no one would care. The day ends.
Third:
It hits. The impact is large. This time there are "Attachments". The CIO clearly does not suffer from a cap on attachment size. The profanity is rising in the office. You can hear it build. The network is hosed and the exchange server has buckled.
The first impact wave is about to hit. Someone has managed to print it. Surprising little damage.
Now it's 9:30 am. The coffee break. We can't help our selves we gather like sheep. It's genetic it can't be helped. Then our manager says it. "So what do you think tech FooBar?" A very very poor attempt at trying give the impression he/she hasn't read the email. This is the pressure wave. The damage is done. Your only hope is the door. The only place in the room where the pressure can escape.
I'm always a bit blury at this point. I regain my senses a full two days later. I awake to the sound of what appears to be a caffeinated pimple spitting on me. It's the new guy. He's excited. This is the first of the after shocks. Generally they can be avoided or mitigated with careful planning. But they cause distress and are generally a bother really. The first week is the worst. 3 sometimes 4 after shocks a day. You don't have much time to prepare for them. By the second week it drops off rapidly to 1 a day.
But every once and a while a big after shock hits. It's another pressure wave. You've been knocked clear into a meeting room. In front of you is a newly constructed power point slide show complete with ripped off graphics from the attachment set. There is a way to survive. You must somehow make it cost more than a million and take more than six months. Because if you get asked for input, it is the only way they will
Overheard, while discussing a candidate who had built complete systems, hardware and software, by himself:
Then, later, when discussing another candidate who had worked only on large teams, at a large company:
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
"The Kool Aid" isn't about Jonestown. It's about the Electric Kool Aid Acid Tests, a series of concerts where LSD was served in Kool Aid.
Perhaps that's how you see it, but I don't think that's the common interpretation.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=drink+the+kool-aid
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinking_the_Kool-Aid
I see your choice under "alternative meaning" on wikipedia, but it's a much less apt metaphor than Jonestown for buying into something just because you're deeply under the spell of its originator.
My point, however, is that it's unreasonable to compare anything in I.T. to mass suicide and murder.
For a moment, I thought I was on Freenode!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
When did the IT department become ruler of the the corporation? In a small company, the IT guy is a consultant you pay to drop by every few days to fix your computers. In a medium sized company, you have full time tech support guys that run around fixing your computers. Somewhere between medium and enterprise, the IT department became almighty and dictated how employees can use their computers and what software they become. If an employee needs to use a product, the IT should quit whining and support the product. They should respond with nothing except "Yes, we can install and support that, and it will cost you $x."
He has been out of work for months.
But one week would have helped him somehow according to you.
Do they teach logic in schools nowadays?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
"Likewise if you're a top-flight sys-admin then surely your skills are not completely in one product, but in the ability to learn products quickly and well and in overall knowledge of procedures and organization"
You know this, I know it as well, but 20 something recruiting agents don't, as neither do HR people or even some technical managers.
I recently had an interview in which I was asked such low level questions (please give me the command line to do this or that) that I wondered if the interviewer actually understood what a systems administrator can do.
If I am told to solve a technical problem I ask the generalities and go and learn the necessary technologies when needed, design, test and implement a solution, with attention to business needs and security.
But then the moron interviewing you is only interested to see if you can memorize man pages then there is no way such company will value the skills you are highlighting.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I did. Since I have been unemployed (more than a year ago) I have run two half marathons and several 10K races.
I have looked for jobs in all industries (broadcasting, oil, education, finance, even government).
I even applied for charity work (they don't need more people, they receive 3 or 4 candidates for each request of help they send).
Still haven't got a job.
I think some of you out there, lucky enough to have a job at the moment, don't realize that the current job market is more akin to a slaughter house.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
If you are landing contracting gigs in the current economic climate, you are either very good or very lucky (most likely the latter).
My contracting friends are struggling, big time, to find new positions, I myself am accepting contracting positions and the field is dry as a bone.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
This is entirely objective: I have worked everywhere in the world only with companies whose names are easily recognizable globally, with responsibilities to match (my favourite was the cry of some users of mine that claimed we were losing $10000000 an hour if a system failed. They were correct).
My previous salaries say so as well as mountains of anecdotal evidence.
And have to say, the job market is dire.
If I wasn't top flight I would not have the money to wait for a better job market, for any run of the mill sys admins losing their job now would be a real nightmare scenario.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Yeah... it sounds like middle management is the crux of the problem there. Personally, I don't think "middle managers" add enough value to justify the negatives they create, until head-count exceeds a certain number of employees. (I don't claim to know what that "magic number" is either! It's just a rough idea of mine.)
It's like the game people used to play as kids where one person whispers a quick story to the next person, and they try to repeat it to the next, and so on. Before long, it's NOTHING like what was said originally.
Middle management's role, ultimately, is to take input and conclusions from the people they manage, consolidate and filter it into neat little "relevant information packages", and present that to upper management or ownership. Then, they collect responses/wishes/demands from the top and try to filter that into orders or requests for the people below them.
Obviously, that means your good arguments to spend money on product X or reasons why NOT to do item Y get "watered down" before they reach the ears of the decision-makers.
When you reach a certain number of employees, this arrangement beats not getting heard at all (because the upper management has no TIME to hear you out). But for a smaller place, it's really counter-productive. They're essentially paying extra people in the middle a big salary to degrade the quality of communications between the owners and the workers!
It is a perfect reply to the invitation a few levels up to write something positive about Hyper-V. ;-)
No matter if it is really any good
C - the footgun of programming languages