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.'"

Comments

Had a chuckle at this.

[Anonymous Coward]

'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.

Re:Had a chuckle at this.

[qoncept]

Exactly. My entire attitude has changed. I still provide my input at work, do what I can to guide the decision makers toward what I think are the right decisions. But then if they make the wrong decision, I move on and keep doing my job. Maybe they could have done things better, but who cares? I'm still working.

Re:Had a chuckle at this.

[eihab]

'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 are "top-flight" the market has no control over you. Your job security is your knowledge and skills, not the salary you get every month.

Re:Had a chuckle at this.

[MBCook]

The headaches your job provides may end up being too much for the benefit. It may be worth it to people.

Even if you don't judge it worth leaving, are you telling me that if management was constantly saying "use X" when it's not even in the right class, you wouldn't prepare to leave when the opportunity came? You don't want to have to fix problems that you predicted and warned against ahead of time forever.

Remember, you don't have to leave until you have a new job. You could slowly look on the sly for 6 months or a year.

Re:Had a chuckle at this.

[Hognoxious]

How much demand is there for top-flight buggy whip makers? Longbowmen? Flint-knappers?

Of course the market has an effect.

Re:Had a chuckle at this.

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

How much demand is there for top-flight buggy whip makers? Longbowmen? Flint-knappers?

Some. More importantly, if you're a top-flight longbowman, surely you are versatile and can translate those skills into using a recurve bow. Why then, you can compete in archery events and endorse products and make a good living.

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. Likewise part of being a top-flight sys-admin is staying current with technology, just as being a top-flight archer is keeping up with the latest bows and techniques. The market might affect how much money and what benefits you are likely to get moving to a new job, but the top-flight people I know in every field are smart enough to know money isn't everything and it's better to take a lower paying job playing with cool toys and enjoying yourself all day, rather than the best paying job dealing with idiots and broken junk that is frustrating and unrewarding.

Incidentally, this is why $100 worth of beer on the company expense account provided in the fridge at work is going to be worth a lot more than $100 divided up as higher salary among your workers.

Re:Had a chuckle at this.

[InvisiBill]

'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 are "top-flight" the market has no control over you. Your job security is your knowledge and skills, not the salary you get every month.

Your knowledge and skills don't magically create food or pay your bills. If you choose to walk out on your current job (due to their utter stupidity or any other reason), you don't need job security, you need to get hired elsewhere. Your top-flight knowledge and skills may let you find a new job sooner than a fresh grad would, but I highly doubt there are many admins out there who can simply walk out of their current job and immediately into another one of their choosing in today's economy.

Re:Had a chuckle at this.

[commodore64_love]

You have to be careful though.

Sometimes "they" will set you up such that, when failure happens, they blame you not themselves. This happened to me where I was suddenly shifted from my usual task of documentation to a board design. I've done board designs in the past, but usually I had several months to review the project, contact parts suppliers, et cetera. They only gave me 2 weeks to finish the task. I said this is an impossible schedule but they didn't want to hear it. Worse - I didn't have the necessary tools on my machine. Even though my manager immediately submitted the request for OrCad install on my PC, it took them a week to get it done.

So long story made short - I worked 100 hours over two pre-Christmas weekends (instead of shopping for my kids' presents) trying to finish a circuit card schematic, layout, and parts list in just *1* week. When I handed it over 1 day past their desired date, first they bitched at me because it had errors (well of course - that's what happens when you RUSH things) and then they blamed me for not meeting their unrealistic schedule. I didn't even get to defend myself and say, "The management was to blame with an unrealistic schedule." I was simply shown the door.

And no you can't sue. Contract workers don't have rights.

Re:Had a chuckle at this.

[DrgnDancer]

I think the thing people are missing here is that our stereotypical "top-flight" admin is not going to hear about the new Hyper-V deployment, throw up his hands and walk out onto the street. He's going to hear about it, argue against it, tell his boss it's a bad idea, and eventually, if the decision was particularly horrid or part of a pattern of bad decisions, start looking for a new job. After he finds a new job (which given the economy may take a bit longer than usual, but *will* happen if he really is that good), then he'll walk out.

Bad management decisions don't result in an immediate loss of talent (unless the bad decision is firing the talented people of course), they result in a gradual drain of talent. Whether you've lost all your good people in a single moment of terrible decision making, or lost them over the course of the last year as they got frustrated and left, you've still lost them.

Re:Had a chuckle at this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you not understand at the outset that you were being set up for failure?

Re:Had a chuckle at this.

[Grishnakh]

This sounds like a valuable lesson. Next time this happens, simply don't do the job at all, because it's a no-win scenario. Instead, immediately start looking for a new job.

Also, if you're a contractor, why would you work 100+ hours/week? Part of being a contractor is that they can't do that to you; they have to pay you for all overtime. If they don't, you get to sue, and since you have a signed contract in-hand, it's pretty hard for them to contest it.

Re:Had a chuckle at this.

[lawpoop]

However, in the cases where the technology is truly bad (like the "Enterprise-class" software we have to use at work) then you will only harm your self-confidence, your sense of self-worth and your overall satisfaction with yourself. After a while you'll start to not give a damn about other things too, and your skills will slowly fade, and the next thing you know - you're stuck in a crappy job you hate.

Only if you base your self-esteem on your job. I got out of that rat-trap a long time ago. Work is work; it's not life nor your identity. Work is a lot more enjoyable now, and the challenges and assholes easier to surmount when my whole sense of self-worth does not hinge on the outcome.

Re:Had a chuckle at this.

[commodore64_love]

>>>Instead, immediately start looking for a new job.

Oh I did. But there's none out there. Literally. So I was basically trapped with nowhere to go. After all, how many jobs are hiring the week before Christmas?

>>>they have to pay you for all overtime.

I know. I earned $9,000 in just two weeks. I knew I was screwed, but I made sure to screw them back and take as many hours as I could squeeze-in before the firing happened. On the day of termination they left me "finish the day out" so I charged 13 hours instead of the usual 8. Fuck the bastards up the ass.

Re:Had a chuckle at this.

[DrVomact]

Contract workers don't have rights.

That clarifies the scenario. I suspect that your PHB-of-the-moment got this fecal matter dropped on him from on high. If you'd been listening at his door you probably would have heard him muttering to himself: "Get out that circuit board design by when?...oh noes...what to do? Ah! This calls for a human sacrifice!"

See, your PHB had to have an excuse to cover his butt. So he handed the brown mess to a contractor—i.e., somebody who doesn't even work for the company, and whom nobody cares about. Then he told his boss: "Man, that contractor from Dead Body Shops really screwed us over! What a totally incompetent idiot! But you know how those body shops are...man I certainly would never actually hire anybody like this!" At this point, all the upper-middle managers in the meeting are nodding sympathetically, because this is a well-known and efficacious ritual. They work themselves into a state of sincerely believing that it really wasn't your boss's fault, that you were a lazy, incompetent, crack-smoking moron (people will believe anything about a contractor once he ceases to exist in the local frame of reference). They will then absolve your ex-PHB of his sins, "cut him some slack", and "give him time to get the new guy (and future sacrifice) up to speed".

Nothing to worry about

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Rant

[DoofusOfDeath]

'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.'"

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.

Re:Rant

[laughingcoyote]

While I can't quote you an exact figure offhand (and doubt anyone can), I will bet you the rent that the number is nonzero. Why take the risk? If it does happen, you're stuck with a double whammy-an inferior, ill-fitting product, and newly hired admins who don't know your company to try and run it. Even if they don't leave, you're still stuck with an inferior, ill-fitting product with your well-trained admins to run it.

On the other hand, the more autonomy you let people have, the more likely they are to stick around. (This is well known enough I hope you don't need proof, and that's really all this comes down to anyway.) And since they're the experts on IT equipment (that IS why you hired them, right?), now you have the best equipment for the job and your well-trained, seasoned admins to run it. Why would you want something else?

Re:Rant

[plague3106]

Well there's the flip side of the coin too. Perhaps there's nothing at all wrong with the technology, but the admin isn't as good as he thinks he is, and fails to understand how to use it to its fullest, or worse, because of dogma in THEIR head, refuse to.

Re:Rant

[causality]

And since they're the experts on IT equipment (that IS why you hired them, right?), now you have the best equipment for the job and your well-trained, seasoned admins to run it. Why would you want something else?

In other words, don't be an incompetent manager. Incompetent managers hire people whose expertise they distrust so they can waste time and effort second-guessing their motives and use their authority to undermine technical decisions that should instead be made with facts and logic. This behavior is a bit like paying a doctor to diagnose a disease and then calling him a liar when he makes the diagnosis - if you honestly believe you know medicine better than the doctor does, why would you hire him? It should surprise no one that this behavior, especially when it occurs in a top-down environment where calling bullshit could get you fired rather than respected for your honesty, can only alienate your staff. It's also no great leap of logic to conclude that the brightest and most talented workers (IT or any other) don't wish to be alienated and don't want the neurotic load caused by regular reminders that the person who hired them for their expertise does not trust their expertise.

Some of the best managers are delegators who do not micromanage more than what is necessary for business or legal reasons. They hire good people whose decisions can be trusted and then they let those people make good decisions with minimal interference. They're also open to suggestions for how processes and methods can be improved and whether it would be economical to replace existing tools with superior ones, with "superior" being defined by the needs of the business and how well they can be met with a particular solution. The control freaks and the ones who want to deemphasize the contributions of subordinates so they can look good just don't understand these things, to the cost of everyone who has to work under them. In fact, I wish a dollar figure could be calculated that would show how costly this type of manager really is.

Re:Rant

[Kokuyo]

Why would you want something else indeed.

Because we IT folk are not trustworthy with money. If left to our own devices, we tend to geek out on cool new tech that is untested and has not proven its stability in any meaningful markets. Unless we are kept on a tight leash, we will start many projects in parallel, never finishing any, just because we want to do fun things instead of work.

At least that's the vibes my management gives off. Frankly, I don't know where this comes from. I mean it's not like I'd want to constantly work around annoying bugs. One would think it would be in my interest first and foremost to have infrastructures that works. Me being the storage and backup guy, it would fall to me to restore lost data so you can bet your ass, your family and your eternal soul that I'll stay away from the cool stuff as far away as possible. I want the reliable stuff.

See, in my company we've had to increase our budget estimates because we knew that management would cut them to shreds anyway. We had to make sure what would be left would be enough to do anything at all. It's basically a self-fullfilling prophecy: They don't trust us and tie our hands in so many ways that we have to start to lie to them to get anything done.

It's frustrating and I, for one, am fed up with it, because on top of it all, when something eventually breaks, it suddenly becomes your fault again. That and the meagre salary I get make me wish I had done something worthwhile. Being a carpenter sounds really neat compared.

Sorry for the rant.

Re:Rant

[SatanicPuppy]

Here's the best/worst example I've ever seen.

I used to work for a company that had a huge managed information infrastructure built up of a number of XML feeds from various business units that went through a custom, in-house, processing system, were categorized, databased, and aggregated out to various parties. The in house system was huge and idiosyncratic, but it worked. There were a number of people (2) who maintained it, and were well paid.

So the old company gets bought by the new company, and the new company derides the old system as worthless, fires all the developers, and discontinues the use of the code. The developers ask for, and are granted, the right to open source the code (who's going to want it, right?)

So the new company shops around to a bunch of third party people, and finds someone who is willing to take on the whole infrastructure for a nice low price. Managers are patting themselves on the back so hard they're getting shoulder problems, "This is so much better than that old crap system HA HA HA!"

Well, as I "migrate" all my information stuff it quickly becomes clear that no one at the new 3rd party company understands their processing software, but that all our old codes, all our weird categorizations...All that stuff still works. Well, that's damn peculiar.

The old processing system used to send back an acknowledgement if you sent it a certain series of codes, telling you receipt time, process time, etc, etc. So I sent up the codes, and got back a response, complete with software version information. Fuckers had taken our OWN CODE and SOLD IT BACK TO US, and like a bunch of morons, the goddamn PHBs had PAID for it!

There is a tendency to trust a 3rd party just because you don't know the problems they're having. Be wary, however, that they don't just turn around and make you pay for what you already had for free.

Just like any other industry..

[Renraku]

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!

Don't bother to RTFAs.

[MarkvW]

These links are all just speculation and fluff. There's no news in any of the articles. Don't waste your time RTFA.

FYI

Re:Poor admins

[SendBot]

It's like being a contractor, using a pneumatic hammer, and having the foreman come up to you and insist you use a carrot to perform your nailing. Then the boss expresses discontent at your declining performance, especially since he made an executive decision he thought would make things works better.

Yeah, it sounds like a dumb analogy, but human civilizations have been building structures much longer than your boss has had exposure to IT concepts. I'll be happy to stand by my carrot analogy and relate real-world examples.

Re:Not Sure What The Point Here Is

[plague3106]

Indeed... which is funny, because no where in the actual article does Nissan say they regretted the decision.

And that guys opinion misses the point; when people say they are an MS shop, they're talking servers / workstations.. nobody cares AT ALL what OS the switch or router is running..

The only non-computer device where I wish there was a different OS is my cable box, which runs linux. The reason I wish it ran something else? It locks up quite a bit, and takes forever to reboot.

What if your admin is clueless?

[spiffmastercow]

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.

Re:What if your admin is clueless?

[mccalli]

At my work the sysadmin refuses to upgrade from SQL Server 2000 Standard Edition...despite the fact that we have a budget (and need)... 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.

Re-apply the budget. Upgrade the admin instead.

Cheers,
Ian

Re:What if your admin is clueless?

[Anonymous Coward]

At my work the sysadmin refuses to upgrade from SQL Server 2000 Standard Edition (which had its support discontinued several years ago

Not true. You can still get tech support for SQL Server 2000:

http://blogs.msdn.com/sqlreleaseservices/archive/2008/02/15/end-of-mainstream-support-for-sql-server-2005-sp1-and-sql-server-2000-sp4.aspx

In fact, extended support for the previous version, SQL Server 7, ends 2010-12-31.

(some businesses really, really, really don't want to change SQL server versions)

though he still hasn't installed the latest service pack from 2004 or so),

Ok, that is pretty dumb.

despite the fact that we have a budget (and need) for a high end clustered system with a nice pretty SAN.

You can cluster with SQL 2000. And even without a cluster, it will run nicely on a 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.

Deadlocks can sometimes be avoided by adjusting your SQL code.

Frankly, the best reason to upgrade from SQL 2000 is native 64-bit versions, which lets you use LARGE amounts of memory for your DB. Not to mention DB mirroring.

Re:Poor admins

[JustNiz]

Yeah its funny how hiring employers require tons of experience, yet ignore it once you get the job.

Begging the question.

[RightSaidFred99]

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

Back in the real world...

[Hognoxious]

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.

Develop a more positive view of the negatives.

[Anonymous Coward]

"... 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.

The Platform

[Arancaytar]

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

Job description

[Charles Dodgeson]

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.