We have been dealing with WebCT (the company) for quite some time now from the application and system administration standpoint. Our experience with the company is that the very few technical people they have are decent people who are pretty knowledgable. However, it is just about impossible to interface with them directly because nearly everything needs to pass through a minimum of one layer of management.
Dealing with WebCT's management, unlike their technical folks, is an exercise in frustration. The dominant behaviors I have noted from their management are: - they are nothing but apologists (mouthpieces) for their company, - they spend a great deal of their time protecting their technical people from customers (arguably, this is normally a good function but not when you have an LMS that is non-functional and campus is screaming at you), and - they spend a great deal of time in CYA-based activities, i.e., they continually blame the customer for problems with the application in order to shirk responsibility for the poor performance of the product.
I'd like to hear from people who have dealt with the Blackboard management team. What is their corporate culture like? Do you think they will be more responsive to their customers than WebCT is?
I'm hoping that most of WebCT's current management team gets pink slips once the merger is complete.
Actually, things at UIUC have changed in the three years since you've been gone. The College of Engineering just replaced its HP-UX systems with Red Hat Linux (Solaris on SPARC is still here), and COE now has some MS Windows labs.
Also, COE is an exception at UIUC. The current estimates on deployed workstations on campus puts MS Windows at about 85 - 90% of all workstations.
As a *nix sysadmin, I am becoming more saddened by the day in the face of the Microsoft juggernaut. But hey, at least we are still primarily running *nix servers on the central servers.
Actually, I've always found it amusing that Sun has this in its binary code license for Solaris (and I've seen it in other places):
You acknowledge that Software is not designed, licensed or intended for use in the design, construction, operation or maintenance of any nuclear facility.
I used to work in the radiation safety field and went on a technical tour of TMI just before the change in owners (current owner is AmerGen).
We were able to visit some aspects of the non-functioning side - the cooling towers (I have photos I took while standing inside one, and here's another), the empty turbine room, and the control room.
Surprisingly standing around the skeletons of the non-functioning cooling towers wasn't nearly as strange as comparing the turbine rooms between the functioning and non-functioning sides of the plant.
Anyone who has seen a turbine room in any kind of large power plant knows how huge they are. The turbine room used for the functioning reactor was hot, noisy, and full of intimidatingly large equipment. The huge emptiness of the unused turbine room was just plain strange in comparison.
IMNSHO, the worst thing about the TMI accident was the lack of communication both inside and outside of the plant. We can only hope that we've learned from our mistakes.
I didn't particularly wish to lend credibility to WWN by responding to this topic, but given the overwhelmingly male response so far, I felt I had to put in my two feminine cents.
(BTW, geeks are freaks that bite the heads off of chickens. I prefer to use the honorable term "nerd.":-) )
Gentlemen, there truly are women that appreciate an intelligent man. I find the current crop of mid-20 to mid-30ish, male computer nerds (particularly the penguinheads!) to be more open to new ideas and more accepting of change than men in many other walks of life.
Yes, male computer nerds do often fit the stereotype of the introvert. However, I've found that if I can get one to open up, he will often turn out to be quite interesting, given the right topic. Additionally, I suspect that a lot of the male nerds I remember from high school and college are now successful, sophisticated men - perhaps not dashingly handsome, but who cares?
Besides, ask yourselves if you really care what the beehive hairdo-ed, big-butted, doubleknit polyester-wearing female readership of WWN thinks.
Just a comment from a female who married a compu-nerd...
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We have been dealing with WebCT (the company) for quite some time now from the application and system administration standpoint. Our experience with the company is that the very few technical people they have are decent people who are pretty knowledgable. However, it is just about impossible to interface with them directly because nearly everything needs to pass through a minimum of one layer of management.
Dealing with WebCT's management, unlike their technical folks, is an exercise in frustration. The dominant behaviors I have noted from their management are:
- they are nothing but apologists (mouthpieces) for their company,
- they spend a great deal of their time protecting their technical people from customers (arguably, this is normally a good function but not when you have an LMS that is non-functional and campus is screaming at you), and
- they spend a great deal of time in CYA-based activities, i.e., they continually blame the customer for problems with the application in order to shirk responsibility for the poor performance of the product.
I'd like to hear from people who have dealt with the Blackboard management team. What is their corporate culture like? Do you think they will be more responsive to their customers than WebCT is?
I'm hoping that most of WebCT's current management team gets pink slips once the merger is complete.
Actually, things at UIUC have changed in the three years since you've been gone. The College of Engineering just replaced its HP-UX systems with Red Hat Linux (Solaris on SPARC is still here), and COE now has some MS Windows labs.
Also, COE is an exception at UIUC. The current estimates on deployed workstations on campus puts MS Windows at about 85 - 90% of all workstations.
As a *nix sysadmin, I am becoming more saddened by the day in the face of the Microsoft juggernaut. But hey, at least we are still primarily running *nix servers on the central servers.
Actually, I've always found it amusing that Sun has this in its binary code license for Solaris (and I've seen it in other places):
You acknowledge that Software is not designed, licensed or intended for use in the design, construction, operation or maintenance of any nuclear facility.
(Solaris Binary Code License Agreement)
I used to work in the radiation safety field and went on a technical tour of TMI just before the change in owners (current owner is AmerGen).
We were able to visit some aspects of the non-functioning side - the cooling towers (I have photos I took while standing inside one, and here's another), the empty turbine room, and the control room.
Surprisingly standing around the skeletons of the non-functioning cooling towers wasn't nearly as strange as comparing the turbine rooms between the functioning and non-functioning sides of the plant.
Anyone who has seen a turbine room in any kind of large power plant knows how huge they are. The turbine room used for the functioning reactor was hot, noisy, and full of intimidatingly large equipment. The huge emptiness of the unused turbine room was just plain strange in comparison.
IMNSHO, the worst thing about the TMI accident was the lack of communication both inside and outside of the plant. We can only hope that we've learned from our mistakes.
I didn't particularly wish to lend credibility to WWN by responding to this topic, but given the overwhelmingly male response so far, I felt I had to put in my two feminine cents.
:-) )
(BTW, geeks are freaks that bite the heads off of chickens. I prefer to use the honorable term "nerd."
Gentlemen, there truly are women that appreciate an intelligent man. I find the current crop of mid-20 to mid-30ish, male computer nerds (particularly the penguinheads!) to be more open to new ideas and more accepting of change than men in many other walks of life.
Yes, male computer nerds do often fit the stereotype of the introvert. However, I've found that if I can get one to open up, he will often turn out to be quite interesting, given the right topic. Additionally, I suspect that a lot of the male nerds I remember from high school and college are now successful, sophisticated men - perhaps not dashingly handsome, but who cares?
Besides, ask yourselves if you really care what the beehive hairdo-ed, big-butted, doubleknit polyester-wearing female readership of WWN thinks.
Just a comment from a female who married a compu-nerd...