When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate your threat or employment of force.
Seriously? That statement is most asinine.
Starting an encounter by saying "I have a gun and you can't use force on me" immediately puts the other party in the position of having to use force. The other party will have to use force to get your attention, stop you from doing something with the gun, or stop you from doing something that harms themselves or someone else in the vicinity.
The biggest problem with carrying a gun (or other weapon) is that it can be taken away from you and used against you. It's much smarter and more efficient to be able to defend one's self or get one's point across without the use of a weapon.
Last but not least, what if each party to this conversation has a gun? Who has to persuade whom and by what means? When is detente reached and by what means, or does the conversation devolve into who shoots whom first?
That is seriously scary -- I learned Cobol in high school in the early 80's and I could have written the same code. Why, oh why didn't that knowledge leave my head, like modern history and gerunds and geometry???
Definitely move over to the new company and see what they have to offer. When it comes time to make the move, ask questions like "what's the negotiated policy on retaining years of service?" Every company negotiates this for its outsourced workers, and it can really affect your experience. On the account I'm on now, the people who came over to my company retained their years of service for the first two years of the contract. Now that that's done, they are starting over from zero. A co-worker who had 25 years in the old company and could have retired but chose to stay is now kicking himself, since he basically threw away his pension.
Also -- ask about the possibility of rehire if the outsourcing doesn't work. There are times that outsourcing fails and then the client company tries to rebuild its former organization. Ask if you can be rehired and if so, what restrictions there might be on that arrangement.
You have GOT to be kidding me. As a former sysadmin who is now a team lead working at an outsourced account at A Very Large Bank, I know the value of change management. You would not believe the spaghetti bowl of nonsense that I found when I walked in the door, along with highly questionable sweetheart arrangements between sysadmins and the bank. I have spent late nights and long weekends doing the job of the completely incompetent sysadmins here, who think this is still The Wild West and make changes willy nilly that bring down applications and services with no thought as to how many users they affect.
Change management is a good thing. Nuff said.
OTOH I do agree that micromanagement and excessive red tape and naughty bad evil. Requiring a proposed change to be documented is not evil.
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously? That statement is most asinine.
Did you work for ABN AMRO? That's what they did -- had a "shadow" IT group completely separate from the regular IT group.
That is seriously scary -- I learned Cobol in high school in the early 80's and I could have written the same code. Why, oh why didn't that knowledge leave my head, like modern history and gerunds and geometry???
Definitely move over to the new company and see what they have to offer. When it comes time to make the move, ask questions like "what's the negotiated policy on retaining years of service?" Every company negotiates this for its outsourced workers, and it can really affect your experience. On the account I'm on now, the people who came over to my company retained their years of service for the first two years of the contract. Now that that's done, they are starting over from zero. A co-worker who had 25 years in the old company and could have retired but chose to stay is now kicking himself, since he basically threw away his pension. Also -- ask about the possibility of rehire if the outsourcing doesn't work. There are times that outsourcing fails and then the client company tries to rebuild its former organization. Ask if you can be rehired and if so, what restrictions there might be on that arrangement.
You have GOT to be kidding me. As a former sysadmin who is now a team lead working at an outsourced account at A Very Large Bank, I know the value of change management. You would not believe the spaghetti bowl of nonsense that I found when I walked in the door, along with highly questionable sweetheart arrangements between sysadmins and the bank. I have spent late nights and long weekends doing the job of the completely incompetent sysadmins here, who think this is still The Wild West and make changes willy nilly that bring down applications and services with no thought as to how many users they affect.
Change management is a good thing. Nuff said.
OTOH I do agree that micromanagement and excessive red tape and naughty bad evil. Requiring a proposed change to be documented is not evil.