I love hearing companies complain about not being able to find the "top 1-2%" of development talent. I ask, "So, is your pay in the top 1-2% for the industry? How about your benefits, work environment, ANYTHING unusually great?"
... in other words, as narrow a job description as I can get away with, so to minimize the amount of work I have to do between smoke breaks, and obstruct as much as I can.
Where I once worked, IT was so slow and obstructionist that even my managers recommend I just go around them when necessary. Hire a new developer and need to get him set up with a Mac development workstation?
The official way: 1. Log a request in the IT system, describing the desired specs and business purpose 2. Hope the request isn't kicked back due to some typo or administrative error 3. Presumably, feasibility studies ensue, vendors are contacted, security audits take place, the White House and Pentagon are contacted, we reach DEFCON 4, and then... 4. Maybe get a workstation in 3-6 months 5. Open it to find it's a PC
The way that works: 1. Go to Fry's and buy the MacBook 2. Expense it, with manager's approval
IT perspective - does this thingie work for 1,000 users? Does this thingie have a license we can support? Does this thingie fit our security model? Does this thingie fit our backup/retention model? Does this thingie cause any problems with the other systems? Does this thingie have a road map for the next 3-5 years?
These questions are not always applicable. It takes good judgment (which many inexperienced IT drones and their rule-books often lack) to know when it makes sense to ask them and when it doesn't.
I want to open 5 ports in the company's firewall and run some software as Admin on my workstation? Yea, scrutinize away! I want to install Angry Birds on my company phone to screw around a little during my lunch break? As long as it's OK with my manager, what the hell does IT care? Is Angry Birds going to steal the corporation's payroll records?
"Costing American Jobs" is simply today's "Supporting Terrorism". If you want to convince idiot voters to oppose something, just tell them that it TAKES AWAY JOBS!
OH MY GOD! You mean someone might just see a photo of my dog? STOP THE PRESSES, MY PRIVACY HAS BEEN RAPED.
The Facebook "threat" to privacy is overblown. I've got a Facebook account. I hardly use it, and don't really have much there. The pictures of me that ARE there are just fishing trip pictures posted by other people. Why the hell should I care who can see them?
I am fairly compensated, as I do a good job of negotiating what I believe I am worth. But there is more to unionization than compensation. Though I do support collective bargaining (which does not need to be seniority based, and can be performance based).
The collective bargaining aspect alone would be a huge boon to Software Engineering and IT salaries. It's appalling how IT workers (who tend to be introverted and lack negotiation skills) are routinely fucked in terms of compensation.
It's both sad and funny--the engineers who believe they are being fairly compensated and who are confident that they're paid "above average" tend to be the ones getting royally screwed.
So non-union employees will always be able to negotiate better compensation than union employees, and nobody will join the union.
Not necessarily. Company: "Your performance this year does not qualify you for more than the compensation you'd make in the union. Take the union package or leave."
The best places I worked had a few older senior "architects" who had vast amounts of knowledge, a lot of middle-age (for tech, that's like 30-35) developers who could get shit cranked out, and a few younger promising junior guys who had a lot of energy and could feed in new ideas.
The worst places I've worked were places that let go all their expensive senior talent, and had nothing but junior people running the show.
How do you know you don't intend to take it until you do the interview? If he's been working in the same place for 15 years, he might find the right place only by doing a few interviews.
Your example is equally typical: Work avoidance, stall and delay, make the job sound harder than it is, hoping the user gives up asking.
Let's see, what did we just witness?
Dreaming up un-asked-for user- and fault tolerance requirements: Overnight installation, backups, RAID mirroring, 24/7 support. None were asked for or required. It's storage for temporary builds, not for the company's financial records.
Preference for unnecessarily exotic hardware: Ultra320, OurVendor. Let me guess, the company needs to use oxygen-filled Monster Cables too because they move the bits faster?
Pontificating on the "definition of 300GB" and worrying about whether you'll be able to find another hard drive in 2 years? More work avoidance and delay tactics.
I'll admit that the change request forms are reasonable, unless the CR process is simply used as a delay tactic.
AU: Screw it, we'll store the builds on our team's own damn machines (which we bought at Fry's out of our own budget) or use Amazon S3 for the next few months until the company rolls out the long-awaited off-shoring of IT support. Thanks for all your help.
As a proud native Californian, I say get the fuck out. You probably took that job from a Californian because you are cheap, and now you're just one of those inbred, cornfed assholes driving up the property costs.... or, as the rest of the country says, "Welcome!"
Exactly. A successful business needs to be nimble and move fast. Doubling a server's hard drive space should take hours, not weeks. Deploying 5 new servers should take hours (spin up a few more VMs), not months.
As someone who just moved to California for a tech job, I am getting a kick out of your reply. I don't know why I'd want to leave, unless I didn't want to be employed.
Your explanation of why upgrading a server's hard drive capacity is a complicated and difficult process is why IT is frequently seen as and treated as a cost center and why it is one of the first departments to get outsourced when possible.
For example, the last courses I needed for my BS were 4xxx level, full-year courses that had 3xxx level full-year courses as prerequisites. Those 3xxx level courses had 2xxx level full-year prereqs and those courses had full-year 1xxx level prereqs.
Your university is using the prerequisite system to justify the 4 year length of the program. I know I'll get ridiculed for this comment, but I learned more in my two-year MBA program than I did in my 4-year Engineering program which was about 6 useful classes and years of filler.
Ahh, yes, SOX. The new IT boogeyman that they (and management) blame for every retarded hoop the real value-creators at the company have to jump through every day. Don't want to set some software up that would double my productivity? Easy--just say you can't because blah blah blah SOX compliance blah blah blah.
It's total BS, but you get away with it because most of your internal customers don't have a clue what SOX even is.
I frequently argue with IT at my company over this kind of crap:
ME: Our build server keeps filling up. It's only got 40GB you know... IT: Please spend 2 hours of your time looking through your directories and deleting 2GB or so you don't need. ME: You realize, 2 hours of my time is about what 2 TERRAbytes of hard drive space costs. IT: Procuring a hard drive takes 3 months and needs to be approved by senior management. ME: I can go to Fry's this afternoon and buy any number of hard drives. There isn't a shortage. IT: Just free up some space again and stop bothering us. ME: I've had to E-mail you about this once a month for the past 3 months, because we have automated processes that copy builds there nightly. IT: Why do you have to be so difficult? Just delete your shit!
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I love hearing companies complain about not being able to find the "top 1-2%" of development talent. I ask, "So, is your pay in the top 1-2% for the industry? How about your benefits, work environment, ANYTHING unusually great?"
Pay peanuts, get monkeys.
... in other words, as narrow a job description as I can get away with, so to minimize the amount of work I have to do between smoke breaks, and obstruct as much as I can.
Behold! The Grand High Priests of IT shaking their fists and wielding their power! Robocop and Judge Judy all rolled up into one magnificent package.
THANK YOU.
Where I once worked, IT was so slow and obstructionist that even my managers recommend I just go around them when necessary. Hire a new developer and need to get him set up with a Mac development workstation?
The official way:
1. Log a request in the IT system, describing the desired specs and business purpose
2. Hope the request isn't kicked back due to some typo or administrative error
3. Presumably, feasibility studies ensue, vendors are contacted, security audits take place, the White House and Pentagon are contacted, we reach DEFCON 4, and then...
4. Maybe get a workstation in 3-6 months
5. Open it to find it's a PC
The way that works:
1. Go to Fry's and buy the MacBook
2. Expense it, with manager's approval
IT perspective - does this thingie work for 1,000 users?
Does this thingie have a license we can support?
Does this thingie fit our security model?
Does this thingie fit our backup/retention model?
Does this thingie cause any problems with the other systems?
Does this thingie have a road map for the next 3-5 years?
These questions are not always applicable. It takes good judgment (which many inexperienced IT drones and their rule-books often lack) to know when it makes sense to ask them and when it doesn't.
I want to open 5 ports in the company's firewall and run some software as Admin on my workstation? Yea, scrutinize away! I want to install Angry Birds on my company phone to screw around a little during my lunch break? As long as it's OK with my manager, what the hell does IT care? Is Angry Birds going to steal the corporation's payroll records?
"Costing American Jobs" is simply today's "Supporting Terrorism". If you want to convince idiot voters to oppose something, just tell them that it TAKES AWAY JOBS!
I don't care, nor do most people.
OH MY GOD! You mean someone might just see a photo of my dog? STOP THE PRESSES, MY PRIVACY HAS BEEN RAPED.
The Facebook "threat" to privacy is overblown. I've got a Facebook account. I hardly use it, and don't really have much there. The pictures of me that ARE there are just fishing trip pictures posted by other people. Why the hell should I care who can see them?
I am fairly compensated, as I do a good job of negotiating what I believe I am worth. But there is more to unionization than compensation. Though I do support collective bargaining (which does not need to be seniority based, and can be performance based).
The collective bargaining aspect alone would be a huge boon to Software Engineering and IT salaries. It's appalling how IT workers (who tend to be introverted and lack negotiation skills) are routinely fucked in terms of compensation.
It's both sad and funny--the engineers who believe they are being fairly compensated and who are confident that they're paid "above average" tend to be the ones getting royally screwed.
So non-union employees will always be able to negotiate better compensation than union employees, and nobody will join the union.
Not necessarily. Company: "Your performance this year does not qualify you for more than the compensation you'd make in the union. Take the union package or leave."
And what did Greenpeace do to deserve to be despised by you and your "rational" Joe Sixpacks?
Paragraphs, man... white space!
The best places I worked had a few older senior "architects" who had vast amounts of knowledge, a lot of middle-age (for tech, that's like 30-35) developers who could get shit cranked out, and a few younger promising junior guys who had a lot of energy and could feed in new ideas.
The worst places I've worked were places that let go all their expensive senior talent, and had nothing but junior people running the show.
How do you know you don't intend to take it until you do the interview? If he's been working in the same place for 15 years, he might find the right place only by doing a few interviews.
+ Insightful?
Someone deserves to be crippled for life simply for firing an overpayed server-rebooter?
Your example is equally typical: Work avoidance, stall and delay, make the job sound harder than it is, hoping the user gives up asking.
Let's see, what did we just witness?
Dreaming up un-asked-for user- and fault tolerance requirements: Overnight installation, backups, RAID mirroring, 24/7 support. None were asked for or required. It's storage for temporary builds, not for the company's financial records.
Preference for unnecessarily exotic hardware: Ultra320, OurVendor. Let me guess, the company needs to use oxygen-filled Monster Cables too because they move the bits faster?
Pontificating on the "definition of 300GB" and worrying about whether you'll be able to find another hard drive in 2 years? More work avoidance and delay tactics.
I'll admit that the change request forms are reasonable, unless the CR process is simply used as a delay tactic.
AU: Screw it, we'll store the builds on our team's own damn machines (which we bought at Fry's out of our own budget) or use Amazon S3 for the next few months until the company rolls out the long-awaited off-shoring of IT support. Thanks for all your help.
As a proud native Californian, I say get the fuck out. You probably took that job from a Californian because you are cheap, and now you're just one of those inbred, cornfed assholes driving up the property costs. ... or, as the rest of the country says, "Welcome!"
Exactly. A successful business needs to be nimble and move fast. Doubling a server's hard drive space should take hours, not weeks. Deploying 5 new servers should take hours (spin up a few more VMs), not months.
As someone who just moved to California for a tech job, I am getting a kick out of your reply. I don't know why I'd want to leave, unless I didn't want to be employed.
Your explanation of why upgrading a server's hard drive capacity is a complicated and difficult process is why IT is frequently seen as and treated as a cost center and why it is one of the first departments to get outsourced when possible.
For example, the last courses I needed for my BS were 4xxx level, full-year courses that had 3xxx level full-year courses as prerequisites. Those 3xxx level courses had 2xxx level full-year prereqs and those courses had full-year 1xxx level prereqs.
Your university is using the prerequisite system to justify the 4 year length of the program. I know I'll get ridiculed for this comment, but I learned more in my two-year MBA program than I did in my 4-year Engineering program which was about 6 useful classes and years of filler.
Throughout my career I've worked at a grand total of one engineering firm where proposals were even a small part of generating business.
Ahh, yes, SOX. The new IT boogeyman that they (and management) blame for every retarded hoop the real value-creators at the company have to jump through every day. Don't want to set some software up that would double my productivity? Easy--just say you can't because blah blah blah SOX compliance blah blah blah.
It's total BS, but you get away with it because most of your internal customers don't have a clue what SOX even is.
I frequently argue with IT at my company over this kind of crap:
ME: Our build server keeps filling up. It's only got 40GB you know...
IT: Please spend 2 hours of your time looking through your directories and deleting 2GB or so you don't need.
ME: You realize, 2 hours of my time is about what 2 TERRAbytes of hard drive space costs.
IT: Procuring a hard drive takes 3 months and needs to be approved by senior management.
ME: I can go to Fry's this afternoon and buy any number of hard drives. There isn't a shortage.
IT: Just free up some space again and stop bothering us.
ME: I've had to E-mail you about this once a month for the past 3 months, because we have automated processes that copy builds there nightly.
IT: Why do you have to be so difficult? Just delete your shit!