People have gotten into hot water or even gotten fired for years for blogging...check out http://www.dooce.com/ and read her story, if you don't already know it. Being a team player vs. maintaining your own opinion about your company's strategy/your boss's bad moods/your apparent lack of advancement opportunities/etc. is a dilemma that is becoming more common. With blogs and other new Internet media, it's becoming much more tempting to try to have it both ways. Sometimes people don't just want to be a corporate shill.
First, patches are inevitable for any application or system. Humans write code and humans make mistakes. Patches are like security incidents; if you think you don't have them (or in the case of patches, don't need them), you aren't looking hard enough. To the comment above about why patches are needed (and to all you "my system is totally secure" Mac-heads out there)...even OpenBSD, with all its code review processes for every release, has security vulnerabilities from time to time (go ahead, look them up). QA/QC process just can't find every little bug before release.
Second, patches for something as critical as Oracle is within most enterprises, MUST be fully examined and qualified. The comment above about being a year or two behind on patches because patches might break stuff, is relevant here. Again, humans write code and humans make mistakes, even on code meant to fix other broken code. Look at Apple's recent patch-to-fix-a-patch-to-fix-a-patch issue from several weeks back. I applaud Oracle for trying to get quality patches out. However, I would say that there comes a point when you just have to feel comfortable with the patch you have and get it out the door. Better to look like you're doing something while you get things together, even if what you do is not ideal, than to look like you're doing nothing and appear incompetent or unresponsive.
Someone might have said this already (and I didn't see it because it was buried in the gigantic pile of posts), but perception is reality. If you look like you know what you're doing, people will assume you know what you're doing. Yes, it's much more comfortable to wear jeans and t-shirts every day, but if you're the only person in your office doing it, you're going to be out of place. A few answers to some of the remarks I've seen:
1. "I don't face customers." That's BS, you face them every day. Your customers are the USERS. If you work in IT and don't understand that simple fact, then I say it's too bad you weren't one of the pieces of dead weight weeded out after the bubble burst.
2. "I don't give a f*** if they don't like what I wear." Yes, and that's just the attitude to take come review time, when they say you don't comply with the dress code and you're obviously not a team player, so they're not going to give you a raise. Perhaps you could tell them to f*** off next time they ask you to fix a system, too. You might not like it, but you have to play by everyone else's rules.
3. "I should be able to be acknowledged for what I know, rather than how I look." I would expect the Slashdot crowd to be smarter than this. Humans are just trained animals, and we still have animal parts to us. We like things that look better to us, for whatever reasons we have built up through time and experience. For example, most of you will immediately discount any solution that has a Microsoft logo on it. You see that logo and you know you won't like it. Most other folks are that way with people who go to work dressed in t-shirts, ripped jeans, and sandals.
4. "We crawl around in all sorts of places and do all sorts of dirty things. It doesn't make sense to wear nice clothes." Well, no, but we also get paid a lot more to do what we do than most other folks we work with (come on, be honest). We can afford a few pairs of slacks and a few golf shirts to wear to work. I wear a golf shirt or button-up shirt with slacks every day, and I still crawl around under desks and go into tight closets. I CAN wash these clothes, after all.
Don't make excuses to dress sloppily, then wonder why you don't move up or make more money. If you're going to succeed, you have to play by the rules.
Slashdot Mirror
People have gotten into hot water or even gotten fired for years for blogging...check out http://www.dooce.com/ and read her story, if you don't already know it. Being a team player vs. maintaining your own opinion about your company's strategy/your boss's bad moods/your apparent lack of advancement opportunities/etc. is a dilemma that is becoming more common. With blogs and other new Internet media, it's becoming much more tempting to try to have it both ways. Sometimes people don't just want to be a corporate shill.
First, patches are inevitable for any application or system. Humans write code and humans make mistakes. Patches are like security incidents; if you think you don't have them (or in the case of patches, don't need them), you aren't looking hard enough. To the comment above about why patches are needed (and to all you "my system is totally secure" Mac-heads out there)...even OpenBSD, with all its code review processes for every release, has security vulnerabilities from time to time (go ahead, look them up). QA/QC process just can't find every little bug before release.
Second, patches for something as critical as Oracle is within most enterprises, MUST be fully examined and qualified. The comment above about being a year or two behind on patches because patches might break stuff, is relevant here. Again, humans write code and humans make mistakes, even on code meant to fix other broken code. Look at Apple's recent patch-to-fix-a-patch-to-fix-a-patch issue from several weeks back. I applaud Oracle for trying to get quality patches out. However, I would say that there comes a point when you just have to feel comfortable with the patch you have and get it out the door. Better to look like you're doing something while you get things together, even if what you do is not ideal, than to look like you're doing nothing and appear incompetent or unresponsive.
Someone might have said this already (and I didn't see it because it was buried in the gigantic pile of posts), but perception is reality. If you look like you know what you're doing, people will assume you know what you're doing. Yes, it's much more comfortable to wear jeans and t-shirts every day, but if you're the only person in your office doing it, you're going to be out of place. A few answers to some of the remarks I've seen:
1. "I don't face customers."
That's BS, you face them every day. Your customers are the USERS. If you work in IT and don't understand that simple fact, then I say it's too bad you weren't one of the pieces of dead weight weeded out after the bubble burst.
2. "I don't give a f*** if they don't like what I wear."
Yes, and that's just the attitude to take come review time, when they say you don't comply with the dress code and you're obviously not a team player, so they're not going to give you a raise. Perhaps you could tell them to f*** off next time they ask you to fix a system, too. You might not like it, but you have to play by everyone else's rules.
3. "I should be able to be acknowledged for what I know, rather than how I look."
I would expect the Slashdot crowd to be smarter than this. Humans are just trained animals, and we still have animal parts to us. We like things that look better to us, for whatever reasons we have built up through time and experience. For example, most of you will immediately discount any solution that has a Microsoft logo on it. You see that logo and you know you won't like it. Most other folks are that way with people who go to work dressed in t-shirts, ripped jeans, and sandals.
4. "We crawl around in all sorts of places and do all sorts of dirty things. It doesn't make sense to wear nice clothes."
Well, no, but we also get paid a lot more to do what we do than most other folks we work with (come on, be honest). We can afford a few pairs of slacks and a few golf shirts to wear to work. I wear a golf shirt or button-up shirt with slacks every day, and I still crawl around under desks and go into tight closets. I CAN wash these clothes, after all.
Don't make excuses to dress sloppily, then wonder why you don't move up or make more money. If you're going to succeed, you have to play by the rules.