I have been both the Flake, and earlier the Heretic.
My personal feeling and experience is that these people are just missurable. I know for much of it I was. And this was for many reasons.
1.) Many "smarter than the average bear" folks are VERY aware of their faults, and thus are quite insecure about certain things (while over confident in others). 2.) It's very hard to make and keep friends when you are this way. Many end up embrassing this wearing t-shirts that say " Doesn't Play Well with Others" 3.) Many have personal challenges like ADD, ADHD, Obsessive/Compulsive, Asperger's etc. If they don't know, or refuse help, this can make them VERY difficult. 4.) Many have been this way their whole lives and honestly have NO idea they are how they are.
I know it's hard, but have some pity. Trust me, anyone who makes others unhappy is very often REALLY unhappy themselves.
While that may sound silly, in 15 yrs you will look back at my comment and laugh sadly
Other good ideas?
Try to be consistent. Realize that everything you create is an opportunity to impress. Know that sometimes wisdom is showned by NOT talking. Yes, even if you ARE right.
You will once some day loose a job suddenly, plan for it, don't fear it. Often it's for no reason you have control over.
Do what you love, you will do it 10x better than stuff you don't.
Try to error on the side of yes, you wan't to be seen as helpful.
learn how to say NO otherwise you will end up on drugs, prescription or otherwise
I would LOVE to go back to school, get a doctorate in physics and work in the field doing ANYTHING related to physics.
Instead I'm a Engineer hiding in a marketing dept happily making between 150-200k/year and I spend my lunch and weekends madly reading about physics, politics, ancient history, all the things that I really love, and would love to get paid to do.
Instead I write white papers, talk at conferences, run tests on hardware that I love, and I do for the most part love my job. But I would SOOO much rather being working for the DOD, or a school, or anyone, doing research. But I can't live on what they make.
And so I remain an engineer hiding in marketing eagerly awaiting Brian Greene's next talk:)
.5 in Technical Marketing. And if I can survive the politics I think I've found my spot. It's fun always planing with the bleeding edge stuff. I LOVED being an SE (Sales/System Engineer) but life points you in funny directions.
What I've found is there are a TON of "second tier" careers that are kind of like dual-classing in D&D, where you have to be a 8th level unix sysadmin || 10th level Windows admin || xth level Engineer of Foo, and then a 2nd level SE, and then you can apply for 1st level technical marketing engineer or something like that:)
As I said, there are lots of cool options after IT. And all of them are better than getting paged at 2am
What made IT fun was all the things that were fast and loose.
Back when....
As long as you answered your pager it didn't matter where you worked from. SOX was something you wanted on Anima chicks It was UNIX vs Windows (now it's Linux vs Linux, Apple vs Windows, Unix vs Unix, and Vmware laughing at everyone) The entire Netapp OS fit on a floppy No one regulated free gifts (man I HATE paying for iPods now) Oh the parties, the trips.....EMC trips to boston that no one can remember..... Budget? What's a budget? Charge-back, Payback? As in that user is going to get "payback" for being such a noobie? No logging, public ips to everyone desk, banks of modems, bbs, telnet accounts at best.net Who had ever heard of an SLA? WTF is "change control" (anyone who thinks they can control change needs to cut back on the medical marijuana)
Point is that every new industry is fun at it's early stage because you get away with just about anything. The ends justify almost any means.
Today it's all about Risk management, accountability, regulation, change control etc. Now IT SUCKS!
But it happens to every cool job eventually. All jobs eventually get regulated, documented, easily replicated, easily taught. And then they are no fun anymore.
Max is/was/will always be a very good friend of mine. Someone who I consider one of my first and most important mentors.
Max is one of the kindest people and most faithful friends a human could ever hope to have.
While I can not and will not go into detail, this is not the first time the FBI has changed their tune and turned on Max. There is another side to this story I assure you.
However you feel about his actions, he truly believes that what he is doing is right.
Max is and will always be someone I will have the utmost respect for.
IF you have a good product, and good sales people it's awesome. So much fun. Basically you are that "trusted advisor". After the sales guy has picked up the sales tab it's your job to show off the product and show how it fits it their environment. It's also a lot of hard work, managing customer expectations, dealing with sales expectations, managing your relationship with engineering and qa.
But after 10yrs as a IT guy, I've never been happier. And never so well paid either;-)
However, if you have a bad product or prick sales people, quit. It will drive you mad if you don't.
IT management is the most thankless, horrible job/career path on the planet. I know this from much experience and many friends.
I know it's very hard when you are a seasoned experienced IT person to know where to take your career, but IT management is NOT it. May I suggest some other options.
Sales Engineer: My favorite. Great pay, good hours, lots of good lunches, some very technical and challenging problems. It's just like being in IT, but you are paid well and everyone appreciates you.
Consultant: Takes a special personality, but hours and pay can be very good.
Field Engineer: Better pay, hours can be rough, but if you don't like dealing with the business side it's better than the previous two options.
Technical Marketing: Little harder to break into, but good pay (not as good as sales), great hours and you really get to make an impact.
Personal "diary" cameras that log everything we do, from our point of view. Everything is written to a bio-encoded storage device. The data on that device is considered to be part of ones person, and can NOT be taken or used against the owner under ANY circumstances unless it is surrendered by someone of sound mind.
Now we all record everything. And it's up to us if OUR data is used against us or someone else. If no one will turn over their video, then you have no case.
An added benefit of this model is it removes the known bias of witnesses. Now you have digital data.
For years now that company has gotten away with some of the most slapped together, rushed and verbose code on the planet. (Some VERY good code too, it's not all bad) They flat out abuse us, and take advantage of an uneducated market.
What really started it for me was back in 1996. I was building a website for my company at the time. I was "instructed" to put 3 features on the site that was ONLY supported by IE and not by Netscape. Else risk our M$ relationship, which was critical to us (video cards company).
I was so upset. Not, "only use features support by both" but they must NOT work in Netscape. I was beside myself.
Slashdot Mirror
With no tuning (other than Jumbo frames for FCoE) I was able to get 9.7Gb/s using FCoE over 10Gb ethernet.
While 16Gb FCP/FC is around the corner, you will be able to run FCoE over 40Gb and 100Gb ethernet in 2-3 yrs. (at MUCH $$)
Keep in mind however, iSCSI has been around for over 10yrs now. These things take time to grow, mature, attach.
So lets wait a few more years before declaring anything dead or alive =)
And keep in mind, FCoE is not meant to replace FCP/FC, its meant to fix what is keeping iSCSI from doing better.
I have been both the Flake, and earlier the Heretic.
My personal feeling and experience is that these people are just missurable. I know for much of it I was. And this was for many reasons.
1.) Many "smarter than the average bear" folks are VERY aware of their faults, and thus are quite insecure about certain things (while over confident in others).
2.) It's very hard to make and keep friends when you are this way. Many end up embrassing this wearing t-shirts that say " Doesn't Play Well with Others"
3.) Many have personal challenges like ADD, ADHD, Obsessive/Compulsive, Asperger's etc. If they don't know, or refuse help, this can make them VERY difficult.
4.) Many have been this way their whole lives and honestly have NO idea they are how they are.
I know it's hard, but have some pity. Trust me, anyone who makes others unhappy is very often REALLY unhappy themselves.
Could be an interesting short term advantage if for example Cisco did but Juniper didn't or visa versa ;-)
While that may sound silly, in 15 yrs you will look back at my comment and laugh sadly
Other good ideas?
Try to be consistent. Realize that everything you create is an opportunity to impress. Know that sometimes wisdom is showned by NOT talking. Yes, even if you ARE right.
You will once some day loose a job suddenly, plan for it, don't fear it. Often it's for no reason you have control over.
Do what you love, you will do it 10x better than stuff you don't.
Try to error on the side of yes, you wan't to be seen as helpful.
learn how to say NO otherwise you will end up on drugs, prescription or otherwise
worthless with out details as how to reproduce the experiment and verify these results.
"back off man I'm a Scientist"
It's a subscription model. You pay them 90k/quarter and they keep bringing you their latest vaperware. Nice!
Your Boss is insane. There is no hope.
as the great Python boys said, "Run away Run away"
I would LOVE to go back to school, get a doctorate in physics and work in the field doing ANYTHING related to physics.
Instead I'm a Engineer hiding in a marketing dept happily making between 150-200k/year and I spend my lunch and weekends madly reading about physics, politics, ancient history, all the things that I really love, and would love to get paid to do.
Instead I write white papers, talk at conferences, run tests on hardware that I love, and I do for the most part love my job. But I would SOOO much rather being working for the DOD, or a school, or anyone, doing research. But I can't live on what they make.
And so I remain an engineer hiding in marketing eagerly awaiting Brian Greene's next talk :)
.5 in Technical Marketing. And if I can survive the politics I think I've found my spot. It's fun always planing with the bleeding edge stuff. I LOVED being an SE (Sales/System Engineer) but life points you in funny directions.
What I've found is there are a TON of "second tier" careers that are kind of like dual-classing in D&D, where you have to be a 8th level unix sysadmin || 10th level Windows admin || xth level Engineer of Foo, and then a 2nd level SE, and then you can apply for 1st level technical marketing engineer or something like that :)
As I said, there are lots of cool options after IT. And all of them are better than getting paged at 2am
How can you have a monopoly on something that is dead on gone? ;-)
What made IT fun was all the things that were fast and loose.
Back when....
As long as you answered your pager it didn't matter where you worked from.
SOX was something you wanted on Anima chicks
It was UNIX vs Windows (now it's Linux vs Linux, Apple vs Windows, Unix vs Unix, and Vmware laughing at everyone)
The entire Netapp OS fit on a floppy
No one regulated free gifts (man I HATE paying for iPods now)
Oh the parties, the trips.....EMC trips to boston that no one can remember.....
Budget? What's a budget?
Charge-back, Payback? As in that user is going to get "payback" for being such a noobie?
No logging, public ips to everyone desk, banks of modems, bbs, telnet accounts at best.net
Who had ever heard of an SLA?
WTF is "change control" (anyone who thinks they can control change needs to cut back on the medical marijuana)
Point is that every new industry is fun at it's early stage because you get away with just about anything. The ends justify almost any means.
Today it's all about Risk management, accountability, regulation, change control etc. Now IT SUCKS!
But it happens to every cool job eventually. All jobs eventually get regulated, documented, easily replicated, easily taught. And then they are no fun anymore.
And why I am no longer in IT =)
will matter to someone!
and then I can complete my planes to.....take over the WORLD!!!!
muhahahahaha
to REALLY improve the product. Camera's should be HD+, with 3d sound mappers etc.......and GET IT CHEAP!!!!!
I would like to see fewer higher quality cameras that collect more data. Like these Bullet Location Device they are testing in Oakland.
A low quality black and white with no sound is of limited value.
Nothing is cooler, and nothing is such a opening to the amazing magic of physics
Max is/was/will always be a very good friend of mine. Someone who I consider one of my first and most important mentors.
Max is one of the kindest people and most faithful friends a human could ever hope to have.
While I can not and will not go into detail, this is not the first time the FBI has changed their tune and turned on Max. There is another side to this story I assure you.
However you feel about his actions, he truly believes that what he is doing is right.
Max is and will always be someone I will have the utmost respect for.
May the force be with you Max, I miss you =)
IF you have a good product, and good sales people it's awesome. So much fun. Basically you are that "trusted advisor". After the sales guy has picked up the sales tab it's your job to show off the product and show how it fits it their environment. It's also a lot of hard work, managing customer expectations, dealing with sales expectations, managing your relationship with engineering and qa.
But after 10yrs as a IT guy, I've never been happier. And never so well paid either
However, if you have a bad product or prick sales people, quit. It will drive you mad if you don't.
IT management is the most thankless, horrible job/career path on the planet. I know this from much experience and many friends.
I know it's very hard when you are a seasoned experienced IT person to know where to take your career, but IT management is NOT it. May I suggest some other options.
Sales Engineer: My favorite. Great pay, good hours, lots of good lunches, some very technical and challenging problems. It's just like being in IT, but you are paid well and everyone appreciates you.
Consultant: Takes a special personality, but hours and pay can be very good.
Field Engineer: Better pay, hours can be rough, but if you don't like dealing with the business side it's better than the previous two options.
Technical Marketing: Little harder to break into, but good pay (not as good as sales), great hours and you really get to make an impact.
Whatever you do, just say NO to management.
There are better virtual I/O solutions out there, several new startups.
check out
http://www.xsigo.com/
We saw crazy performance improvements implementing kqueue in bsd, would love to see something that great at handling many sockets standard linux.
Do they realize how they are making a movie come to life?
I actually went out and bought a 1080p plasma Pioneer Elite TV so that I could enjoy 1080p content on my new PS3.
Only ONE game available supports 1080p. Even the new F1 racing game is locked to 720p
what is the point claiming 1080p if your games aren't going to support it. I feel ripped off.
Personal "diary" cameras that log everything we do, from our point of view. Everything is written to a bio-encoded storage device. The data on that device is considered to be part of ones person, and can NOT be taken or used against the owner under ANY circumstances unless it is surrendered by someone of sound mind.
Now we all record everything. And it's up to us if OUR data is used against us or someone else. If no one will turn over their video, then you have no case.
An added benefit of this model is it removes the known bias of witnesses. Now you have digital data.
For years now that company has gotten away with some of the most slapped together, rushed and verbose code on the planet. (Some VERY good code too, it's not all bad) They flat out abuse us, and take advantage of an uneducated market.
What really started it for me was back in 1996. I was building a website for my company at the time. I was "instructed" to put 3 features on the site that was ONLY supported by IE and not by Netscape. Else risk our M$ relationship, which was critical to us (video cards company).
I was so upset. Not, "only use features support by both" but they must NOT work in Netscape. I was beside myself.
Still bothers me
and even I would join the Army =)
Very sad to see what l0pht has turned into