I work this same schedule & would hate to go back to 5x8s or 4x10s. I'm already there, so what's a few more hours? Simple math shows that while most folks average 8 days off a month, I get 14. Add in 4 weeks of vacation & I actually have more days off each year than I work. As a wage slave that means every check has OT & every holiday I work earns my 2.5x OT. Best of all, I'm not tied to a pager or cellphone.
Plus, I work nights (+10% shift differential) so I get to take my daughter to school in the morning & spend the afternoon with her while getting my 6 hours sleep while she's at school. She stays with her Grandparents' at night so I earn the double bonus of not having to pay for a sitter & no complaints about never seeing thier grandchild. I get to be an involved parent (including volunteering at school) & my job babysitting mainframes allows me lots of downtime to read./ between catnaps.;-)
Its not glamorous, I don't make six-figures or drive a BMW, but time spent with my daughter makes it all worth while.
As someone who works in a 'dinosaur pen', I've been hearing about the mainframe's demise for years. Of course these are also the same folks that promised us the 'paperless office', yet we go through pallets of paper every week.
We have two mainframe systems, IBM & Tandem (HP Non-Stop), as well as over 100 HP UNIX boxes. In general, the mainframes do the heavy lifting while the so-called 'distributed systems' handle storage, data warehousing & whatnot. There isn't a day that goes by without some kind of problem with the HP boxes. The UNIX tech services group is always running around putting out fires, while the IBM & (to a lesser degree) Tandem groups only have to deal with scheduled maintainence & upgrades & such. The running gag is to refer to them as Maytag repairmen since just like the commercials, they sit around waiting for something to go wrong.
Bottom line - a bunch of over-clocked PCs does not a mainframe make.
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I work this same schedule & would hate to go back to 5x8s or 4x10s. I'm already there, so what's a few more hours? Simple math shows that while most folks average 8 days off a month, I get 14. Add in 4 weeks of vacation & I actually have more days off each year than I work. As a wage slave that means every check has OT & every holiday I work earns my 2.5x OT. Best of all, I'm not tied to a pager or cellphone.
Plus, I work nights (+10% shift differential) so I get to take my daughter to school in the morning & spend the afternoon with her while getting my 6 hours sleep while she's at school. She stays with her Grandparents' at night so I earn the double bonus of not having to pay for a sitter & no complaints about never seeing thier grandchild. I get to be an involved parent (including volunteering at school) & my job babysitting mainframes allows me lots of downtime to read ./ between catnaps. ;-)
Its not glamorous, I don't make six-figures or drive a BMW, but time spent with my daughter makes it all worth while.
As someone who works in a 'dinosaur pen', I've been hearing about the mainframe's demise for years. Of course these are also the same folks that promised us the 'paperless office', yet we go through pallets of paper every week.
We have two mainframe systems, IBM & Tandem (HP Non-Stop), as well as over 100 HP UNIX boxes. In general, the mainframes do the heavy lifting while the so-called 'distributed systems' handle storage, data warehousing & whatnot. There isn't a day that goes by without some kind of problem with the HP boxes. The UNIX tech services group is always running around putting out fires, while the IBM & (to a lesser degree) Tandem groups only have to deal with scheduled maintainence & upgrades & such. The running gag is to refer to them as Maytag repairmen since just like the commercials, they sit around waiting for something to go wrong.
Bottom line - a bunch of over-clocked PCs does not a mainframe make.