I did the WCOM to WCG deal to avoid EDS. Actually, I planned on staying at WCG. But I enjoyed the working environment at WCOM much better, and as it turned out, about six months after EDS took over, things started looking up. And pay (the big factor that had people mad) was raised across the board.
NOTE: EDS really knows how to run an IT department. Get this... they actually buy things if they are needed! But the "Look at the extra money left over in my AFE!" slush-fund went away. It was a great way for managers (and project managers) to buy toys or other things that the department actually needed.
EDS shares are doing well, too, which made people FAR better off than their WCOM or WCG shares today. You might take another look at EDS and see how it is today.
BTW... your perception of pre-merger MCI being bloated is shared throughout the company. Four people and one manager for every job that would take a single person. (Okay, I put a bit of spin on that.) I think also that MCI was more policy/procedure oriented than Worldcom. More "going through the process" as opposed to Worldcom's "just get it done and go onto something else".
The downside of the WCOM legacy was that they were probably a little TOO thrifty, and not as professional.
About bad habits/fat grown... a bit, yes. For example, how most all the WCOM's all got pay increases to the MCI levels. And the growth of policies/procedures which slow work down. But legacy MCI has been trimmed in the process.
But don't get me wrong. I absolutely LOVED working at Worldcom, at least where I was. The atmosphere was incredibly good, and I had an awesome manager. I only left when EDS was going to take over my group. After I found out that they didn't run things into the ground, and actually started running IT (and the people) far better than WCOM, I came back to my old job.
Still enjoy it.
There are jobs here which are REALLY GOOD. There are jobs here that REALLY SUCK (be it because of a manager, pay, workload, whatever). But for me, WCOM is a very good experience.
Its a big company. Experiences are going to be hit-and-miss.
BTW... I feel sorry about your stock options. But back in the late 90's, they really panned out for us. One year, my "standard issue of shares" given to average employees panned out to something in the neighborhood of $10,000 after taxes. Bernie believes in giving shares to his employees. Just the market value of the stock recently has ruined that lately.
Correct. UUNet was an intention decision to leave as a seperate operating unit, completely outside of the rest of the company.
I've watched a number of mergers, acquisitions, and spinoffs. MFS, MCI, EDS. With WCOM/MCI, they were merging the corporate networks even before the merger was completed. Teams on both sides that were deemed redundant were reduced to a skeleton level.
WCOM has had the experience of taking over the network infrastructure department of EDS. They know exactly what they'll need to do in this case, and how the big picture works.
Not really. If he was fired BECAUSE of the schedule slip, don't you think the cheerleader would have been eager to point it out? Even so, again, a CIO resigning in a situation like this is silly at face value.
Worldcom has a LOT of experience on mergers and acquisitions. Don't expect them to sit around and ignore you. They'll move quickly to integrate or to cut.
Describing the working environment at Worldcom is much like the blind man describing the elephant. There are many reasons for this.
First, you've got your different departments. Like IT, or Network Engineering, or Local Service, or a number of other departments. Each kind of sets it own tune.
Also, your direct management will play a big part in your environment. For example, I see people in the building (during the summer) wearing shorts, t-shirt, and a do-rag or cap.
Third, it also depends on the legacy of the site that you are absorbed into. The true Worldcom side is probably much more laid back than the former MCI side. Of course, UUNet would be different, too, as would legacy MFS (local service). So your location is going to determine which of the merged groups you get into.
So, you've got your department, your local manager, and your merger legacy which all plays a very important role on how your environment will be.
Just to give you my story, when I was a Worldcom employee under IT Infrastructure, the local management was 'uptight'. The department and legacy company (true WCOM) was relaxed. So, only jeans on Friday. All the other days were business casual. Comp time was free flowing. Schedules were laxed. But pay was stingy.
Under EDS, this has changed greatly for me. The local management is relaxed. The legacy (call it EDS now) is... uh... still trying to get a handle on that one. EDS is more feudal in that you work for an 'account' more than you work for 'EDS'. Department is very good. Work at home relaxed. Pay increased significantly. Good deal all around.
[BTW, would you mind emailing me the name of your company?]
Best thing to do is to find out what entities you will be merged into and explore from there. There isn't much way to describe the company as a whole. The only thing I've seen over the past few years is a some shrinking. It is easier to find a parking spot.
Sorry I cannot give a pat answer.
They're trying to connect schedule slips with the CIO resigning. In all likelyhood, they are not connected. Schedule slips happen all the time in IT. And it was probably related more to the application or custom coding than any operating consideration. But a senior Microsoft cheerleader puts a slant on it to give the impression that the CIO resigning and the schedule slip are related. Laughable.
The other thing is this... the expansion from 5 to 100s of servers. 5 windows boxes? Fine. 100s? There's a good place to start discussions of a new CIO resigning. Or should I call him an junior infrastructure architect? Talk about a nightmare.
I guess the golf game they offered my VP wasn't too hot!
He's very anti-windows and wants to rid the entire datacenter of Windows boxes at every turn. (It isn't a religious stance, either.) It isn't cost... it is about them being a pain in the ass. A "win" is converting them to Solaris and never having to hear about them again.
I don't see that happening, at least in the enterprise space. The last thing they want is to downgrade an application to the Windows platform. (Frankly, here, they are HAPPY to get rid of Windows boxes.) Good luck trying to sell people on a switch like that. It isn't realistic.
Sure, you have some levels where you need to just bash everything in sight. But there are other levels where you need to collect pieces and you're working against a clock. It is tough to do with a normal control. I'm wondering that, if I'm not going flat-out all the time, would it still be possible to complete those levels?
Sounds like it could take out some of the enjoyability if it makes games too tough to play.
Wish I was able to pull up the postscript right now. A couple of quick ideas:
If you go with IBM/Sun/Whatever, lease your hardware. You'll save a good deal of money that way.
Also, if it isn't practical to get the configuration you achieve (say, sticking with Intel hardware), you might consider solid state drives as an alternative. Not as fast as RAM, but substantially faster than disk, and will typically saturate an UltraSCSI bus with just one drive.
I realize you are in research. It has just been my experience that when the user community comes knocking at my door with some outrageous demands, chances are, there is a better way that the problem can be solved. I apologize for implying you are a qwack.
The probably *can* afford the machine, and it's probably going to be cheaper to throw hardware at the problem that it will be to hack at the problem to make it computable in awkward hardware.
Probably a dangerous response to give on Slashdot, but if they've got money to burn, typically speaking, they're not going to be as Linuxcentric as the submitter seems to say they are.
The posting would have gone more like, "We're about to spend $1M on hardware to do this. But if you can tell me some hardware we can do this with on Linux for the cheap, I can convince them!"
Found out about the Mushlom RAM at their website. As always, don't trust Pricewatch to tell you the full truth about a product.
> * 4 piece kit - 4x1Gb > 4Gb Kit (4pcs) PC100 ECC Registered w/IBM $1,280 (Buy Now) The thing I really hate about Pricewatch is how easy it is to think you're comparing the same item, when you are not. (Especially kits which have slightly different things in them, or OEM products which are lesser than the retail kits.)
But I very much admire your work to find those tasty modules!;)
But are these SDRAMs registered? If so, they may not be fully realized on a PC motherboard. You can still buy memory modules that you can't access its full size.
So I'll say what nobody has said until this point. (If you find this in Metamod, and it is marked 'redundant', please SPANK the moderator for me.)
Either you've got something REALLY REALLY strange going on, or you've got an incredibly strange niche' you are programming in. Your best bet is to spend a few brain cycles and figure out a way to do it WITHOUT 64gb of RAM.
However, if you're hell-bent on getting some CPUs that run Linux, and your budget is unlimited, go for a Sun Ultra Enterprise 10000. Other downside? You'll need a minimum of 16 CPUs to go with that 64 GB of ram (unless Sun released higher density ram chips that were certified for the E10k while I wasn't looking, in which case, you'll only need 8 CPUs). Expect to pay $1-2M.
And then if Linux has been ported to the UltraSparc III processor, you might be able to get away with something smaller. But the Sun V880 will only go 8 CPUs at 32GB. You'll need at least a Sun Fire 3800 to do the job of 64GB. Probably will take 4 processors to make the 64gb available.
The biggest memory being put out for PCs right now are 1gb modules (that I've seen). I don't think you're going to find a motherboard with room for 64 memory modules. Or even 32.
Time to rethink what you are doing, or throw lots of money at it. That money, though, would probably be better spent at buying the brainpower to rethink it.
Dump the idea of being a coder for the rest of your life. Instead, become a sysadmin. Chances are, you'll end up being very good at it with all of your programming background.
A little known secret is that systems administrators have almost all the upside of being a computer programmer, with very little of the downside. And almost none of the pressure, in most cases.
Okay. Gave a book company permission to print a snapshot in time of the website. Book company doesn't do much to promote the book. Said it was a bad seller. Turns around and sues the company who we worked for (who was aiding him with the website) saying it was their best seller. Gets the website shut down.
In the end, he settles with the publisher for what I consider some outrageous terms. Like the publisher can publish a snapshot of the site whenever they want. The website has to cary its copyright, and the book publisher's. Submitters have to sign the book publisher's copyright form. Anything that the author can't certify has to be rewritten.
Hate to say it, but even though his site is still running, he got horribly screwed in the end. [apologies for the pun]
Well, if I had to give a FuckedCompany.Com type of post-mortem, it'd probably go something like this:
Hey, guys! Let's sell a CPU that requires a custom chipset, provides a quarter of the processing power, quarter of the power requirements, and at the same price as the top-of-the-line chips!
Of course, they could just sell an Intel CPU and underclock it. I feel bad for Transmeta. Their code morphing and what not was cool.
Researched. Many sources say ALi Magick was first DDR chipset. An example from Ace's Hardware:
There is no denying that the launch of DDR SDRAM was not really a success. ALi was first with their ALi MAGIK 1, but the chipset had some compatibility issues, and did not work well with all memory brands.
Yes, Paranoia was great stuff. And the "Send in the Clones" reminds me so much of this Star Wars. It also reminds me of something Dan Rather (or some other news anchor) said. That "We should be on the lookout for an unknown attack from an invisible enemy."
Personally, I think Paranoia should be brought back. But this time, instead of communists, it should be terrorists. (Which would integrate well with the "secret societies".)
Back in the days of modems (anyone remember those?), US Robotics was a company that you could always go to when you wanted the fastest modem on the market. In a way, you could say "nobody got fired for adopting US Robotics". An ISP that selected US Robotics as their vendor knew where they were going, and they'd have the best speed. Customers would stick with that ISP because they knew that they'd have the fastest connect rates. (Okay, mind you, locked into a propriatary format and vendor.)
AMD is known for having the lowest cost. Period. Rarely ever are they more expensive than Intel. But I get confused about Athlon's strategy. They're not going to have the fastest CPUs for long periods of times, so for something like computer manufacturers, you're not going to select AMD for performance machines (even though they may currently be "on top") because you know it isn't going to last.
I suppose I'm getting far off on a tangent here, but I think AMD would be far more successful if they could continually be known for creating the best performance processor. Then, hardware vendors would be far more likely to adopt their processor and chipsets.
But I don't have my finger anywhere near the pulse of this market. Am I just plain silly?
Slashdot Mirror
I did the WCOM to WCG deal to avoid EDS. Actually, I planned on staying at WCG. But I enjoyed the working environment at WCOM much better, and as it turned out, about six months after EDS took over, things started looking up. And pay (the big factor that had people mad) was raised across the board.
NOTE: EDS really knows how to run an IT department. Get this... they actually buy things if they are needed! But the "Look at the extra money left over in my AFE!" slush-fund went away. It was a great way for managers (and project managers) to buy toys or other things that the department actually needed.
EDS shares are doing well, too, which made people FAR better off than their WCOM or WCG shares today. You might take another look at EDS and see how it is today.
BTW... your perception of pre-merger MCI being bloated is shared throughout the company. Four people and one manager for every job that would take a single person. (Okay, I put a bit of spin on that.) I think also that MCI was more policy/procedure oriented than Worldcom. More "going through the process" as opposed to Worldcom's "just get it done and go onto something else".
The downside of the WCOM legacy was that they were probably a little TOO thrifty, and not as professional.
About bad habits/fat grown... a bit, yes. For example, how most all the WCOM's all got pay increases to the MCI levels. And the growth of policies/procedures which slow work down. But legacy MCI has been trimmed in the process.
But don't get me wrong. I absolutely LOVED working at Worldcom, at least where I was. The atmosphere was incredibly good, and I had an awesome manager. I only left when EDS was going to take over my group. After I found out that they didn't run things into the ground, and actually started running IT (and the people) far better than WCOM, I came back to my old job.
Still enjoy it.
There are jobs here which are REALLY GOOD. There are jobs here that REALLY SUCK (be it because of a manager, pay, workload, whatever). But for me, WCOM is a very good experience.
Its a big company. Experiences are going to be hit-and-miss.
BTW... I feel sorry about your stock options. But back in the late 90's, they really panned out for us. One year, my "standard issue of shares" given to average employees panned out to something in the neighborhood of $10,000 after taxes. Bernie believes in giving shares to his employees. Just the market value of the stock recently has ruined that lately.
Correct. UUNet was an intention decision to leave as a seperate operating unit, completely outside of the rest of the company.
I've watched a number of mergers, acquisitions, and spinoffs. MFS, MCI, EDS. With WCOM/MCI, they were merging the corporate networks even before the merger was completed. Teams on both sides that were deemed redundant were reduced to a skeleton level.
WCOM has had the experience of taking over the network infrastructure department of EDS. They know exactly what they'll need to do in this case, and how the big picture works.
Expect quick movement.
Not really. If he was fired BECAUSE of the schedule slip, don't you think the cheerleader would have been eager to point it out? Even so, again, a CIO resigning in a situation like this is silly at face value.
Worldcom has a LOT of experience on mergers and acquisitions. Don't expect them to sit around and ignore you. They'll move quickly to integrate or to cut.
Describing the working environment at Worldcom is much like the blind man describing the elephant. There are many reasons for this.
First, you've got your different departments. Like IT, or Network Engineering, or Local Service, or a number of other departments. Each kind of sets it own tune.
Also, your direct management will play a big part in your environment. For example, I see people in the building (during the summer) wearing shorts, t-shirt, and a do-rag or cap.
Third, it also depends on the legacy of the site that you are absorbed into. The true Worldcom side is probably much more laid back than the former MCI side. Of course, UUNet would be different, too, as would legacy MFS (local service). So your location is going to determine which of the merged groups you get into.
So, you've got your department, your local manager, and your merger legacy which all plays a very important role on how your environment will be.
Just to give you my story, when I was a Worldcom employee under IT Infrastructure, the local management was 'uptight'. The department and legacy company (true WCOM) was relaxed. So, only jeans on Friday. All the other days were business casual. Comp time was free flowing. Schedules were laxed. But pay was stingy.
Under EDS, this has changed greatly for me. The local management is relaxed. The legacy (call it EDS now) is... uh... still trying to get a handle on that one. EDS is more feudal in that you work for an 'account' more than you work for 'EDS'. Department is very good. Work at home relaxed. Pay increased significantly. Good deal all around.
[BTW, would you mind emailing me the name of your company?]
Best thing to do is to find out what entities you will be merged into and explore from there. There isn't much way to describe the company as a whole. The only thing I've seen over the past few years is a some shrinking. It is easier to find a parking spot.
Sorry I cannot give a pat answer.
They're trying to connect schedule slips with the CIO resigning. In all likelyhood, they are not connected. Schedule slips happen all the time in IT. And it was probably related more to the application or custom coding than any operating consideration. But a senior Microsoft cheerleader puts a slant on it to give the impression that the CIO resigning and the schedule slip are related. Laughable.
The other thing is this... the expansion from 5 to 100s of servers. 5 windows boxes? Fine. 100s? There's a good place to start discussions of a new CIO resigning. Or should I call him an junior infrastructure architect? Talk about a nightmare.
I guess the golf game they offered my VP wasn't too hot!
He's very anti-windows and wants to rid the entire datacenter of Windows boxes at every turn. (It isn't a religious stance, either.) It isn't cost... it is about them being a pain in the ass. A "win" is converting them to Solaris and never having to hear about them again.
I don't see that happening, at least in the enterprise space. The last thing they want is to downgrade an application to the Windows platform. (Frankly, here, they are HAPPY to get rid of Windows boxes.) Good luck trying to sell people on a switch like that. It isn't realistic.
Guns don't kill people. People kill people. For the same reason, Linux isn't the threat. People who use Linux to kill Microsoft are the threat. ;)
Sure, you have some levels where you need to just bash everything in sight. But there are other levels where you need to collect pieces and you're working against a clock. It is tough to do with a normal control. I'm wondering that, if I'm not going flat-out all the time, would it still be possible to complete those levels?
Sounds like it could take out some of the enjoyability if it makes games too tough to play.
Wish I was able to pull up the postscript right now. A couple of quick ideas:
If you go with IBM/Sun/Whatever, lease your hardware. You'll save a good deal of money that way.
Also, if it isn't practical to get the configuration you achieve (say, sticking with Intel hardware), you might consider solid state drives as an alternative. Not as fast as RAM, but substantially faster than disk, and will typically saturate an UltraSCSI bus with just one drive.
I realize you are in research. It has just been my experience that when the user community comes knocking at my door with some outrageous demands, chances are, there is a better way that the problem can be solved. I apologize for implying you are a qwack.
Can't wait to read that postscript later.
There was more intro than meat in that submission. Seems to follow the hype that is in the article...
"...It's merely a matter of taming the most powerful gas on the planet..."
"...The future is nonpolluting, inexhaust-ible, nontoxic..."
Oh. Wait. I see some realism here:
"...There are immense practical barriers..."
Damn those realists! They're SO GOOD at what they do!
The probably *can* afford the machine, and it's probably going to be cheaper to throw hardware at the problem that it will be to hack at the problem to make it computable in awkward hardware.
Probably a dangerous response to give on Slashdot, but if they've got money to burn, typically speaking, they're not going to be as Linuxcentric as the submitter seems to say they are.
The posting would have gone more like, "We're about to spend $1M on hardware to do this. But if you can tell me some hardware we can do this with on Linux for the cheap, I can convince them!"
BAH! Mushlom = Mushkin. I'm a dumbass.
Found out about the Mushlom RAM at their website. As always, don't trust Pricewatch to tell you the full truth about a product.
;)
> * 4 piece kit - 4x1Gb
> 4Gb Kit (4pcs) PC100 ECC Registered w/IBM $1,280 (Buy Now)
The thing I really hate about Pricewatch is how easy it is to think you're comparing the same item, when you are not. (Especially kits which have slightly different things in them, or OEM products which are lesser than the retail kits.)
But I very much admire your work to find those tasty modules!
But are these SDRAMs registered? If so, they may not be fully realized on a PC motherboard. You can still buy memory modules that you can't access its full size.
So I'll say what nobody has said until this point. (If you find this in Metamod, and it is marked 'redundant', please SPANK the moderator for me.)
Either you've got something REALLY REALLY strange going on, or you've got an incredibly strange niche' you are programming in. Your best bet is to spend a few brain cycles and figure out a way to do it WITHOUT 64gb of RAM.
However, if you're hell-bent on getting some CPUs that run Linux, and your budget is unlimited, go for a Sun Ultra Enterprise 10000. Other downside? You'll need a minimum of 16 CPUs to go with that 64 GB of ram (unless Sun released higher density ram chips that were certified for the E10k while I wasn't looking, in which case, you'll only need 8 CPUs). Expect to pay $1-2M.
And then if Linux has been ported to the UltraSparc III processor, you might be able to get away with something smaller. But the Sun V880 will only go 8 CPUs at 32GB. You'll need at least a Sun Fire 3800 to do the job of 64GB. Probably will take 4 processors to make the 64gb available.
The biggest memory being put out for PCs right now are 1gb modules (that I've seen). I don't think you're going to find a motherboard with room for 64 memory modules. Or even 32.
Time to rethink what you are doing, or throw lots of money at it. That money, though, would probably be better spent at buying the brainpower to rethink it.
Sorry.
Dump the idea of being a coder for the rest of your life. Instead, become a sysadmin. Chances are, you'll end up being very good at it with all of your programming background.
A little known secret is that systems administrators have almost all the upside of being a computer programmer, with very little of the downside. And almost none of the pressure, in most cases.
Okay. Gave a book company permission to print a snapshot in time of the website. Book company doesn't do much to promote the book. Said it was a bad seller. Turns around and sues the company who we worked for (who was aiding him with the website) saying it was their best seller. Gets the website shut down.
In the end, he settles with the publisher for what I consider some outrageous terms. Like the publisher can publish a snapshot of the site whenever they want. The website has to cary its copyright, and the book publisher's. Submitters have to sign the book publisher's copyright form. Anything that the author can't certify has to be rewritten.
Hate to say it, but even though his site is still running, he got horribly screwed in the end. [apologies for the pun]
Well, if I had to give a FuckedCompany.Com type of post-mortem, it'd probably go something like this:
Hey, guys! Let's sell a CPU that requires a custom chipset, provides a quarter of the processing power, quarter of the power requirements, and at the same price as the top-of-the-line chips!
Of course, they could just sell an Intel CPU and underclock it. I feel bad for Transmeta. Their code morphing and what not was cool.
Researched. Many sources say ALi Magick was first DDR chipset. An example from Ace's Hardware:
There is no denying that the launch of DDR SDRAM was not really a success. ALi was first with their ALi MAGIK 1, but the chipset had some compatibility issues, and did not work well with all memory brands.
Yes, Paranoia was great stuff. And the "Send in the Clones" reminds me so much of this Star Wars. It also reminds me of something Dan Rather (or some other news anchor) said. That "We should be on the lookout for an unknown attack from an invisible enemy."
Personally, I think Paranoia should be brought back. But this time, instead of communists, it should be terrorists. (Which would integrate well with the "secret societies".)
Back in the days of modems (anyone remember those?), US Robotics was a company that you could always go to when you wanted the fastest modem on the market. In a way, you could say "nobody got fired for adopting US Robotics". An ISP that selected US Robotics as their vendor knew where they were going, and they'd have the best speed. Customers would stick with that ISP because they knew that they'd have the fastest connect rates. (Okay, mind you, locked into a propriatary format and vendor.)
AMD is known for having the lowest cost. Period. Rarely ever are they more expensive than Intel. But I get confused about Athlon's strategy. They're not going to have the fastest CPUs for long periods of times, so for something like computer manufacturers, you're not going to select AMD for performance machines (even though they may currently be "on top") because you know it isn't going to last.
I suppose I'm getting far off on a tangent here, but I think AMD would be far more successful if they could continually be known for creating the best performance processor. Then, hardware vendors would be far more likely to adopt their processor and chipsets.
But I don't have my finger anywhere near the pulse of this market. Am I just plain silly?
I'm hoping that this'll extend to them. Wouldn't it be delicious to get the inner workings of those boxes? That'd be a big win for everyone.