Manuals just aren't even close to being that good anymore. Wish they were. Google is quite a help, nowadays, though. Especially if some poor bastard has already documented the problem. (And I try to document stuff if I run into something new that no one else appears to have seen before, but that's rare -- unless it's in-house code no one else has ever seen... then you just document the odd-ball behavior and talk to the "Engineer".)
This guy saying he should go into computers becuase he lives in video games is in for a hell of a bad ride, methinks. Real-world *job* related computing has zero to do with what video games do, and tends to be text-oriented and mundane. Grow up. As one friend says, "If you can't bill for it, it's just a hobby."
In many years of being a sysadmin and telecom system integration professional, I've never had to use any higher math other than basic algebra to deal with anything that came up. What I did have to know was lots of arcane historical stuff about "how X works" and "how Y works" and make them work together... down to the bit level, in some cases.
I have definitely seen the level of "shit code" (my phrase) out of Engineering people that DO know higher math get higher and higher and higher over the years, though. It's not their fault. Most companies have put so much "procedure" around their work, that they're doomed to repeat all the mistakes over and over again. They code to a poor specification, hurried through some "process" by management, and then we pester them (literally) for years to fix various stupid behavior that should have been obvious, given the business we're in.
Run screaming away from ISO 9000 shops. All they've really done is document how to do something wrong, and put procedures around it, making it virtually impossible to change. Very similar to military/defense contract jobs, but worse.
I write better shell scripts than most of the CS grads I've worked with over the years. Most of theirs are bloated annoying things that are 30 pages long, follow all the "rules" of good coding practice, and DON'T do anything near what a customer EXPECTS them to do. And most of them don't have the people skills nor the balls to hold up a project and ASK what the customer wants. Those few I've worked with that did have that level of customer focus, were a joy to work with.
Remember as you get into computers: Quality is not a department, it's an attitude.
Get the code working right first, then sprinkle in some error checking for the COMMON stuff... networks DON'T always work. Disks are ALWAYS full. And users type in absolutely crazy-assed shit.
Small, simple, straightforward programs that can run correctly no matter WHAT happens to the network connection, the system RAM, or the disk space... that's the goal.
Anything else from Engineers is crap that the system admin and the OS clean up after.
But... It all keeps me employed, coming up with workarounds. I always appreciate shitty Engineering until it gets me out of bed at 2AM, but even that lately hasn't been bothering me as much since my employer pays on-call pay and overtime... my monetary incentives are wrong, but then again, so are the incentives that drive the sales people and the engineers, so my little overtime add-on is just a sign... of something else terribly wrong.
Internet Janitor and sysadmin, at your service...:-)
It's been that way for many many years now, and is almost culturally fully accepted now in almost every large company. Only small companies bust their butts to write tight, good code, generally.
"Bugs are normal" replaced, "Bugs are not tolerated" -- eons ago. And lots of the code base is purchased from elsewhere in many industries... so the developers at your particular shop may or may not actually have a way to fix it, if you find it's acting funny.
I tell all people interested in Admin duty... be prepared for late hours... and learn a GOOD scripting language WELL, something you can
Sounds like this will be your first experience with how pair programming often works in the real world.
Learning how to communicate at different levels and still produce an effective pair is your learning experience you'll take away from this, while the other guy is soaking up your programming experience.
You'll be seeing this scenario again in the job world... think about what you can learn from it to make the next time easier.
I know a number of long-haired, sandal-footed engineers who created software that ran on 12 DOS boxes in 1995 and pulled down $16 million a year.
They knew how to sell, they knew how to talk to management people, and they worked HARD on finding a few well-dressed "champions" who handle those people too dim to figure out their dress-code has NOTHING to do with their ability.
You know what else two of them had: MIT Degrees. Those spoke louder than their tie-dye T-shirts and sandals.
Repeat after me: It's not about dress, it's about ABILITY. Corporate management types know how to find people that a) can do things, b) they feel comfortable with.
There are PLENTY of examples of "hippie types" making millions... no problem at all. Heck, Wozniak is a good example.
Making people think it has something to do with how they dress shows that you grew up thinking that society will shun you if you don't follow societies norms. However, it's EXACTLY that type of thought that stifles creativity NECESSARY for new products and ideas on how to make old products BETTER.
It all has more to do with the ability level of the people involved (both suits and hippie-types) to communicate, and effectively create products that do something productive. If more teachers, parents, and communicators like yourself took the time to explain that ABILITY is how EVERYTHING happens, less worrying about people's outward appearances and more focus on their RESULTS would help the country (and world) a whole lot. Screw what the person LOOKS like -- can he communicate effectively and get things DONE?
Changing out the corporate desktop is the LAST place to look at for most open-source or Free software types to help companies grow and thrive. There are usually MUCH bigger impact opportunities available in the back-end processes that will save the company FAR more than changing out the Desktop OS will. They're not glamorous or ego-puffing jobs for anyone other than the people who know the system works better behind the scenes and costs less. This is the #1 reason the Holy Desktop is always pursued first. Dumb engineering. Dumb strategy.
In other words, even your story sounds like your ABILITY to THINK about which technology to use, and gain a big-picture perspective of what the CEO and Board would like to see happen (better technology, lower price, ZERO disruption to workforce, and ZERO re-training costs = lower bottom line) is impaired by a pre-conceived notion that the Desktop OS was the answer... at least in one of your projects. It's almost never the first place to go changing things.
I'm not a huge Exchange fan by any means, but if you didn't factor training costs of a new and different system into the equation when you priced Outlook Web... you're missing a large piece of the picture.
Outlook Web these days looks and acts as much like the regular Outlook client as they could make it act... there's no way a user could need ANY training to migrate from one to the other, seamlessly -- other than to give them something they can put in their pocket with the URL of the Outlook Web site on it.
Anything else will require training, even if you didn't factor it in. Someone, somewhere, will have to step the lower 1/3 of your computer users (in terms of computer "comfort" level) through anything else you deploy.
So generally -- anything else probably won't REALLY be cheaper. It'll only appear so on paper to the bosses if they're NOT PAYING ATTENTION.
One of the tech support numbers at work is only one digit off from 1-800-2PAY-TAX.
We get calls all day long (more as April 15th approaches) from various morons who say they have questions about their taxes (2PAYTAX only accepts payments and isn't even the IRS), or they just try spouting off their credit card information right after we just got done answering "XYZ Technical Support".
Having a number not that far off from the IRS and hearing the IDIOTS that call our number, ALMOST makes me feel bad for the IRS folks... only ALMOST.
One lady with a heavy New York accent talked to TWO of our techs and almost blew a gasket when we both told her she had the wrong number. She was so focused on wanting to bitch someone at the IRS out, she wasn't paying any attention to what we were saying to her. When told by me for the fourth or fifth time she had the wrong number, she promply got snotty and said, "So you're telling me you won't answer my question?"
This type of revolt by those actually doing the BUILDING of THINGS is happening everywhere -- not just at MSFT.
If your perspective and timeline change from 10-15 years to 30+ years, your view things like "it has to ship this quarter!" change dramatically.
Unfortunately, most upper management at U.S. Corporations (especially Sales) aren't bonused/compensated on long-term customer relationships or long-term sales growth, they're incentivized on quarterly numbers. Period.
Some things just take longer than 3 months to work out... is what American business needs to learn to come back to terms with. And they need to work hard on communicating that to the armies of idiot day-traders who think every quarterly earnings release is a "significant" indicator of company health.
Until the "market" stops trying to get rich quick, businesses will continue to be damaged by the need to show the market perfect numbers every single quarter of a year.
There are many MANY people who have had circumstances beyond their control keep them from completing a degree program -- and there are plenty of them who can code circles around you.
And most of those guys/gals who didn't have degrees -- who left you -- probably just got sick of your snooty attitude.
It very likely had nothing to do with them wanting free training. That, or as you trained them, you didn't keep up with their new salary requirements.
See -- tech skills bring a certain paycheck with them, degree or no degree.
It's easier to get past the HR wonks and idiots like you, by showing you an expensive piece of sheepskin, but if the right coder/tech/whatever walked in the door who could blow away your properly pedigree bearing Engineers, you'd hire him/her in a heartbeat.
Check your attitude at the door -- only results count. You snooty brat.
It would be really easy to see why none of them wanted to work with you.
They sold off all the good product lines to the dipshits at Tyco, to mire those divisions in bureaucracy and bad politics, and to kill off any semblance of good engineering in them.
You sir, are coming across as arrogant as the original poster.
Check your attitude.
IT is overhead in most organizations, and many of the tasks we perform are only infrastructure because the business chose to do a particular task with computers.
I can think of a number of tasks that never should have been computerized at any company I've worked for as a sysadmin, and be careful -- if your upper management figures that out, you'll be an IT "Director" of a three-person department.
I'm surprised you didn't say something more along the lines of, "I'm amazed your IT group doesn't already know you're dissatisfied with the work they're doing. My IT group keeps track of the pulse of the company gossip about such things and we'd never let the situation get so far as to have users planning a revolt. We're better than that. We would immediately pull together some meetings with the user-base and/or their management and find out if there really was something we could fix."
Your attitude is EXACTLY what hurts sysadmins like myself working for you -- you think your IT group is part of the Core of the business... but a few MF's (major fuckups) and a clueful upper manager watching you and you'll be dead and gone. Seen it happen. Arrogance has no place at EITHER side of the negotiating table when it comes to internal services.
Yes, if your IT group supports PRODUCTION systems that MAKE MONEY, you're in a better position than many. If your IT group is only supporting internal customers, and you're bitching like this here on Slashdot, you'll be gone in a couple of years... you're not focused enough on your customers.
Yes, the big bosses set your big goals, but your job as a Director is to align those goals with what your userbase needs to do their jobs. ESPECIALLY if they're the ones making the company's revenues. You don't do that by showing disdain toward them in ANY way. Imagine if they had to sign a support contract with your IT staff every year -- would your end-users be willing to pony up this year? Next year? Would they shop you around? (Because trust me, eventually -- they will. You'd better be better at customer service AND be able to prove it with specific examples of where your staff and department have done AMAZING things -- otherwise, snipping off your budget and outsourcing (even if the service is poorer) will look better than continuing to pay for arrogant IT snobs.)
I've worked for guys like you, and spent many hours apologizing to end-users for your arrogance and bad policies... so they'd want to stay and make the company some more money so I could keep my job.
The old adage always applies, and it's as true as ever in IT or any other department in ANY company:
If you can't bill for it, it's just a hobby.
If you can't hand your end-users a bill (a big one) every year -- NOT your upper management -- and they say, "You guys are WELL worth it..." You've seriously fucked up as an IT Director.
None of your employees can say that to you for fear of losing their jobs, so I'll say it to you on Slashdot. Go see what people in your company want and build that. Check the "I know better than you" arrogance at the door. You work for them.
Work on coming up with the McDonald's model for the "average Joe" for this type of thing. Their food is only barely adequate, but it's prepared and served virtually exactly the same, nationwide. (I'd say world, but they serve different things to match cultural differences, etc.)
If you could build your business into the "it may not be perfect, but if you have these guys do it, it'll be done reasonably well for a reasonable price" you'll be sitting on a gold mine.
In fact, you could pair up with home builders to put in a "certified" system with your name on it, if you ever get that big.
Right now, home automation and theatre systems are in that juvenile stage where everything is custom, because the price tag is so high, people expect royal treatment.
If I could call up a company and say -- come give me your "CyberHouse with Medium Theatre to-go option" and the price point were right and the warranty was flawless... from a national company big enough to "be around a while", I'd probably do it.
Slashdot Mirror
If you're walking in Camden, New Jersey, bring a firearm and know how to use it. :-)
Screw the PDA's and high-tech gadgets.
How the HELL did this make it into a Slashdot story?
News for idiots, people who don't know how to travel? Stuff that doesn't matter, especially if you don't care where this guy goes "walkabout" to.
What are optical goggles, and what do you feed them with? Just curious. I've been working on adding swimming as exercise to my routine.
Manuals just aren't even close to being that good anymore. Wish they were. Google is quite a help, nowadays, though. Especially if some poor bastard has already documented the problem. (And I try to document stuff if I run into something new that no one else appears to have seen before, but that's rare -- unless it's in-house code no one else has ever seen... then you just document the odd-ball behavior and talk to the "Engineer".)
:-)
This guy saying he should go into computers becuase he lives in video games is in for a hell of a bad ride, methinks. Real-world *job* related computing has zero to do with what video games do, and tends to be text-oriented and mundane. Grow up. As one friend says, "If you can't bill for it, it's just a hobby."
In many years of being a sysadmin and telecom system integration professional, I've never had to use any higher math other than basic algebra to deal with anything that came up. What I did have to know was lots of arcane historical stuff about "how X works" and "how Y works" and make them work together... down to the bit level, in some cases.
I have definitely seen the level of "shit code" (my phrase) out of Engineering people that DO know higher math get higher and higher and higher over the years, though. It's not their fault. Most companies have put so much "procedure" around their work, that they're doomed to repeat all the mistakes over and over again. They code to a poor specification, hurried through some "process" by management, and then we pester them (literally) for years to fix various stupid behavior that should have been obvious, given the business we're in.
Run screaming away from ISO 9000 shops. All they've really done is document how to do something wrong, and put procedures around it, making it virtually impossible to change. Very similar to military/defense contract jobs, but worse.
I write better shell scripts than most of the CS grads I've worked with over the years. Most of theirs are bloated annoying things that are 30 pages long, follow all the "rules" of good coding practice, and DON'T do anything near what a customer EXPECTS them to do. And most of them don't have the people skills nor the balls to hold up a project and ASK what the customer wants. Those few I've worked with that did have that level of customer focus, were a joy to work with.
Remember as you get into computers: Quality is not a department, it's an attitude.
Get the code working right first, then sprinkle in some error checking for the COMMON stuff... networks DON'T always work. Disks are ALWAYS full. And users type in absolutely crazy-assed shit.
Small, simple, straightforward programs that can run correctly no matter WHAT happens to the network connection, the system RAM, or the disk space... that's the goal.
Anything else from Engineers is crap that the system admin and the OS clean up after.
But... It all keeps me employed, coming up with workarounds. I always appreciate shitty Engineering until it gets me out of bed at 2AM, but even that lately hasn't been bothering me as much since my employer pays on-call pay and overtime... my monetary incentives are wrong, but then again, so are the incentives that drive the sales people and the engineers, so my little overtime add-on is just a sign... of something else terribly wrong.
Internet Janitor and sysadmin, at your service...
It's been that way for many many years now, and is almost culturally fully accepted now in almost every large company. Only small companies bust their butts to write tight, good code, generally.
"Bugs are normal" replaced, "Bugs are not tolerated" -- eons ago. And lots of the code base is purchased from elsewhere in many industries... so the developers at your particular shop may or may not actually have a way to fix it, if you find it's acting funny.
I tell all people interested in Admin duty... be prepared for late hours... and learn a GOOD scripting language WELL, something you can
Buy assets, not liabilities.
Definition: If you buy something that's not making you money or saving you money, it's a liability.
Sounds like this will be your first experience with how pair programming often works in the real world.
Learning how to communicate at different levels and still produce an effective pair is your learning experience you'll take away from this, while the other guy is soaking up your programming experience.
You'll be seeing this scenario again in the job world... think about what you can learn from it to make the next time easier.
I know a number of long-haired, sandal-footed engineers who created software that ran on 12 DOS boxes in 1995 and pulled down $16 million a year.
They knew how to sell, they knew how to talk to management people, and they worked HARD on finding a few well-dressed "champions" who handle those people too dim to figure out their dress-code has NOTHING to do with their ability.
You know what else two of them had: MIT Degrees. Those spoke louder than their tie-dye T-shirts and sandals.
Repeat after me: It's not about dress, it's about ABILITY. Corporate management types know how to find people that a) can do things, b) they feel comfortable with.
There are PLENTY of examples of "hippie types" making millions... no problem at all. Heck, Wozniak is a good example.
Making people think it has something to do with how they dress shows that you grew up thinking that society will shun you if you don't follow societies norms. However, it's EXACTLY that type of thought that stifles creativity NECESSARY for new products and ideas on how to make old products BETTER.
It all has more to do with the ability level of the people involved (both suits and hippie-types) to communicate, and effectively create products that do something productive. If more teachers, parents, and communicators like yourself took the time to explain that ABILITY is how EVERYTHING happens, less worrying about people's outward appearances and more focus on their RESULTS would help the country (and world) a whole lot. Screw what the person LOOKS like -- can he communicate effectively and get things DONE?
Changing out the corporate desktop is the LAST place to look at for most open-source or Free software types to help companies grow and thrive. There are usually MUCH bigger impact opportunities available in the back-end processes that will save the company FAR more than changing out the Desktop OS will. They're not glamorous or ego-puffing jobs for anyone other than the people who know the system works better behind the scenes and costs less. This is the #1 reason the Holy Desktop is always pursued first. Dumb engineering. Dumb strategy.
In other words, even your story sounds like your ABILITY to THINK about which technology to use, and gain a big-picture perspective of what the CEO and Board would like to see happen (better technology, lower price, ZERO disruption to workforce, and ZERO re-training costs = lower bottom line) is impaired by a pre-conceived notion that the Desktop OS was the answer... at least in one of your projects. It's almost never the first place to go changing things.
Sam's Club was promoted the same way... Made in USA!
Hasn't been that way at either outlet for a long time now.
Yawn.
Another supposedly "secure" distro with no differentiator between it and anything else other than someone turned on settings already there.
Wake me up when they do something that CHANGES Linux and ALL the OTHER distros stand up and take note.
I'm not a huge Exchange fan by any means, but if you didn't factor training costs of a new and different system into the equation when you priced Outlook Web... you're missing a large piece of the picture.
Outlook Web these days looks and acts as much like the regular Outlook client as they could make it act... there's no way a user could need ANY training to migrate from one to the other, seamlessly -- other than to give them something they can put in their pocket with the URL of the Outlook Web site on it.
Anything else will require training, even if you didn't factor it in. Someone, somewhere, will have to step the lower 1/3 of your computer users (in terms of computer "comfort" level) through anything else you deploy.
So generally -- anything else probably won't REALLY be cheaper. It'll only appear so on paper to the bosses if they're NOT PAYING ATTENTION.
You call crappy overpriced Opteron-based boxes a "renaissance" at Sun?
Uh... yeah. Sure. Whatever you say.
One of the tech support numbers at work is only one digit off from 1-800-2PAY-TAX.
We get calls all day long (more as April 15th approaches) from various morons who say they have questions about their taxes (2PAYTAX only accepts payments and isn't even the IRS), or they just try spouting off their credit card information right after we just got done answering "XYZ Technical Support".
Having a number not that far off from the IRS and hearing the IDIOTS that call our number, ALMOST makes me feel bad for the IRS folks... only ALMOST.
One lady with a heavy New York accent talked to TWO of our techs and almost blew a gasket when we both told her she had the wrong number. She was so focused on wanting to bitch someone at the IRS out, she wasn't paying any attention to what we were saying to her. When told by me for the fourth or fifth time she had the wrong number, she promply got snotty and said, "So you're telling me you won't answer my question?"
No you idiot, I CAN'T answer your questions.
This type of revolt by those actually doing the BUILDING of THINGS is happening everywhere -- not just at MSFT.
If your perspective and timeline change from 10-15 years to 30+ years, your view things like "it has to ship this quarter!" change dramatically.
Unfortunately, most upper management at U.S. Corporations (especially Sales) aren't bonused/compensated on long-term customer relationships or long-term sales growth, they're incentivized on quarterly numbers. Period.
Some things just take longer than 3 months to work out... is what American business needs to learn to come back to terms with. And they need to work hard on communicating that to the armies of idiot day-traders who think every quarterly earnings release is a "significant" indicator of company health.
Until the "market" stops trying to get rich quick, businesses will continue to be damaged by the need to show the market perfect numbers every single quarter of a year.
Bob, all I can say is "well done"... nice post.
;-)
But you do know that it's not traditional to actually KNOW anything about the topic being discussed on Slashdot, right?
Seriously -- interesting read. Thanks.
Moral of the story: Most sermons are boring.
There are many MANY people who have had circumstances beyond their control keep them from completing a degree program -- and there are plenty of them who can code circles around you.
And most of those guys/gals who didn't have degrees -- who left you -- probably just got sick of your snooty attitude.
It very likely had nothing to do with them wanting free training. That, or as you trained them, you didn't keep up with their new salary requirements.
See -- tech skills bring a certain paycheck with them, degree or no degree.
It's easier to get past the HR wonks and idiots like you, by showing you an expensive piece of sheepskin, but if the right coder/tech/whatever walked in the door who could blow away your properly pedigree bearing Engineers, you'd hire him/her in a heartbeat.
Check your attitude at the door -- only results count. You snooty brat.
It would be really easy to see why none of them wanted to work with you.
Thanks for confirming that Cingular doesn't give a damn about their customers or potential ones.
And Bell South was just bought by AT&T...
(Cue: Empire Strikes Back Soundtrack...)
Vaccuum.
Sad, isn't it? Another good engineering firm bites the dust to make way for more bureaucrats and people who have never seen any good engineering.
People work for GE?
They sold off all the good product lines to the dipshits at Tyco, to mire those divisions in bureaucracy and bad politics, and to kill off any semblance of good engineering in them.
And how would he reach the adjuster...? He'd call his agent.
You sir, are coming across as arrogant as the original poster.
Check your attitude.
IT is overhead in most organizations, and many of the tasks we perform are only infrastructure because the business chose to do a particular task with computers.
I can think of a number of tasks that never should have been computerized at any company I've worked for as a sysadmin, and be careful -- if your upper management figures that out, you'll be an IT "Director" of a three-person department.
I'm surprised you didn't say something more along the lines of, "I'm amazed your IT group doesn't already know you're dissatisfied with the work they're doing. My IT group keeps track of the pulse of the company gossip about such things and we'd never let the situation get so far as to have users planning a revolt. We're better than that. We would immediately pull together some meetings with the user-base and/or their management and find out if there really was something we could fix."
Your attitude is EXACTLY what hurts sysadmins like myself working for you -- you think your IT group is part of the Core of the business... but a few MF's (major fuckups) and a clueful upper manager watching you and you'll be dead and gone. Seen it happen. Arrogance has no place at EITHER side of the negotiating table when it comes to internal services.
Yes, if your IT group supports PRODUCTION systems that MAKE MONEY, you're in a better position than many. If your IT group is only supporting internal customers, and you're bitching like this here on Slashdot, you'll be gone in a couple of years... you're not focused enough on your customers.
Yes, the big bosses set your big goals, but your job as a Director is to align those goals with what your userbase needs to do their jobs. ESPECIALLY if they're the ones making the company's revenues. You don't do that by showing disdain toward them in ANY way. Imagine if they had to sign a support contract with your IT staff every year -- would your end-users be willing to pony up this year? Next year? Would they shop you around? (Because trust me, eventually -- they will. You'd better be better at customer service AND be able to prove it with specific examples of where your staff and department have done AMAZING things -- otherwise, snipping off your budget and outsourcing (even if the service is poorer) will look better than continuing to pay for arrogant IT snobs.)
I've worked for guys like you, and spent many hours apologizing to end-users for your arrogance and bad policies... so they'd want to stay and make the company some more money so I could keep my job.
The old adage always applies, and it's as true as ever in IT or any other department in ANY company:
If you can't bill for it, it's just a hobby.
If you can't hand your end-users a bill (a big one) every year -- NOT your upper management -- and they say, "You guys are WELL worth it..." You've seriously fucked up as an IT Director.
None of your employees can say that to you for fear of losing their jobs, so I'll say it to you on Slashdot. Go see what people in your company want and build that. Check the "I know better than you" arrogance at the door. You work for them.
Nicely done. Software maturity levels (and the maturity of those writing most software) needs to come up about ten-fold.
Of course, this also assumes that the management can create a viable business model that allows this, both money and time-wise.
It's coming... someday... well-engineered software...
Meh.
Again, well-said: It's a move in the right (attitude) direction.
Just remember: QA is not a department, it's an attitude.
Work on coming up with the McDonald's model for the "average Joe" for this type of thing. Their food is only barely adequate, but it's prepared and served virtually exactly the same, nationwide. (I'd say world, but they serve different things to match cultural differences, etc.)
If you could build your business into the "it may not be perfect, but if you have these guys do it, it'll be done reasonably well for a reasonable price" you'll be sitting on a gold mine.
In fact, you could pair up with home builders to put in a "certified" system with your name on it, if you ever get that big.
Right now, home automation and theatre systems are in that juvenile stage where everything is custom, because the price tag is so high, people expect royal treatment.
If I could call up a company and say -- come give me your "CyberHouse with Medium Theatre to-go option" and the price point were right and the warranty was flawless... from a national company big enough to "be around a while", I'd probably do it.
Just thoughts...
I'm glad there's people like you around, so I can buy your speakers at estate sales for pennies on the dollar.