I would, however, disagree with your characterization of what I did. As I stated, I was unfailingly polite about it, and did my best to be professional. That means quite specifically I did not shout it from the mountaintop. While my original post was indicative of my bitterness, I did my best not to show that in the various meetings I attended. I was much much more successful at doing that than many of the various department heads, etc. This entire project was extremely divisive, and detrimental to the company.
You make the same mistake that many of the ego-inflated bigwigs at the company I worked for did: that I wanted to be right, and my motivation for bringing this up was personal gain and making power ploys within the company. You think I did this so I could make myself look smart, and make other people look stupid. This is exactly the same mindset that most of the other folks had, and exactly the same mindset that resulted in the project being such a dismal failure. Everyone was so worried about their personal status within the company, and so worried someone would intrude on their personal domain that the entire project crashed and burned like a huge steaming pile of burning, well... you get the idea.
My motivation was very very simple. I wanted to decrease my workload. I had seen these types of deployments earlier in my career, and knew most of the pitfalls. I was working 45 or hours a week at the various sites I maintained, as well as about 10 hours more from home. With this project, that increased to 60+ hours a week onsite.
I was not screaming from the mountaintops that I was right, everyone else was wrong. I was bringing up points as the project went along that I recommended action X, and the accounting guy reccomended action Y. Action Y was implemented, with consequence Z, and consequence Z was correctly predicted by me. I did this in the vain hope that in the next phase, when I recommended action A, and sales recommended action B, and I predicted consequence C, that maybe someone would listen. You see, I was under the impression that it was my JOB to recommend proper technical courses of action. It is unfortunate that most people in business, especially the ones with a modicum of influence, can only conceive of a dissenting opinion as a vehicle to either build themselves up, or tear someone else down.
Being right but unable to get anyone to listen to you is - as the original post pointed out - *your* shortcoming, not theirs. Being able to influence someone is an art and is just as important as having the right answers.
Having to influence people, playing politics and making power ploys is the reason business (especially large corporations)is the scum-filled cesspit that it is today. Once you make your prime concern office politics rather than technical merit, you are a sellout, at least from the geekmind standpoint. Maybe the marketing guys might like you better, and invite you out to lunch or something. If that's what you like, and what makes your life rewarding, so be it. That did not work for me.
I am a network engineer, a very technical person, and have absolutely no patience with office politics and political games. I am an artisan, much like someone who makes fine furniture, I find it offensive when personal power plays (not legitimate business needs, mind you) take precedence over doing things right... My position with the company was NOT managerial, but was technical. Bottom line, I should not have been in those meetings. I was brought in because the VP in charge of all the facilities in my state did not trust the CIO to adequately consider the needs of our facilities, which were the test run for the deployment. This proved to be correct. I was in one of those unfortunate positions where I answered to both the VP of the local operations, as well as the head IT guy in the company - a rock and a hard place. And I was quite aware I did NOT have the disposition to play
The sad fact is, the way companies go about business decisions has lots more to do with upper management making "good ol' boy" deals that benefit important individuals (both within and outside the company) than technical merit, or doing things the best way for the company. Then there are the decision makers with huge, fragile egos that view any dissenting voice as a direct attack on them and some kind of ploy for power within the company(simply because they cannot conceive of any other reason anyone might disagree with them).
I was involved with a large-scale Oracle deployment at my last employer. I kid you not when I say trained monkeys could have made better business and technical decisions regarding this deployment. I protested in varying degrees of urgency, getting more vocal as time went on (and my hours per week increased). I very very nearly lost my job over it, and I was NOT being a butthole about it. I nearly lost my job because I was RIGHT, and pointed out that I had correctly predicted many of the failings and problems that arose as a result of stupid decisions. Even though I was (at least I thought) polite and professional about it, I was taken aside by my non-technical IT superiors and told to shut the hell up or I'd be looking for another job.
I wound up looking for and getting another job anyway, but the moral of my story is, no good deed goes unpunished. You must realize, especially in huge corporations, that things like these have nothing to do with technical merits or doing things the right way. Its all about power ploys and political maneuverings(sp?).
Dunno if this could happen, with all the FTC regulations and other things I don't understand, but if it did, wouldn't MS own SCO's IP? And then be able to sue various (probably larger) Linux users with endless variations of lawsuits from now until eternity? With MS's bankroll, I don't think any single case won or lost would ever put the issue to rest then... If they lose one case, just change things around a little bit, and sue someone else using Linux...
Is it just me, or has our legal system just become like some utterly cheat-infested Unreal or Quake session? I wonder if all the lawyers involved are sending ICQs like "U fag! I will pwnz u in court, la!" "u witness camping Beeeeyoooootch u suk!". Of course, they would probably not use the punctuation...
I am sure the Enron executives share your viewpoint, and wonder why they are in jail... After all, it's just doing business, isn't it?
Perhaps one day some of the Microsoft folks can join them. We can hope, at least...
Taking advantage of stupid or weak people/companies/customers/whatever is wrong, even if it *is* legal. It shouldn't be legal... One of those house-repair scammers tried to screw my grandmother (in her late 80's at the time). She did not fall victim, but others did. If she would have fell for it, would that have been OK? I see no moral difference between the small-time and big-time scammers.
1. The "Trusted Computing" initiative. That has immense power to be abused, and will be largely in the hands of companies and organizations who are more interested in power and profits rather than privacy and security.
2. The Homeland Security Act (or whatever the official name is). This has gone past security into just plain scary. A national database of every monetary transaction that takes place in the US? Absolute freedom for wiretapping (of all flavors)? Our rights are swirling down the drain, and in this case, technology is making it a bit easier to do it. Let's see some legislation protecting the American citizen for a change.
3. Sort of related to 1. Media and software companies should NOT have the right to do ANYTHING to a person's computer, regardless of what EULAs you agree to. Legislation needs to be put into place regulating the access that any company has to an individual's computer. We have to stop allowing the entertainment industry to dictate legislation here.
4. Campaign finance reform - related to 1 and 3. We all know politicians are slithy toves who are as fickle as the wind. It is their nature. We need campaign finance reform to STOP large companies of all types being able to make large donations (cough cough Microsoft cough cough RIAA). I personally think political donations should ONLY be able to be made by individuals, and should be capped at a level that most people could afford.
I sent in a submission yesterday to slashdot about how to purposefully get on spam lists for the purpose of testing spamassassin - I will allow myself to be deluded into thinking I am responsible for this article.
Slashdot Mirror
I told him not to do what I did.
I would, however, disagree with your characterization of what I did. As I stated, I was unfailingly polite about it, and did my best to be professional. That means quite specifically I did not shout it from the mountaintop. While my original post was indicative of my bitterness, I did my best not to show that in the various meetings I attended. I was much much more successful at doing that than many of the various department heads, etc. This entire project was extremely divisive, and detrimental to the company.
You make the same mistake that many of the ego-inflated bigwigs at the company I worked for did: that I wanted to be right, and my motivation for bringing this up was personal gain and making power ploys within the company. You think I did this so I could make myself look smart, and make other people look stupid. This is exactly the same mindset that most of the other folks had, and exactly the same mindset that resulted in the project being such a dismal failure. Everyone was so worried about their personal status within the company, and so worried someone would intrude on their personal domain that the entire project crashed and burned like a huge steaming pile of burning, well... you get the idea.
My motivation was very very simple. I wanted to decrease my workload. I had seen these types of deployments earlier in my career, and knew most of the pitfalls. I was working 45 or hours a week at the various sites I maintained, as well as about 10 hours more from home. With this project, that increased to 60+ hours a week onsite.
I was not screaming from the mountaintops that I was right, everyone else was wrong. I was bringing up points as the project went along that I recommended action X, and the accounting guy reccomended action Y. Action Y was implemented, with consequence Z, and consequence Z was correctly predicted by me. I did this in the vain hope that in the next phase, when I recommended action A, and sales recommended action B, and I predicted consequence C, that maybe someone would listen. You see, I was under the impression that it was my JOB to recommend proper technical courses of action. It is unfortunate that most people in business, especially the ones with a modicum of influence, can only conceive of a dissenting opinion as a vehicle to either build themselves up, or tear someone else down.
Being right but unable to get anyone to listen to you is - as the original post pointed out - *your* shortcoming, not theirs. Being able to influence someone is an art and is just as important as having the right answers.
Having to influence people, playing politics and making power ploys is the reason business (especially large corporations)is the scum-filled cesspit that it is today. Once you make your prime concern office politics rather than technical merit, you are a sellout, at least from the geekmind standpoint. Maybe the marketing guys might like you better, and invite you out to lunch or something. If that's what you like, and what makes your life rewarding, so be it. That did not work for me.
I am a network engineer, a very technical person, and have absolutely no patience with office politics and political games. I am an artisan, much like someone who makes fine furniture, I find it offensive when personal power plays (not legitimate business needs, mind you) take precedence over doing things right... My position with the company was NOT managerial, but was technical. Bottom line, I should not have been in those meetings. I was brought in because the VP in charge of all the facilities in my state did not trust the CIO to adequately consider the needs of our facilities, which were the test run for the deployment. This proved to be correct. I was in one of those unfortunate positions where I answered to both the VP of the local operations, as well as the head IT guy in the company - a rock and a hard place. And I was quite aware I did NOT have the disposition to play
The sad fact is, the way companies go about business decisions has lots more to do with upper management making "good ol' boy" deals that benefit important individuals (both within and outside the company) than technical merit, or doing things the best way for the company. Then there are the decision makers with huge, fragile egos that view any dissenting voice as a direct attack on them and some kind of ploy for power within the company(simply because they cannot conceive of any other reason anyone might disagree with them).
I was involved with a large-scale Oracle deployment at my last employer. I kid you not when I say trained monkeys could have made better business and technical decisions regarding this deployment. I protested in varying degrees of urgency, getting more vocal as time went on (and my hours per week increased). I very very nearly lost my job over it, and I was NOT being a butthole about it. I nearly lost my job because I was RIGHT, and pointed out that I had correctly predicted many of the failings and problems that arose as a result of stupid decisions. Even though I was (at least I thought) polite and professional about it, I was taken aside by my non-technical IT superiors and told to shut the hell up or I'd be looking for another job.
I wound up looking for and getting another job anyway, but the moral of my story is, no good deed goes unpunished. You must realize, especially in huge corporations, that things like these have nothing to do with technical merits or doing things the right way. Its all about power ploys and political maneuverings(sp?).
I have a UO character named Laimass Rawlplyr
Dunno if this could happen, with all the FTC regulations and other things I don't understand, but if it did, wouldn't MS own SCO's IP? And then be able to sue various (probably larger) Linux users with endless variations of lawsuits from now until eternity? With MS's bankroll, I don't think any single case won or lost would ever put the issue to rest then... If they lose one case, just change things around a little bit, and sue someone else using Linux...
Is it just me, or has our legal system just become like some utterly cheat-infested Unreal or Quake session? I wonder if all the lawyers involved are sending ICQs like "U fag! I will pwnz u in court, la!" "u witness camping Beeeeyoooootch u suk!". Of course, they would probably not use the punctuation...
I am sure the Enron executives share your viewpoint, and wonder why they are in jail... After all, it's just doing business, isn't it?
Perhaps one day some of the Microsoft folks can join them. We can hope, at least...
Taking advantage of stupid or weak people/companies/customers/whatever is wrong, even if it *is* legal. It shouldn't be legal... One of those house-repair scammers tried to screw my grandmother (in her late 80's at the time). She did not fall victim, but others did. If she would have fell for it, would that have been OK? I see no moral difference between the small-time and big-time scammers.
As the poster above commented, H1B visas need to either be severely curtailed or eliminated. I forgot to mention that. All his points are well taken.
1. The "Trusted Computing" initiative. That has immense power to be abused, and will be largely in the hands of companies and organizations who are more interested in power and profits rather than privacy and security.
2. The Homeland Security Act (or whatever the official name is). This has gone past security into just plain scary. A national database of every monetary transaction that takes place in the US? Absolute freedom for wiretapping (of all flavors)? Our rights are swirling down the drain, and in this case, technology is making it a bit easier to do it. Let's see some legislation protecting the American citizen for a change.
3. Sort of related to 1. Media and software companies should NOT have the right to do ANYTHING to a person's computer, regardless of what EULAs you agree to. Legislation needs to be put into place regulating the access that any company has to an individual's computer. We have to stop allowing the entertainment industry to dictate legislation here.
4. Campaign finance reform - related to 1 and 3. We all know politicians are slithy toves who are as fickle as the wind. It is their nature. We need campaign finance reform to STOP large companies of all types being able to make large donations (cough cough Microsoft cough cough RIAA). I personally think political donations should ONLY be able to be made by individuals, and should be capped at a level that most people could afford.
I sent in a submission yesterday to slashdot about how to purposefully get on spam lists for the purpose of testing spamassassin - I will allow myself to be deluded into thinking I am responsible for this article.
Is there very much functional difference between this and Twiggi?