I actually don't like video content on the web; for a variety of reasons, but the primary one is that the audio from the video would give me away at work.
I mean, I hope this works out and is the revenue generator you hope it is, but as I think many of us are viewing the site from work, I don't know how popular a destination it's going to be.
Well, yes. That's kind of how it works; companies pay you what they think you are worth. It's interesting, then, that these very large companies feel compelled to pay me at all when, presumably, they have internal staff that should be capable of handling it ( and, not to put to fine a point on it; they pay me a lot ).
It doesn't sound like you've ever worked for a large org...or indeed, anything larger than a mom and pop, if at all. It seems to me that you are projecting your own ignorance on the world because you simply can't fathom how a real IT division operates.
It's a valid point, however I feel the difference between our argument is that of scale; I accept the highlighted behavior as the norm. I certainly don't expect to ever get to a place where I can't think of a single thing that needs money spent on it.
However, what I've seen in the firms I've worked for has been the kind of cost cutting that leaves you one power outage from catastrophe. There are HOSTS of servers that no one knows how to manage because the experience and training necessary won't be budgeted for; so they sit there, plugging away. And hopefully, they never need to be worked on, because no one is quite sure who could do it.
Same goes for security, relevantly; every single company I've worked for has had security appliances in place that, more often than not, no one really knows the credentials to. Worse, they usually lack the staff to adequately manage these devices ( lack of training or competency ). We aren't talking about switches here, but edge firewalls that protect things like CC processing servers.
Like I said, I don't expect to have my wish list crossed off, nor even my "Needs to be done" list. But what I WOULD expect is for these companies to understand the risk they are taking and fund the liabilities appropriately.
In the past we were once valued as profit centers and assets as great productivity gains were realized switching to computers then desktops, then spreadsheets, email, and so on and so on. Today, a nerd is not someone who can turn on a PC and use a formula in a spreadsheet. Everyone can do this. Therefore, we do not offer anything of important value except when something blows up.
This is precisely the attitude I was talking about; management and bean counters fail to appreciate just how important IT is. You only touch on one, very small, aspect of our jobs. In fact, IT holds as much, if not more, liability as HR; we protect the company in countless ways, and accordingly, our skillsets need to be varied. I need to be at least semi-competent in every skill set necessary to successfully run a company; HR, legal, finance, project management to name the generics, not to mention the specific core competency of the business. And then, on top of all of that, I need to be an expert in various IT technologies. If I fail in any of those responsibilities, I expose the company to serious liability ( oh, you were ignorant of some obscure PCI requirement? Fined. Oh, you didn't realize employee records needed to be handled a certain way legally? Fined. ect... ).
That's what IT is about; not building workstations or servers. It's managing the information in the corp, with the goal to create an efficient organization.
Having worked for a few firms in the IT division, I can say this isn't surprising...at all. Between clueless management and the inability to grasp IT's value and contribution to a company, it'd have been news if they HADN'T been cracked wide open.
When you mix in outsourcing, the argument can almost be made that this is exactly what these firms WANT to happen.
The female bosses I've worked for have been vindictive and back stabbing ( not to me, necessarily, but as more a general attitude ). This from an admittedly small sample set of 4. Further, that is not to say the male bosses have been winners either, they have simply failed in different ways.
I have had one good manager for my personality type, and it was only because he knew what his job was; direct me what he wanted done, get me the resources I needed to accomplish the job and run interference on upper management to keep them out of my way.
Well, OK, ya. As I understand it, he and his religion harassed coworkers and subordinates. The material he used to harass these people is less important than the act of harassment itself. If anything, I'm guessing he was given MORE leeway because of the subject matter, but ultimately if you can't behave yourself then yes, you will be fired/let go.
...but better suited for a sci-fi novel rather than any serious contemplation. Look at all the trouble we have with building tall buildings AND magnetic installations. We are no where NEAR ready to take on something like this.
Kind of like the space elevator. Another concept that's several hundred years away from practicality, if ever.
I'd rather see us spend some real effort in improving the tech we currently have and are stuck with for the foreseeable future.
...this doesn't surprise me in the least. You have a few that respect and understand technology, and all it can do for the dept, but most resent it and try to deal with it and little as possible.
I was speaking general; obviously specific employers might buck the trend.
There are a few employers out there that actually value their employees correctly, preemptively compensating and the like. They are obviously the exception. But I think if you take an average throughout the industry and correct for like-skill sets, you'd find that my position holds true.
I wish I could teach people NOT to feel defeated by this. In IT, it's not only par for the course, but it's how you get raises. Take two people of similar capabilities, except one is somewhat seditary while the other changes jobs every year or two. Give it 10 years. Guess which one will have the higher salary, by quite a margin?
This is just one aspect of our business, and I wish people understood that better.
I second the "Leave" recommendation. You aren't going to change minds. You can dig in your heals and tell them "No, this will not work", and they may listen to you...but just as likely they'll find someone who they can bully around. More likely really.
Eh? A popular GOP politician, possibly the party's presidential candidate, make an absurd comment about science. Hence, it belongs on slashdot. You know, news for nerds and stuff that matters?
I'm sure many here would dread Santorum getting in to the whitehouse based on his science cred alone. That makes it somewhat relevant.
( beck is a nut, btw. If you can't see the distinction between slashdot and beck...well, you might be standing too close to that particular fire )
So...to combat the tardiness problem, you will make people do inane bullshit which takes up valuable meeting time AND breeds resentment right out of the gate?
New to this whole "managing people" thing, aren't you?
( Note: I am almost never late, and the few times I have been have been unavoidable. As in, "CC processing server crashed 5 minutes ago and needed some attention" unavoidable. But while we're on the topic, yes, my time *is* more valuable that just about every one else's in the room ( CEO excluded, but they almost never show up to the daily technical meetings ).
I'm late to a meeting, for whatever reason, and you are asking me to do what now? No. I don't think so.
But by all means, try it. Not only will it undermine your authority ( which can't be all that strong to begin with, if you have to rely on silly shit like this ), but it will create some seriously awkward moments ( which I have trained myself to be immune from, for just such a situation ).
I dispute your title; I have taken some of the "hardest" tests out there, and I found them easy. Why? Because I have a ton of real world experience with the product and I studied their "best practices" prior to taking the test.
Certs have more worth if they accurately test your real world applicable knowledge.
Get rid of scheduled lunches and other breaks, and you could call it work without a hint of sarcasm.
Re:What about clueless admins?
on
Tales of IT Idiocy
·
· Score: 3, Funny
Given the obvious competence level of these admins, do you think they knew how to make ntpdate work as a non-root user?
Ya, neither do I. And yes, they were logging in as root....with a shared public/private key set. Note: BOTH private AND public keys were shared amongst all 500 servers.
Because ssh keys are more secure, don't you know.
What about clueless admins?
on
Tales of IT Idiocy
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
In my time I have seen some amazing examples of idiocy.
I once had to lecture some linux admins as to the nature of ntpd and how they don't have to be constantly logging in to set the time, but here's the brilliant part of that equation: someone had come up with a "login script" idea, that used ntpdate to set the time. So all they had to do was log in to the system and the time would be automatically set. I only got involved when they were trying to develop an automated login system so they wouldn't have to log in to 500+ linux servers, constantly, all to keep the time set. I actually had to argue with them, to show they what ntpd could do. It was unreal.
Then there was the time I found windows admins that thought you had to have a user account for every machine you joined to a domain. A unique user account. A unique administrative user account. And because they had several thousand machines, password maint was a nightmare...or at least would be, except they came to the conclusion that using an easy to remember password on all of these administrator accounts was an easier solution.
That's a bit strange, no? You'd think Job's family would be the one filing, not Apple, unless they own his personality rights. Which would be kinda creepy, if you think about it.
What, all 15 minutes of the 3D that was in tron? It was crap. Avatar was a great 3D demonstration, I'll grant you. Take away the visuals, and it was a Pocahontas remake though.
A very very small niche market exists for 3D movies in the theaters, whereas most consumers resent having to pay the extra cost for 3d because the theater isn't showing the 2d version.
As far as games; niche market, again, although you have a more compelling argument here than with the movies. Still, even granting that, you aren't talking about numbers necessary to keep an industry segment afloat.
No, 3D is being pushed because the industries in question want to try to resell you equipment/content. It's little more than a gimmick that appeals to 1% of the market.
Dooku was a pretty boring, on screen villain. Sure, manipulative, but in a tired drawn out kind of way. Utterly disposable.
Maul had an energy to him, a perversion, that told the audience he was really enjoying being a dick. If they'd kept that up in subsequent movies, he would have been a great bad guy, leading in to Palpatine.
I agree that Qui-gon shouldn't have been killed off in the first movie. I would have preferred to have seen him do half the training of Anakin, resulting in Anakin's somewhat rebelious nature against the council. I would have killed off Qui-gon in a manner that could be construed as the council not backing him up, to give Anakin enough motivation to start sliding. So by the time Obiwan got him as an apprentice ( and let's face it, a newly raised padawan taking an apprentice? Not exactly feasible. By this point in the second movie, Obiwan would have been a jedi for almost a decade. Much more workable ) he was already tainted. I would have then played their relationship off of Anakin's ego ( remember, he's strong in the force and was trained by Quigon ), resulting in a more friend/partner type of relationship instead of master/padawan, which would explain Obiwan's attitude in #4, along with the idea that Anakin was able to fall to the dark side.
Slashdot Mirror
I actually don't like video content on the web; for a variety of reasons, but the primary one is that the audio from the video would give me away at work.
I mean, I hope this works out and is the revenue generator you hope it is, but as I think many of us are viewing the site from work, I don't know how popular a destination it's going to be.
Well, yes. That's kind of how it works; companies pay you what they think you are worth. It's interesting, then, that these very large companies feel compelled to pay me at all when, presumably, they have internal staff that should be capable of handling it ( and, not to put to fine a point on it; they pay me a lot ).
It doesn't sound like you've ever worked for a large org...or indeed, anything larger than a mom and pop, if at all. It seems to me that you are projecting your own ignorance on the world because you simply can't fathom how a real IT division operates.
Of course it's IT's job; no one else understands both the requirements and the technology, nor it's implementation and the implications.
As far as my importance; seeing as I contract with several of my former employers, I think my impact is significant to the various businesses.
It's a valid point, however I feel the difference between our argument is that of scale; I accept the highlighted behavior as the norm. I certainly don't expect to ever get to a place where I can't think of a single thing that needs money spent on it.
However, what I've seen in the firms I've worked for has been the kind of cost cutting that leaves you one power outage from catastrophe. There are HOSTS of servers that no one knows how to manage because the experience and training necessary won't be budgeted for; so they sit there, plugging away. And hopefully, they never need to be worked on, because no one is quite sure who could do it.
Same goes for security, relevantly; every single company I've worked for has had security appliances in place that, more often than not, no one really knows the credentials to. Worse, they usually lack the staff to adequately manage these devices ( lack of training or competency ). We aren't talking about switches here, but edge firewalls that protect things like CC processing servers.
Like I said, I don't expect to have my wish list crossed off, nor even my "Needs to be done" list. But what I WOULD expect is for these companies to understand the risk they are taking and fund the liabilities appropriately.
In the past we were once valued as profit centers and assets as great productivity gains were realized switching to computers then desktops, then spreadsheets, email, and so on and so on. Today, a nerd is not someone who can turn on a PC and use a formula in a spreadsheet. Everyone can do this. Therefore, we do not offer anything of important value except when something blows up.
This is precisely the attitude I was talking about; management and bean counters fail to appreciate just how important IT is. You only touch on one, very small, aspect of our jobs. In fact, IT holds as much, if not more, liability as HR; we protect the company in countless ways, and accordingly, our skillsets need to be varied. I need to be at least semi-competent in every skill set necessary to successfully run a company; HR, legal, finance, project management to name the generics, not to mention the specific core competency of the business. And then, on top of all of that, I need to be an expert in various IT technologies. If I fail in any of those responsibilities, I expose the company to serious liability ( oh, you were ignorant of some obscure PCI requirement? Fined. Oh, you didn't realize employee records needed to be handled a certain way legally? Fined. ect... ).
That's what IT is about; not building workstations or servers. It's managing the information in the corp, with the goal to create an efficient organization.
*is, not isn't. It's one of those days.
Having worked for a few firms in the IT division, I can say this isn't surprising...at all. Between clueless management and the inability to grasp IT's value and contribution to a company, it'd have been news if they HADN'T been cracked wide open.
When you mix in outsourcing, the argument can almost be made that this is exactly what these firms WANT to happen.
The female bosses I've worked for have been vindictive and back stabbing ( not to me, necessarily, but as more a general attitude ). This from an admittedly small sample set of 4. Further, that is not to say the male bosses have been winners either, they have simply failed in different ways.
I have had one good manager for my personality type, and it was only because he knew what his job was; direct me what he wanted done, get me the resources I needed to accomplish the job and run interference on upper management to keep them out of my way.
I'm not sure how much I trust any scientist that thinks elephants are born out of eggs....
( I keed, I keed )
Well, OK, ya. As I understand it, he and his religion harassed coworkers and subordinates. The material he used to harass these people is less important than the act of harassment itself. If anything, I'm guessing he was given MORE leeway because of the subject matter, but ultimately if you can't behave yourself then yes, you will be fired/let go.
...but better suited for a sci-fi novel rather than any serious contemplation. Look at all the trouble we have with building tall buildings AND magnetic installations. We are no where NEAR ready to take on something like this.
Kind of like the space elevator. Another concept that's several hundred years away from practicality, if ever.
I'd rather see us spend some real effort in improving the tech we currently have and are stuck with for the foreseeable future.
...this doesn't surprise me in the least. You have a few that respect and understand technology, and all it can do for the dept, but most resent it and try to deal with it and little as possible.
This won't even change anything, really.
I was speaking general; obviously specific employers might buck the trend.
There are a few employers out there that actually value their employees correctly, preemptively compensating and the like. They are obviously the exception. But I think if you take an average throughout the industry and correct for like-skill sets, you'd find that my position holds true.
I wish I could teach people NOT to feel defeated by this. In IT, it's not only par for the course, but it's how you get raises. Take two people of similar capabilities, except one is somewhat seditary while the other changes jobs every year or two. Give it 10 years. Guess which one will have the higher salary, by quite a margin?
This is just one aspect of our business, and I wish people understood that better.
I second the "Leave" recommendation. You aren't going to change minds. You can dig in your heals and tell them "No, this will not work", and they may listen to you...but just as likely they'll find someone who they can bully around. More likely really.
Time to jump ship and let them fail on their own.
Eh? A popular GOP politician, possibly the party's presidential candidate, make an absurd comment about science. Hence, it belongs on slashdot. You know, news for nerds and stuff that matters?
I'm sure many here would dread Santorum getting in to the whitehouse based on his science cred alone. That makes it somewhat relevant.
( beck is a nut, btw. If you can't see the distinction between slashdot and beck...well, you might be standing too close to that particular fire )
So...to combat the tardiness problem, you will make people do inane bullshit which takes up valuable meeting time AND breeds resentment right out of the gate?
New to this whole "managing people" thing, aren't you?
( Note: I am almost never late, and the few times I have been have been unavoidable. As in, "CC processing server crashed 5 minutes ago and needed some attention" unavoidable. But while we're on the topic, yes, my time *is* more valuable that just about every one else's in the room ( CEO excluded, but they almost never show up to the daily technical meetings ).
I'm late to a meeting, for whatever reason, and you are asking me to do what now? No. I don't think so.
But by all means, try it. Not only will it undermine your authority ( which can't be all that strong to begin with, if you have to rely on silly shit like this ), but it will create some seriously awkward moments ( which I have trained myself to be immune from, for just such a situation ).
I dispute your title; I have taken some of the "hardest" tests out there, and I found them easy. Why? Because I have a ton of real world experience with the product and I studied their "best practices" prior to taking the test.
Certs have more worth if they accurately test your real world applicable knowledge.
Get rid of scheduled lunches and other breaks, and you could call it work without a hint of sarcasm.
Given the obvious competence level of these admins, do you think they knew how to make ntpdate work as a non-root user?
Ya, neither do I. And yes, they were logging in as root....with a shared public/private key set. Note: BOTH private AND public keys were shared amongst all 500 servers.
Because ssh keys are more secure, don't you know.
In my time I have seen some amazing examples of idiocy.
I once had to lecture some linux admins as to the nature of ntpd and how they don't have to be constantly logging in to set the time, but here's the brilliant part of that equation: someone had come up with a "login script" idea, that used ntpdate to set the time. So all they had to do was log in to the system and the time would be automatically set. I only got involved when they were trying to develop an automated login system so they wouldn't have to log in to 500+ linux servers, constantly, all to keep the time set. I actually had to argue with them, to show they what ntpd could do. It was unreal.
Then there was the time I found windows admins that thought you had to have a user account for every machine you joined to a domain. A unique user account. A unique administrative user account. And because they had several thousand machines, password maint was a nightmare...or at least would be, except they came to the conclusion that using an easy to remember password on all of these administrator accounts was an easier solution.
That's a bit strange, no? You'd think Job's family would be the one filing, not Apple, unless they own his personality rights. Which would be kinda creepy, if you think about it.
What, all 15 minutes of the 3D that was in tron? It was crap. Avatar was a great 3D demonstration, I'll grant you. Take away the visuals, and it was a Pocahontas remake though.
A very very small niche market exists for 3D movies in the theaters, whereas most consumers resent having to pay the extra cost for 3d because the theater isn't showing the 2d version.
As far as games; niche market, again, although you have a more compelling argument here than with the movies. Still, even granting that, you aren't talking about numbers necessary to keep an industry segment afloat.
No, 3D is being pushed because the industries in question want to try to resell you equipment/content. It's little more than a gimmick that appeals to 1% of the market.
Dooku was a pretty boring, on screen villain. Sure, manipulative, but in a tired drawn out kind of way. Utterly disposable.
Maul had an energy to him, a perversion, that told the audience he was really enjoying being a dick. If they'd kept that up in subsequent movies, he would have been a great bad guy, leading in to Palpatine.
I agree that Qui-gon shouldn't have been killed off in the first movie. I would have preferred to have seen him do half the training of Anakin, resulting in Anakin's somewhat rebelious nature against the council. I would have killed off Qui-gon in a manner that could be construed as the council not backing him up, to give Anakin enough motivation to start sliding. So by the time Obiwan got him as an apprentice ( and let's face it, a newly raised padawan taking an apprentice? Not exactly feasible. By this point in the second movie, Obiwan would have been a jedi for almost a decade. Much more workable ) he was already tainted. I would have then played their relationship off of Anakin's ego ( remember, he's strong in the force and was trained by Quigon ), resulting in a more friend/partner type of relationship instead of master/padawan, which would explain Obiwan's attitude in #4, along with the idea that Anakin was able to fall to the dark side.
The way they played it in the movie just sucked.