Dirty Duty On the Front Lines of IT 166
snydeq writes "Jobs may be scarce in today's economy, but there's no shortage of nasty IT work — as the third annual installment of InfoWorld's Dirty IT Jobs series demonstrates. From the payroll cop to the coolant jockey to the network sherpa who has to squeeze into rodent-filled spaces and deal with penny-pinching clients, these seven jobs provide further proof that dirty duty abounds on the front lines of IT."
FTA: (Score:5, Funny)
The hardest part of Andrew Bonar's job is convincing the world he's not a spammer. It's not easy. Just having "email deliverability consultant" on his business cards is enough to start the Viagra jokes.
Somehow I don't think Andrew Bonar's job title is the reason for the Viagra jokes.
You would think that he'd be an expert. (Score:3, Insightful)
With a name like that. But ...
Dude, if your clients are going to "bend the rules" then they are spammers.
Deal with it.
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There are tons of bosses who think that it's a good idea to send out emails about their product/services to thousands of people who never asked for them (hey their product is wonderful after all, etc etc).
You can convince some of them that it's not a good idea, in which case they don't become spammers.
And there really are overzealous spamfilters. I've seen people here who think it's a great idea to block off entire IP ranges (not just for their personal s
How many call him first? (Score:2)
And how many of those bosses would think to call him for his services PRIOR to sending that email?
http://www.rhyolite.com/anti-spam/that-which-we-dont.html [rhyolite.com]
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Re:FTA: (Score:5, Funny)
The hardest ... Bonar ... is enough to start the Viagra jokes.
I fix code written by offshore Indian developers. (Score:4, Insightful)
I fix the horribly shitty code written by offshore Indian "developers".
The crap and stupidity I encounter from them daily is far worse than dealing with rodents, or cramped spaces, or spending months on the high seas.
Re:I fix code written by offshore Indian developer (Score:5, Insightful)
So, is it cheaper to hire idiots to write most of the code and then hire someone smart later to fix it?
Re:I fix code written by offshore Indian developer (Score:5, Insightful)
> So, is it cheaper to hire idiots to write most of the code and then hire someone smart later to fix it?
Doesn't the question answer itself? What's cheaper in the long run - install plumbing and wiring *while* the house is being built or afterwards?
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You ask that question as if the metaphor speaks for itself, but it doesn't. I'm not a business mogul, but people who are business moguls are pretty good at doing math and finding the cheapest solutions. It strains credulity to say that all the people hiring Indian developers are making unwise business decisions. The only way that could be true is if you personally have superior knowledge and reasoning to all of those business people. That's possible, but unlikely.
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but people who are business moguls are pretty good at doing math and finding the cheapest solutions.
They are pretty good at math and spreadsheets, but they fail at predicting the future. I doubt wholesale recoding was in the original plan. The original plan looked like "Hire twice the number of Indian programmers at 1/4 the cost, get done in half the time! Beat the competition and pocket the savings! Yay!"
"Fix the code in a hurry" is added as an addendum after the truth bites them in the ass.
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The people hiring offshore developers mi
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>I don't know: I'm not a plumber. Sure as hell works well a treat if you offshore the bulk of dev. work and get a local specialist to fix it as required.
If you are satisfied with the construction and quality assurance of that sentence I have no doubt you will find similarly constructed software acceptable.
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> Right now with software you need to put it in the market as soon as possible to start generate profit and then fix the problems with support contracts.
Oh, the Microsoft model. Yes, customers love that. Especially when they have to acceptance test the same crap 5 times before meeting minimum functionality.
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You'd be surprised at how little some municipalities look at. The plans, and ... the plans. Once the fee is paid and the permit issued, they're not going to come by every day to make sure everything is up to code. That's why you can end up digging up sewer pipe and copper plumbing a few years after its been installed because it doesn't conform to code and nobody checked.
That
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Mod parent up. (Score:2)
Remember, it isn't always about the techs or the technology.
Marketing operates on their own logic/ideology.
Management operates on a logic/ideology completely different from marketing OR the techs.
Ideally, you'll have a manager who can handle all three modes of "logic" and explain what they want you to do and why in a way that you can understand and handle.
Re:Mod parent up. (Score:4, Insightful)
The dirty part? Techies often play a little fast and loose with the truth. But it's the marketing hag who catches hell for it.
TFA goes on to berate techies for claiming something is ready when it isn't, etc. I don't buy it. Most techies I know are too truthful for their own good, partly because of the b/w nature of our world, and partly as an allergic reaction from cleaning up too many overpromise/underdeliver SNAFUs we inherit from Sales and Marketing types. I've been on the techie end of that equation too many times, and although you can take my unconfirmed anecdotal data as you wish, my guess is that most here have had similar experiences.
...
...
... [notices the MH's eyes glazed over] Okay, say something like this - "OLC 1.0 leverages Web 2.0 technology to bring the power of cloud computing to your fingertips."
...
...
... thanks! Bye!
Hypothetical conversation between techie and marketing hag:
MH: So, I'm like, trying to put together a press release and a flyer about OurLatestCoolthing1.0, and I was hoping you could like, help me with the technical parts.
T: Yeah, sure. Happy to help.
MH: Oh cool. So, like I talked to your manager, and he said that OLC v1.0 is fully Web 2.0 and cloud compliant, and is guaranteed to save companies 50% of their IT budget. Then he
T: What? No. That's just wrong. Are you sure he said that?
MH: [puzzled look] Yeah. I like just got done talking with him, and he said to talk to you, because you could like explain it better.
T: Oh. [mental note to speak to the boss man] Yeah, well you probably don't want to say "Web 2.0 and cloud compliant", because that doesn't make sense. There is no "Web 2.0" or "cloud" standard per se, and so there's really nothing to be compliant with
MH: [scribbling furiously] Wait, what? Standard? What do you mean?
T: There is no "cloud computing" standard. It's just a buzzword. You can't be compliant with it because
MH: [eyes light up] Oh! Good! I could use that! [scribbles] Okay, "OLC 1.0 leverages Web 2.0 technology to bring the power of cloud computing to your fingertips.
T: You probably don't want to guarantee any specific level of savings, either. Have you talked to Sales about that?
MH: Okay. Great, thanks! [leaves cubicle, then sticks head back in for one more question] Oh, by the way, how many engineers do we have certified on this?
T: Right now? No one. We just finished building the platform, and we haven't finished writing the training material yet. Why?
MH: Oh. How many will you have trained by like the end of next week?
T: Uhh, none. Not until the training material is finished. Talk to the technical writers and trainers.
MH: [worried] But like, how many will you eventually have trained?
T: [shrugs] Well, all the inbound tech support guys, for starters, and then
MH: Oh! Right! Good! So like, how many of them are there?
T: Eight guys at the moment, but
MH: Great
Half an hour later, the phone rings. A sales guys calls up to ask about the OLC v1.0. He just saw the latest marketing press release, and is really glad to see that it is "Web 2.0 and Cloud compliant".
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Except they will never get it 100% right. Both parties will eventually settle for something that mostly-works and kinda-sucks, when the pressure from the client for fixes equals the backpressure from the idiots for "we have spent enough time on you" (sometimes written as "fuck off and die").
Hire a good coder from the start (or leverage the ones you already have), and you'll have less of this back-and-forth, where all you're really doing is reiterating the specs you gave them in the first place. The issue
Re:I fix code written by offshore Indian developer (Score:4, Informative)
If you can re-write what they spit out as a support function, you are working too cheap. And of course the company's accounting system is worse than the State of Arizona's. Which is bad.
What you just said was also 'I can do it as well as they can, all by myself, within a support timeline'. So you and/or your boss are not selling your abilities either. But that's another topic - how do you sell to management what they aready have? Imagine the hilarity when they realize they paid twice for the project, and one of the costs is already in the house...
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Imagine the hilarity when they realize they paid twice for the project, and one of the costs is already in the house...
Judging by how most workplaces function, his employer would immediately source the in-house cost. Then they'd end up with one offshore code house fixing another offshore code house's mistake. They'd still pay twice for the work, but now it would be "aligned to strategy."
Re:I fix code written by offshore Indian developer (Score:4, Interesting)
We went through this just a few months ago, as a tiny coder shop. We needed an Asterisk IVR built, had never done it before and didn't have time to learn, so we contracted out to an offshore company who were supposedly experts with Asterisk, as referred to us by a business acquaintance. We actually ended up with a working product, but it took so much hand-holding and error checking that by the time they delivered the final version, I knew more about Asterisk than they did, mostly because I read the PHPAGI docs a bit more thoroughly. And it was about 6 weeks late on a 2 week timeline. Face, meet egg.
The 10-hour timezone shift was a massive PITA. The communication hurdles led to poor quality output, because instead of asking us proper questions, they'd "play dumb" and do it wrong, seemingly on purpose hoping we wouldn't notice I guess. Every time they'd jiggle some code, we had to retest our entire flowchart and bark at them for every failure. Maybe I'm a hopeless idealist, but I like to think of contractors as a black box: work order goes in, completed work comes out. In my mind, that includes testing, especially since we had crystal clear pass/fail scenarios.
I'm sure there are some Indian shops that are worth the money (bell curve), but this one clearly wasn't. Sure, they were cheap, but I ended up doing more work to support them than had I done it all from scratch, so it ended up costing more. On the upside, I am now modestly self-sufficient in writing PHP scripts to drive Asterisk; another random skill I never wanted in the first place.
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So while they're still with the company, they can talk about all these great "initiatives" they've started,
You are talking about an increase in Power Word ( or more accurately, brown matter ) density within Curriculum Vitae space. The problem is that past a certain density, Curriculum Vitae space can collapse in on itself. Then you have brown matter entering the accretion disk.
e.g. "Facilitated & enhanced a balanced, agile solution in a collaborated, multi-national project that simplified and incorporated a streamlined production model transforming & modernizing the development process... ( this section
Re:I fix code written by offshore Indian developer (Score:4, Insightful)
My observations: There are some very good Indian developers. There are some very cheap Indian developers. My observations do not include any overlap between the two.
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Except that crappy American developers are more expensive than crappy Indian developers.
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I get what you're saying but a lot of these things are beginner mistakes.. *face palm* learn the right way and move on.
A decent explaination about the mistake and the correct way to do it goes a long way to further their knowledge and understanding. If they refuse to learn.. to hell with em and treat their work like lepers, no need to fixate on it. Keep them out of core dev and give them little side projects to learn from.
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True, but the American developer is much easier to rein in and/or terminate. If a contractor is awful, you'll ditch him and he'll find ten more suckers around the corner. If you fire your own awful coder, that sonofabitch is out of a job, and when he has the gall to give your name as a reference to his future employers, you'll have the opportunity to keep him out of THAT job too.
The issue here is not one of race, but purely geographic / organisational. A local contractor that does a poor job, gets poor r
Dirty is Relative (Score:4, Insightful)
I have relatives that run pig farms.
Re:Dirty is Relative (Score:5, Funny)
I have relatives that run pig farms.
Given the grooming habits of most NOC monkeys a server farm isn't that far off.
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Might be easier than cleaning them
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I am in IT because I grew up on a farm on the Great Plains.
I farmed, ranched and knew folks with pig farms, all of that motivated me to get a job where I didn't have to smell those things or get covered in hydraulic fluid on a regular basis.
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Then why did you choose IT?
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You completely missed the subtext: that IT exposes you to smells similar to those found on a pig farm.
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Yep. One of my buddies became an engineer because that was a sure and fast route far away from working a ranch and mucking horse stalls in Montana.
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You've obviously never installed cat5 in a coal mine.
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Hell, people whine about having to work in cubicles. Hard to have much sympathy when you've worked in a bullpen...
rj
Dust Bunnies and Asbestos (Score:5, Interesting)
I've gone through my share of cluttered closets, dusty vents, underneath dirty desks, and cleaned the fluff off of old computers.
However, nothing makes me feel dirtier than installing Windows Genuine Advantage, as part of the new computer deployment checklist.
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Re:Dust Bunnies and Asbestos (Score:4, Interesting)
I disagree. I did RTFA, and the guy tried to get the school district to do the right thing. They refused.
And his second point, that it's damn near impossible to teach kids ethics when they know the district is cheating...
I dislike the BSA as much as the next guy, but whenever I was the IT guy (and thank ha-Kadosh Baruch-hu, I'm not, right now), I always made sure that all our software was properly licensed.
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Why call the BSA when you already know who the vendors are for the software that's not in compliance with the licenses?
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School system = government.
Are you OK with the government being so hypocritical? "Hey, we'll enforce these copyright laws to the maximum extent... on YOU"
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Worse. They could have negotiated an educational discount, and given the sheer volume I'm sure they would have paid less than 1/4 of retail, or gotten site-wide licenses for even less. I am personally on the fence about piracy (see my other posts), but still this type of infringement seems inexcusable.
Re:Dust Bunnies and Asbestos (Score:4, Interesting)
Really?
Because if my customer asks for it, as far as I'm concerned, I'm giving them what they paid for. All the headaches, tradeoffs, and everything else that goes with it. The worse Microsoft cripples the Windows ecosystem - the happier I am to push every line of crippleware out to their customers. There is enough literature out there, and people have dealt with Microsoft products' limitations long enough - even non-technical users should know better by now. I'm not responsible for their poor choices. I do that job to the ethical best of my ability. (If Windows is *not* up to the task, I'll give them my technical opinion. But I won't waste project time debating the issue or trying to redesign the system around an alternate OS - unless that's my specified task).
The sooner my customers realize they're paying me to shoot them in the foot - the sooner they'll start paying me to load Ubuntu (or whatever) disks. But some people just seem to live in denial forever. Maybe human nature? Dunno.
Maybe the two most wrong sentences ever written (Score:5, Funny)
Can someone please call an ambulance? I think these sentences may have caused my head to explode.
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Interestingly, as you read the write up, it turns out it's the managers lying their asses off that she has to cover for and actual geeks that let her know she was lied to. I guess the managers lied when they told her they were geeks too. That happens a lot when MBAs are allowed to manage geeks.
This line in TFA says it all (Score:5, Insightful)
"The geek personality is very different," says Bectel. "I've worked in a lot of different markets, and techies have much higher expectations for coverage than virtually any one else. It's because they're so passionate about what they do, and they expect everyone else to be equally passionate about it."
The one line explanation of /.
Questionable ethics (Score:2)
Smith says he approached his superiors and the district's IT department and explained why that was wrong, but to no avail. So one day he called the Business Software Alliance and reported them...a few months after he contacted the BSA, his employers purchased
Re:Questionable ethics (Score:5, Insightful)
If an educational institution can't afford monopolyware then PIRACY is not the answer. If they can't pay their own way helping perpetuate the Microsoft monopoly, then perhaps they should not help perpetuate that crap to begin with.
A kid doesn't need to learn the Brand X version of a particular sort of software.
That's just nonsense perpetrated by middle aged idiots that couldn't adapt to something new if their life literally depended on it.
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A kid doesn't need to learn the Brand X version of a particular sort of software.
That's just nonsense perpetrated by middle aged idiots that couldn't adapt to something new if their life literally depended on it.
The trouble is, a kid DOES need to learn Brand X of a particular sort of software, because the people he'll be working for/with use it and if he doesn't know it, they'll hire someone who does. In a sense, his life does depend on it.
For all the fervor of the FOSS hype, here in the real world people need to make a living, and they go to school to learn the skills they need to do that. Beg, borrow or steal if you must, but if you are a school, your ultimate responsibility is to teach the skills that enable
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So, Word '97 is the same as Word 2007?
XP is the same as Vista?
How about instead of teaching how to use a single version of an OS or software suite, they teach kids how to use a word processor, and more general stuff about using a computer?
Re:Questionable ethics (Score:5, Insightful)
Second, a kid does not need to learn Brand X of a particular sort of software. They need to learn concepts, not specific implementations. So they should learn what a word processor is good for. Whether it's MS Word, or OpenOffice, or iWork (or pick some other word processor). Irrelevant. Learn what a word processor does. (Repeat for presentation software, spreadsheet, etc) It will make them more versatile in the real world. Additionally, the second option in there is free, thus solves the original problem of "we can't afford the licesnes". I have no idea what they need Creative Suite for. That's an even bigger sledgehammer than MS Office for putting in finishing nails.
Yet another advantage for OpenOffice, since it is free, the kid can easily take a copy home and use it for homework there too, and not inflict a large licensing cost on the family too.
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Eh, I dunno man. We're talking about kids here, not adults in a tech training program. If a kid uses Foxit instead of Acrobat, then the kid will still know what a PDF is. And, the kid will still know what Acrobat is -- it's the software whose authors won't let him use it, for whatever reason. Hardly any software is so complicated that it can't be learned quickly on the job. I got all the way through high school, four years of college, and five years of professional programming before I ever had to use Windo
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perpetuate the Microsoft monopoly
Anyone know where I can get a key for Microsoft CS5? Or really just MS Photoshop, that's all I ever use.
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No, he did exactly the right thing.
I wish more people would do that.
If the school, or anybody else, for-profit or non-, can't afford to pay for the licenses they need then the answer is to find another alternative, not to engage in illegal copyright infringement.
In this case, there are two possible solutions: They can ask Microsoft for donated licenses (which MS does all the time, by the way), or they can use a free alternative, such as OpenOffice. The latter is even better, really, as the open source can
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The people's tax money.
Not if it's a public school. In that case, it's a government organization run at the consent of the people using our tax dollars and is not above the law.
So what was he supposed to do next? Pay for the software out o
Trademarks (Score:5, Informative)
...you're asked to throw a 'TM' after a product name, only to find out later it's not really trademarked
Slapping that TM after a product name does trademark it, unless some direct competitor has already trademarked that same name first.
Only the (R) (for Registered trademark) has to be...well, registered.
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I thought everybody learned that after the reoccuring TM joke in the Monkey Island series.
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Yep, so remember, folks: if you make lingerie, you can't call it "very sexy" because Victoria's Secret has trademarked it (no, really), and if you make baked goods, you can't say they're "fresh from scratch" because Schlotzky's has trademarked it (no, really).
I don't know how well these trademark claims have stood up, but know for a fact I felt brain cells dying away when I saw these companies actually trying to claim IP rights in these terms for their product lines. Not just the outrageousness of trying t
Payroll cop fubar (Score:5, Insightful)
If, as the article relates, Jennifer Hoffman had to call the data center and walk them through the process of manually restarting the one, single, solitary payroll server, a few items come to mind:
1) The people doing the upgrades without considering their impact should be shot on sight. Anyone who has worked more than a week in a network environment knows, or should know, that when you are considering an upgrade to anything, you have to find out who else is impacted by the upgrade.
2) Relying on said single, solitary server for payroll is just begging for disaster. For a highly critical task such as payroll, having one point of failure is beyond stupid. One deserves what one gets if the server dies.
3) The person who was fired but was still able to log time so they got paid was smart, the people who administered user accounts and security were not. Basic rule when someone is fired/let go/whatever is you disable their account. Immediately. Whomever in IT let this little gem get by should also be shot.
4) Having only one person who knew how to run the payroll software was, like issue 2 above, beyond stupid. Does no one use the bus principle any more? For the uninitiated, if someone gets run over by a bus, can they be replaced by someone else with minimal downtime? Are their tasks documented? What about quirky procedures that need to be done?
These are just basic questions I had when I read that job. My other question was, what company did she work for so I can introduce myself to them as a "Risk Mitigation Specialist"?
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Wow.. 50% of your solutions involve shooting people.. Have you considered counselling for your anger management? Or could I perhaps interest you in a career at the local library?
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50% of your solutions involve shooting people.
Yeah! What a pussy! Real management could push that into the high 90s.
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Well, bear in mind... not shooting everyone may be a budgetary mitigation. Ammunition can be expensive, and there are so many cost-effective ways to deal with offenders.
Some good reference material [theregister.co.uk]
Re:Payroll cop fubar (Score:4, Interesting)
Bus Principal is only employed after it actually happens. We had this very same discussion years ago, then one day, one of the techs woke up dead.
Took the rest of the team better part of a month to get things all torn down and put back together because nobody had the keys to anything.
It will not happen again. Once was enough
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Bus Principal is only employed after it actually happens. We had this very same discussion years ago, then one day, one of the techs woke up dead.
Tell me, does this result in zombie processes?
Re:Payroll cop fubar (Score:4, Funny)
2) Relying on said single, solitary server for payroll is just begging for disaster. For a highly critical task such as payroll, having one point of failure is beyond stupid. One deserves what one gets if the server dies.
Do you work with me? Sounds like half of the conversation we have here on a regular basis.
I work in the shop of a computer store and at least three times a year someone comes in with an off-the-shelf $400 PC that they need fixed ZOMG YESTERDAY because it's their payroll server and 10-200 people need their paychecks ASAP. (For about half, it's the end of the week. For the other half, it's end of the DAY. And it's 4:45 when they bring the PC in and they close at 5:00.) Then when we tell them that it won't be ready in 15 minutes they get angry. And if their hard drive died, it gets better. The first thing they say when we tell them that their information is, short of a data recovery company's best efforts, gone forever is ALWAYS "But that's the only copy!"
Seriously? Single point of failure, no redundancy, no backup, and any sort of failure means 200 people who want their paychecks being mad at YOU? Might as well just have sent everyone a gift-wrapped torch or pitchfork for Christmas.
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My answer to all your points:
What you say is true, but the reality is that small companies usually can't justify the overhead (lack of dedicated resources), and the larger companies have much bigger cracks for good intentions to fall into.
#1: sometimes (most of the time) when you ask the questions like "does anything else depend on X", you get no answer, or worse: an incorrect answer. You go ahead, pull the plug, then get yelled at for not knowing the information people withheld from you.
#2: Payroll is not
Those qualify as dirty jobs in this industry? (Score:5, Funny)
Mike Rowe would laugh at every last one of them.
Re:Those qualify as dirty jobs in this industry? (Score:5, Funny)
Hell, he'd take one look at it and start a company called...
Wait for it...
MikeRoweSoft...
Yes, it's already been done [wikipedia.org]...
Dirty Jobs (Score:2)
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Home Support for VIPs (Score:2)
My last place, I was asked to, out of hours, go and setup the home network and VPN setup of the director of something or other. It was implied that it would be part of my normal course of duties. I absolutely refuse to do things of that sort, so I replied that my next available evening would be approximately 19 months from that day, and I could do it then. But I could expedite the process and clear some time to do the work for my "normal" contract billing hours - $200/hr, minimum three hours, plus travel ex
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They should've sent you during normal business hours. Helping someone get their VPN up and running is definitely within the scope of an IT person's duties. Though I agree in refusing to do it outside of normal business hours, that's just asking too much for something that doesn't have to be done later than 5pm.
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Unless he qualified for salaried exempt (and damned few computer people do), asking him to do that without pay is a crime in most states. Firing him for refusing to do so is a crime that might actually get some attention, depending on what state.
(Home IT support for the owner of the company I work for is explicitly part of my job, but a) he's not an idiot when it comes to computers, and b) since he tried having his nephew "who knows a lot about computers" fix something, he's been very, very polite to me.)
Redundancy (Score:2)
"penny-pinching clients"
You mean "clients"
Its Missing (Score:3, Insightful)
#3 (Score:2)
I can resonate with #3 a bit. A company that I have been providing leased accounting software and support to for years is about to switch to something entirely new (and in the process, no longer require my services). Now, while the loss of monthly income (when they pay on time) is certainly cause for concern, I also won't have to answer phone calls while I'm sleeping, and it will free up my more conventional work schedule so I can consider other job opportunities.
The problem here, is that just today I got
Re:Lumping these guys with actual programmers (Score:4, Interesting)
Take the analogy of "Public health": Public health means MDs, and PhD epidemiologists, and biochemists and stuff; but it also means the sweaty guy with the pipe wrench who makes sure that your water comes up your water pipe, your sewage goes down your sewage pipe, and the two don't get confused on their way to your mouth. Same goes for the dubiously literate kid at McDonalds who checks the core temperature of the "beef" patty because the pictograms in the employee handbook told him to.
Obviously, any screwdriver jockey who calls himself a "hardware engineer" just because he replaces dead hard drives when the SAN LEDs change color to tell him to needs a smacking. As does any ITT Tech Java monkey who calls himself a "software engineer". However, the idea that "IT" consists exclusively of upper-echelon engineering experts is transparently silly. A huge percentage of the labor involved in making a real-world IT system run basically has little or no relationship with hardware or software engineering at all.
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The fact that "water" isn't just a polite synonym for "dilute sewage" is very much a modern innovation.
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Some of them might be actual programmers as well.
I am a system administrator, who sometimes does these sort of it dirty jobs and I do dev work in php, perl, C++ and Java.
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Arguably this may be true. Here's a question: - Does every person who writes code qualify as a software engineer?
Here is a possible test: Civil engineers are personally responsible for errors in their work. If they design a structure and it falls down because of their errors, they are personally responsible. Do coders accept this level of responsibility for the bugs in their code? If so, maybe they are engineers.
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Here is another spin: what if the structure falls down because of errors in the computer design software, which was used to design the structure, who will take the blame?
Hint: it's the corporation, not the lit
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And yes, I realize some OLDER person will get on this thread and say "I'm a train engineer - a real engineer - unlike these punks with engineering 'degrees'"
Of course, engineers existed before train drivers; but that's another story...
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And at one time a train engineer did a lot more than drive the train.
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I take offense to programmers thinking they are "software engineers" when in fact many do not hold engineering degrees.
I worked at a job where they changed my title from "sys admin" to "IP Engineer". I avoided that term like the plague, for the very reason you mention.
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Absolutely. As one who has had the "pleasure" of moving/removing equipment, it is amazing at how disgusting some people are. I distinctly remember one case where I had to go to some machines and do a manual update. As I leaned over to put my fingers on the keys of a keyboard, I paused as I looked down and saw, as Tyr is my witness, that there was fungus or something growing from between the keys.
If you saw the movie Apollo 13 as they wer
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An AC calling another AC a moron (or perhaps the same AC).
What is this, Digg ?