Re: Bad managers are like knotweed
"I'd be interested if anyone has a notion to explain this ...."
I'd suggest reading a couple of books on management written by one of your fellow Brits, C. Northcote Parkinson.
Friday is here again, bringing with it the ferreting for loose change to pay the beer bill – and, of course, On Call, our weekly column in which readers tell us how they dealt with a tech support drama. This week, we meet "Hugh", whose tale of "make do and mend" landed in some rather hot water. Hugh worked at a major non- …
I heard about Germany (And an older generation) that after the war, if you had talent and ambition you went into business . Others went into politics ( of course there were exceptions), armed forces were a bitter duty.
Oh, and I don't think they suffer from the equivalents to Eton et al.
"quite a few Army officers go into IT, especially stuff like project management"
There's good and bad in every group, and I had the misfortune of clashing heads with "The General" - he went round the place pretending to be in charge of IT and generally berated me because I wouldn't run systems to suit him.
If anyone in the team was annoyed with him, he'd be "demoted" by being referred to as a lower rank.
One day, he annoyed me so much, I stormed into the office and called him "The Fucking Dishonorable Discharge",
"I'd be interested if anyone has a notion to explain this ...."
It's a digression from the usual sort of anecdata... but I'll try.
One represents the world of feelings and desire, the other the world of the reality of *getting things done*. The prime advantage of military education (and that includes boot camp/basic) is to bash into everyone's head that the team and the result are of a much higher priority than ego, especially ego which gets in the way of dealing with reality as it is, rather than how you would like it to be.
Sort of BTW, but not really. Earlier this year the USS Fitzgerald collided with a freighter, in Japanese waters. It turns out that the Officer of the Deck on the USS Fitzgerald, and the Officer in charge of the Combat Information Center were engaged in a tiff more appropriate to a pair of 12 year old girls, which they were acting like: they were not speaking to each other. Although CIC was aware of the risk of collision shown by the constant bearing angle between the ships, CIC did not so inform the bridge and trigger some reaction before it was too late. Seven sailors died because of that ego storm.
"Two entirely different creatures, it seems. It's weird."
In 2004, Michael Barone wrote a book about this dichotomy, called 'Hard America, Soft America.'
'A peculiar feature of our country today, says Michael Barone, is that we seem to produce incompetent eighteen-year-olds but remarkably competent thirty-year-olds. Indeed, American students lag behind their peers in other nations, but America remains on the leading edge economically, scientifically, technologically, and militarily.'
A REALLY REALLY interesting read.
Also about then, I read an article in some publication, written by a lefty journalist (but I repeat myself (damn! I just typed 'mysql' and had to go back!)) who was embedded with an Army unit in the sand-box. He was astounded by the men he met: "Where do they find people like this?" They were, of course, completely unlike anything he had ever seen at Columbia U, or Brown. The mind-blower for him, was when a Corporal gave up his lottery-gifted planned satellite phone call to his expectant wife back home, so that the Sergeant could use the platoon's only allowed call, to call the parents of their recently killed brother in arms. The journo could neither imagine nor understand this selflessness: Where do they find people like this? To him it was as if they were grown in Montana or Idaho or Kansas. But such people are not found, they can be and are made. And the modern educational system (including Oxbridge etc) *does not teach that*. STEM at least requires that the bridges not fall down, but that is unfortunately not enough on its own.
Here endeth the digression.
"America remains on the leading edge economically, scientifically, technologically, and militarily"
What about socially? What good is being the leader in economy science and etc. if it is not to make the society and the people more happy?
"the platoon's only allowed call, to call the parents of their recently killed brother in arms"
Ditto. What good is an army that restrict the calls to the parents of a killed soldier?
Sometimes, there just isn't enough bandwidth to go around, depending on when this happened.
They'd have to rely on other, older, methods to get that call home. I believe the US army has a tradition of sending an officer to the parent's home to break the news in person if possible - getting a call directly from the front lines is probably *still* exceptional.
Seems to imply that this is a US phenomenon. Of course, the way that "they find people like this" is that they are trained to fight and die as a team. I'm not military but I suspect that if managers the world over had to work to build a successful team or everyone died, we'd have more successful teams. A bit excessive though, rather costly in human lives.
"British bad management—and I mean, really, hopelessly ignorant, tone-deaf, counterproductive and often arrogant dimwits"
I work with one of those but he's the classic techie promoted into a mangtement job and so grinds everything to a standstill as everything has to be approved/designed/implemented by him [cos hes the best techie obv] rather than jiust let his very competent staff just get on with getting shit done [which they really want to and are being demotivated into their graves by his need to be a hero].
That is much more often the reason for bad management in UK IT than putting competent managers in to give techies their room to excel.
We have 5 people on a good day (actually 4.5 as one is about half useless) supporting 1,200 people and about 1,400 machines, as well as printers, cell phones, desk phones, and whatever else is hurled our way. Yet there is plenty of money for beautifying the lawn, constant remodeling of areas that were just remodeled the year before, acquisitions of smaller companies, as well as "feel good" stuff like employee activities and clubs. Which makes for an odd schizophrenic environment, kind of like being in hell but with nice lunches.
While I realize that image and growth are necessary for any company to remain relevant, IT is a foundation of any business these days, and I feel like we're building the Taj Mahal on gravel in a floodplain most days. We are stretched ridiculously thin.
I have heard of poor companies who send their minions on eBay raids.
Old RAM sticks are actually *more* reliable than new sometimes, depending on what they came out of.
Also a lot of the time they can run at their rated clock speed whereas newer ones auto-negotiate to whatever the speed of the CPU/BIOS/uEFI default which can result in issues.
Also relevant: many old laptops have socketed CPUs so can be upgraded if you have enough of them and a little assembly line of PFY's taking them apart with military precision and then running the final soak test en masse with a CPU fan clean/replacement included via drawing lots.
(note: with mine I needed to reflash the BIOS but this was a 2 minute job)
Batteries can be reconditioned with the right procedure and I make extensive use of BatteryInfoView (tm) and similar tools for a quick go/no go test.
The really rubbish one(s) get given away to folks as an alternative to being mains tethered with the advice to be really careful with backups, sometimes they last a few months to a year.
Used but tested SSDs are normally OK for many applications and everything gets backed up to encrypted SD card with a boot alert if it gets taken out.
I have a old Dell laptop with a old socketed i7 and new SSD, docking station two 21" monitors, it has a keyboard that I can really use (anyone happy with the new models, all touchscreen BS) so well my "good" USB keyboard is not used.
Liked it so much bought a i5 version as a spare
Let me be very clear, if anyone says there is no budget some one in the chain of command usually more than one is trying to give there boss a blow job (the only exception is when you see bailiffs at the front door). Spend what you need to get the job done and meet compliance, otherwise your not doing a professional job. The trouble is that most IT professional lack training in other areas such as negotiation.
Belgium, 2011, Friday afternoon, 13:00, midwinter. Telephone: Can you start there and there at 17:00? Till 21:00?, the temp office person asks. Sure, I say. ... The adress was 10km from my place, and there was more than 10 cm snow on the road. Yes we can... So I arrive early, 16:45, no one there but the last of the daystaff - no problem, I start anyway. At 17:25 the person that was supposed to tell me my job finally arrives (shopping, very important). Weekend passes, monday comes, 15 cm of snow, I start at 16:55. At 20:15 there is nothing more to do, I confer with my collegue, sure, go home. Tuesday: Telephone, the temp office: There have been complaints about you starting early... I arrive at the place of work, there is a person that looks as pretty as Iggy Pop - the female version. I start at 17:00, and she starts accusing me of ALWAYS starting early, and leaving early as well. And it was this, and that, and such and such, and you cannot say that. I defend myself by stating that the first time I was about 10 minutes early while the other person was 25 minutes late (YOU CANNOT SAY THAT!) and the next time I was 5 minutes early... which is rather neat being on time, having to start at 17:00, also in regard to the weather and such.... AND YOU MUST NOT START AT 17:00!!! ... Right. Since I had figured out after 5 minutes with the aggravated Iggi Pop-crocodile (lovely skin texture, large mouth, she would make a nice hand bag - with shoes to match), whatever I did was wrong, I told her to go look for somebody else, and Celeste had left the building at 17:05. ... Next day, the temp office calls, there have been complaints... I explain, and the temp office person responds with: What??? They cannot do that...