back to article Breaking the habit

Pott's First Law: user inertia is the most powerful force in the universe. This is due to habits and habituation. Habits are patterns of behavior repeated with such frequency that they become subconsciously embedded. Habituation is the slow, steady acceptance of that regular stimulus input. Habituation is not only a result of …

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  1. Uk_Gadget

    The title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits.

    I feel your pain..... Just had our practise run, in the final stages of development, nearly ready to deploy... Just got to wait for the accountants nod then it's all systems change...

  2. Devon_Custard
    IT Angle

    Dude...

    At least deploy all these settings and apps automattically...GPO....SMS.....APPV

    1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

      Dude...

      So many applications and settings for which that simply isn't possible. It sucks. Greatly.

      1. Devon_Custard
        FAIL

        @Trevor_Pott

        Sorry, but if you have enough time to individually apply settings to 50 machines you have enough time to collate them and automate.

        1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

          @Devon_Custard

          The applications in question don't support said automation. It is not an issue of not being willing to put the time in to figure out how to automate them. The exception here is Firefox, to which I throw a “mea culpa”. I made an assumption (which made an ass out of u and me) that add-ons were global. I was caught entirely by surprise when I logged on as the user to load up the PST and discovered that the Firefox add-ons installed under the administrative context weren’t there.

          I am 100% certain it is possible to automate the Firefox portion of this rollout. In fact, it’s on my list of new GPOs to create in the next month. That said, since we had to go into the profiles to manually configure applications for which there simply is no possible way to automate a rollout anyways, we did the Firefox as part of that.

          When I say that there is no possible way to automate the rollout of these applications, I mean it. I have spent four years of off-and-on research trying.

      2. J. Cook Silver badge
        Go

        Indeed.

        And even Office 2007, which my company deployed via SCCM (the sucessor to SMS), we had a fairly high failure rate. I'm pretty certain we have a number of vendors who have never heard of "custom SMS/SCCM package" for their program, let alone certifying that it runs on windows 7.

        There is something, however, to be said about setting up a master VM image with all the apps on it, and just running Sysprep on it, even for Windows 7. (I have the server side piece to that little nugget for my company; it's been the source of a bit of frustration these past two weeks getting time to work on it, let along get it working.)

  3. phuzz Silver badge
    Go

    Office 2007

    When we upgraded everyone from office 2003 up to 2007, there was a good week or so of moaning and complaints from our users, but after a few grumbles (and pointers on where 'their buttons' had been moved to) they took to it fine.

    Now they'd probably break my hand if I tried to make them use 2003 again...

    ditto XP to Vista/7, although a good tip for moving 'less technical' users to Win7, is to go round and show them how to change the background to the pretty ones that ship with 7. It's a bit like putting butter on a cat's paws, they played around for the rest of the afternoon, and soon forgot any complaints they had.

    1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

      Backgrounds?

      Nein! We use RDP to access virtual machines. You vill use solid colours und you vill like ut!

  4. dreamingspire
    FAIL

    Training, training...

    Did nobody think of training the users in advance? (Perhaps they did, but would not spend the money - if so, Trev, change your job.)

    1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

      Training?

      As in where you spend money to get users trained? Not in the seven years I've worked there. Myself and the other sysadmin have gotten MCP exams paid for. The other sysadmin and the CFO periodically are flown out to learn some things about how the point of sales software works. One or two of our production folks attends a conference every year about how a piece of industry-specific software works.

      As to users...no sir. It is generally considered our job as IT Operations to train them. The production fellow has to train users in the use of that application. That's as far as it goes. As to chaninging my job...why do you think I took up writing? It will be a slow process, but maybe in ten years...

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Headmaster

    A very predictable farce

    In my experience the sort of project described is run by IT people who are used to the new technologies and dont consider the human element of the users consuming these services.

    There will always be some moaning but the implementation (at least as described) does not seem to have done much hearts and minds work at all. The outcome expected seems to be mostly that the service will be easier for IT to manage in this case.

    failures and big-bang implementations are not always avoidable but there does not seem to have been much help available from vendors or other management or personell to field calls or fix things elsewhere. working 80 hours straight in many places would get HR departments boiling over potential health and stress issues let alone your ability to fix things being reduced.

    Getting some "expert" users trained in advance in the various cities and getting queries and complaints going to them would also take the pressure off.

    It seems to me that either this really was done on the cheap to the point where working several days in a row would have been inevitable even without the failures (in which case doomsday was self inflicted), or risk mitigations were out of budget (unrealistic corporate expectation).

    Was any kind of risk review done in advance? When I have been forced in to big-bang implementions one of the key things done is to ensure that there is room for rest periods/staff rotation for both the implementation and any contingency time, not just one person start to finish.

    1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

      It was indeed a farce.

      I happen to agree. We have three sites not located in the same city as myself. I took the time on the company dime to go to two of them. I trained up the store manager and assistant store manager in the new software insofar as was possible given the dearth of test equipment. When I attempted to do so in the second store I visited, any attempts at training the manager were brushed off. "Just install it, we'll figure it out when you do." The assistant manager was on holidays.

      As we have a fellow in the third city who is capable of swapping a hardware component with about 90% success rate I was strongly discouraged for spending the time or money to visit the third city. Surely I could simply tell the pseudo-tech in the other city how the software worked, no? Predictably, this is the city where most of wailing occurred. Not for lack of superhuman and heroic effort on behalf of the peusdo-tech on the other site – he tries his best and I think him greatly for it – be he’s not an IT body. (Let that in no way diminish the excellent resource he provides. I couldn’t administer that city without him.)

      Risk mitigation isn’t something that’s considered until after folk have experienced that particular kind of failure. I went into this weekend knowing /exactly/ how bad I would be. I told everyone how bad it would be. I had a conversation with the CEO in which I explained to him that this weekend would be hellish on the IT Operations staff and the whole week following would be shaking out the bugs. We were going to miss things. We were going to fail at thing, or some things would go wrong unexpectedly at the last moment.

      Oh, and I didn’t want to roll out the newer versions of the software. I’d have been quite happy to sit on XP, Office 2003 until 2012. Though to be honest I would have upgraded communicator to 2007 R2 because it actually /is/ better than 2005 R2.

      As to staff period of rest and rotation…they were enforced. I ensured that the other sysadmin and the bench tech got rest. As close to a full eight hours sleep per night as we were able to provide them. I personally was the one who put in the 82 hours straight because I will ask no man to do what I am not willing to do myself. I believe in leading by example and if I can make the lives of those I work with easier by working a little harder…then so be it. Besides, I needed them bright eyed and busy tailed to handle the pile of crap that was going to hit us Monday morning.

      It wasn’t an ideal situation. It was compounded by the fact that I made mistakes and misjudgements along the way. I should have had contingencies planned for a few things I didn’t and I probably a few to many contingencies for things that didn’t blow up. Throw in the things I couldn’t control or predict, as well as nonexistent budget and impossible deadlines and you have a Doomsday Weekend. (I don’t use the term lightly.) Learned a lot though…some of which I am hoping to pass on through my blogs.

  6. kempsy
    Gates Horns

    Upgrade from Occive 2003 to 2007

    I would disagree with phuzz, having been part of an organisation that "upgraded" from Office 2003 to Office 2007 I wouldn't say that people would be terribly unhappy if they want back to 2003.

    Indeed, juding by the still frequent comments (after over 12 months) of "where the hell is this" and "why can't i open/print that", I would take 2003 back in a heartbeat - if only for the peace and quiet!

    I would agree with you on the upgrade from XP to Vista/7, although thats more down to the users not really interacting (or needing to anything more than a basic level) with the operating system as a whole.

    1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

      @Kempsy

      Ubitmenu. <3.

  7. Pandy06269
    FAIL

    OMG!

    We had enough trouble changing one application across a ~700-strong user-base, let alone changing Windows, Office and the browser!

    Surely you could have virtualised their existing desktops (VMware P2V or similar) then slowly phased them in by changing one thing at a time. Office 2003 to 2007/2010 and Windows XP to 7 are enough of a change *each* to send a regular user swimming up the creek, let alone inflicting that on them at the same time.

    Sorry but if you'd even suggested doing all these changes at the same time where I work you'd have been thrown out the office and not let back in even if you had a better suggestion. I bet it killed all productivity for the first couple of days.

    Also the identical VM installations - was it not even possible to create one VM with everything installed and then use that as a template? Even if you have 5 different configurations, that's still 45 less machines you've got to install from scratch.

    1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

      @Pandy06269

      We are running almost fully VDI. We did use templates. Office doesn't like bing cloned. Firefox has user-specific configurations and add-ons must be installed /per user/. We have industry-specific applications that absolutely require user specific configuration. PST files had to be loaded from the old forest's exchange server into the new forest's exchange server manually. The change from XP to 7 also brought with it the change in profile types. We changed from roaming profiles to folder redirection and did so across forests. That meant manually importing files from the old network and placing them into the appropriate places on the new network.

      There were other things, but no. It wasn't something that could be automated. I promise you we automated everything we could, and made extensive use of template VMs. Sadly, the ability to filly configure applications which require user-specific setup depends on support from the application vendor. Two of the applications we use simply don’t support it, and I have zero say in the fact that we use them.

  8. Graham Bartlett

    How not to do it, by Trevor Potts

    "We decided unilaterally to change the software on everyone's machines. For our own convenience we didn't just do this as part of PC refreshes - instead I trashed everyone's working environments in one go. We didn't train them on how to use the new software, even though every piece of software is radically different from what people had previously used. Some of this software is incompatible with what was previously used, so that some users will be unable to carry out business-critical tasks. We didn't [I assume] check that there were no deadlines or other important events which would be adversely affected by users being unable to use their PCs efficiently. We didn't properly assess how long this was going to take or ensure we had adequate assistance, so we ended up working stupid hours to get it done.

    "And here's an article saying that we're heroic and my users are clueless idiots for complaining about their IT staff screwing them over."

    Jeez, get a clue, man.

    1. BlueGreen

      This is a *bit* over the top but I agree

      You don't jerk the rug out from under them so they suddenly can't do their job, you don't (if possible) do it in a big bang, you get buy-in (prior involvement) from the users - critical, that, will save a lot of aggro - you provide training or run both systems in parallel, you get local experts trained up so the users have someone who isn't you to call on for what hasn't been covered in training...

      Seriously, you just *don't* do it like you did. What a mess.

      Your managers have some explaining to do also.

      1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

        @Bluegreen

        The local experts thing was tried. See above post by me. Getting "buy-in" from the users is impossible...they see any change as a hostile act and the changes were dictated from above my head as necessary. We didn't have the funds to run both systems in parallel.

        And no, you DON'T, EVER do it how we did it. It was a mess. Please, anyone reading these articles and these comments....learn from that.

        As much as I would love to blame my managers and say they have explaining to do…they sort of didn’t have much choice either. Well…one of them did. The one pushing the new software as requisite. The rest…if you take the new software requirement as a given, then no…there was no other choice. The funds simply weren’t available to it properly. It’s not a matter of being cheap; it is a matter of IT requirements outstripping capacity. The company I work for is in a odd place: we have the IT requirements of a company three times our size. Periodically, we are all of us forced to bite the bullet and do what we don’t want to do.

        I am sure I shoulder some of the blame. I explain this through my articles as I talk about the things I should have done but didn’t. I could have done some things to make this go smoother, but didn’t think of them in time. Still, the combination of what I should have and could have done combined with what I should have and couldn’t have done made for a weekend in which pretty much everything that could go wrong…did.

        I don’t think it’s a neat little bow where all the blame can be borne by one person. I deserve to take some crap for it. The managers do as well. The users were warned about all of this before hand (months beforehand) and honestly could have read their damned emails too. I think there’s plenty of blame to go around, but unfortunately the issues involved are so complex you can’t lay them all on one person’s head.

        It was a learning experience for all involved. One I hope my readers learn from as well.

    2. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

      @Graham Bartlett

      Trevor Pott. No s.

      I don't view myself as in any way heroic. Simply backed into a corner. I do think that the other two souls involved in this are somewhat heroic: they have many other choices, but to but the shoulder to the grindstone anyways. I wish there was a way to big them up something fierce; I think they have done the impossible under exceptional circumstances.

      Myself on the other hand, I am theoretically in charge of IT Operations here. To my way of thinking, anything good that occurs in IT operations is because of the valiant efforts of my staffs and everything bad falls on my shoulders. I didn’t have the resources to do this right and I was inadequate at MacGyvering a solution to pull it off given the limited resources available. That is indeed my fault, I will attempt in no way to dodge that responsibility.

      This isn’t an article about heroics. This is an article explaining how it all goes horribly, horribly wrong when you're backed into a corner. When you get backed into a corner, learn from what's talked about in the article and find a way out of it. If nothing else then go back to El Reg on that day, print out these articles and present them to your manager. Whatever you do, don't let yourself get trapped in the same situation I got trapped in.

      I knew exactly how bad this was going to be before I hit the weekend. I told everyone how bad it was going to be. I also had no other choice. Under no circumstances should anyone view what occurred as heroic or anything to look up to. I would be saddened beyond words if someone who read these articles was unable to learn from them and avoid the mistakes made.

  9. Alex Rose

    Terminal Services

    I'm confused as to why you didn't use terminal services? That way you install the software only as many times as you have users. 50 users - 2 or 3 terminal servers - job done.

    Using VMs with thin clients just seems.....weird. I'd be interested to know your reasoning for going down this route?

    1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

      @Alex Rose

      A question instead of a snipe! Hurray! Okay, here’s the skinny: We use a Point Of Sales (POS) application that is absolutely vital, and forced us into the VDI route. In Addition, we have a piece of industry specific software that isn’t compatible with multiple sessions running on a single machine.

      The POS software is only barely multi-session aware. It will work if it is installed on a terminal server, with several people running several instances of it. However the application over a userbase of about 50 individuals does tend to crash on someone’s machine at least once a day. When that thing crashes in a terminal services environment for one user, it crashes for them ALL. For the same reason, application virtualisation is out; App-V doesn’t fully containerize the application. It just presents a TS session consisting of one application. Tank one copy of the app in an App-V scenario, you still tank every other copy running on the Windows Desktop Services server.

      Since it’s a POS application, when it crashes it leaves a nightmare for the bean counters to clean up, let alone an inconvenience for the users. Because of weirdness in the design of the POS application, it absolutely *must* be run from the same location. We can’t deploy it centrally and have folks on remote sites run it locally. They have to be using VMs at a central location to use it.

      Even if we could iron that out, we still wouldn’t be able to run the industry-specific piece of software that the other 25 users require in a multi-session environment.

      Oh, and both those apps as well as Firefox require user-specific configurations, so we’d still have to have logged on as each user to do that, as well as port their PST files from the old network.

      And that sir is how we ended up with VDI.

      1. Alex Rose

        tl;dr

        So the tl;dr version is, "Lazy developers made me do it" :)

        Thanks for the info.

        1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

          @Alex Rose

          A little too tl;dr, actually. As much as I would love to dump it all on the devs' laps...they are in a similar situation. Not enough devs, many demanding customers and a rapidly changing IT landscape. I do have to give them the benefit of the doubt. Working with devs from the companies that sell us their software for years now…they seem look good, but dramatically overworked folk. There are no easy fingers of blame here.

  10. kevin mulholland
    Stop

    Bit at a time

    Was it not possible to 'upgrade' departments one at a time to the new system, this would give you a learning experience of the users pain points as well as not creating chaos for your company come Monday morning.

    Departmental manager buy-in, selected expert users in each department to cover the simple stuff; so that everyone does not hassle IT straight away. These are the things to do. Expert users can be give the new kit weeks in advance of the department upgrade,everyone knows its coming, as the can actually see change happening.

    Oh, and even though I hate to say it, get a project manager to supervise and organise. They can then take some of the management flak for things not going to plan.

    Reduce chaos, increase simplicity, all VM's as similar as possible, push configs to linux boxes via scripts if you have not gone down the puppet route, reduce typing that you have to do when dead tired after 80 hours working.

    Don't do things that make the entire company think that all IT do is cause problems and cannot create solutions, you will not win friends.

    1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

      @Kevin Mulholland

      As regards getting a project manager, your sentiments on this are something I can’t agree more with. Unfortunately, my opinion on the matter (that systems administration and project/departmental management are separate occupations by necessity) is not shared. I can do one or the other, but trying to be both results in bad things.

      As to "upgrade" department at a time...sadly it’s only possible when you have the gear. When you are switching active-directory forests, it's very much an all-or-nothing proposition. It's not simply adding a domain to an existing forest, but actually a completely new forest. Now, if we had had the hardware to run both systems in parallel, I could have done some fancy things with trusts, and redirected outlook for people on the new network back to the old e-mail server until we switched that, then directed people on the old network to the new e-mail server etc.

      If we could have run the two networks in parallel I could have taken all the time I wanted to change over and this would have gone smooth as you please. When you have to do it using only the resources you have, then a forest change absolutely requires a complete cutover.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I'm astonished by your arrogance

    What you describe as apathy is probably the desire to get on with doing the job, using appropriate and familiar tools.

    When the accountants come to you and say that they need the latest whatsits in Excel: upgrade them

    When the secretaries tell you they need a later version of word: do it.

    Otherwise, who the hell are you to be dictating what software your fellow employees are using?

    You are there for them: not the other way around.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Alert

      Your'e wrong Thad.

      "You are there for them: not the other way around."

      So wrong it's almost funny....The job of the IT dept (in this regard) is to provide a stable IT platform from which the employees of the business can carry out their duties.

      If employees have an issue with IT they should approach the IT dept who will then work out a solution for them.

      It's the IT dept with the knowledge, expertese and it's the IT dept that gets it in the neck when things go wrong.

      Letting users have say in how the "Rainforest" is run will just result in problems down the line and to me, your attitude indicates a lack of experience and confidence to the point that you just go along with what your users ask for simply because you don't know any better and you talk about user apathy!?!

      "When the accountants come to you and say that they need the latest whatsits in Excel: upgrade them

      When the secretaries tell you they need a later version of word: do it."

      You obviously live on planet "everything is free". Good luck with that though because for me "I want it because I heard it's the latest one and Dave in accounts said he might be getting it" isn't a good enough business justification for a bespoke desktop enviroment.

      Clueless...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        No...

        Ahhh... Microsoft!

        What they did was to put the choice of computing application in the hands of users, and, of course, they did it by marketing their own products. Can you seriously tell me that any informed user would choose Word for Windows? They did. That's ***THEY*** did. Not you, and not me (when I was an IT manager too). Many an IT manager can't admit to themselves that their real control ended when they took terminals off desks and put PCs there.

        Yes, I was in the trade, and yes I do believe in what I said. Company-wide applications occupy a different area to desktop "productivity" apps, of course: there it is the server that rules, not forgetting that even that is about the company and the people, not the IT dept.

        It's a consumer world on the desktop. Don't worry, because in the end, Microsoft will persuade people they want that upgrade anyway, and then it has to be financed out of the IT budget.

        It is never a black and white world. Our upgrade to W2K was required by one essential bespoke application that ran the company's business. In that situation, could I listen to anyone who wanted to stick with W98? No of course not.

        1. Alex Rose

          OK...

          Well Aston Martin's marketing people have persuaded me that I need that DB9. I STILL don't think my boss is going to let me have it.

          I don't know what it is that makes people think that IT doesn't have to bow to the realities that every other department bows to, but for some reason they do.

          Do you think purchasing would order the secretaries Mont Blanc fountain pens if they said they needed them? Or do you think they'd be exercising due diligence if they checked first if the existing pens were still up to the job?

    2. Alex Rose

      I'm astonished by your ignorance

      I'm guessing you don't work in IT and don't know an awful lot about business.

      IT are there to supply the best IT possible for a given budget. If the accountants want upgrading to the latest "whatsits" in Excel then it needs to be demonstrated that the benefit of doing so outweighs the cost.

      This is what is known in the trade as good business practice.

      I could do my job a lot better with a Aston Martin DB9 as my company car, I can demonstrate that I can do the job in less time so should my boss give me one?

      Changing passwords helps keep costs down by reducing network intrusions, just because users don't see the value (to which a monetary amount can be attached) doesn't make IT arrogant to expect them to toe the line.

  12. FozzyBear
    Stop

    Man!

    Give the man a break. He is throwing his experiences out there for others to read and learn from. Whether right or wrong it is all a learning experience and personally I’d rather learn from another’s fuckups than my own. Could have been managed better, definitely. Could have been implemented better, sure. A lot of things could have been done better, particularly, when you have the opportunity to examine the project under the hindsight microscope The fact is all of us have rowed the same project canoe up that same sewer infested creek at least once before

    Hopefully from this post others in similar positions will take away some sound advice

  13. This post has been deleted by its author

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Heh

    While I see what some commenters believe are good points they forget some businesses simply don't work that way, and probably never will.

    Place I work? pretty much just that. Stuck in old habits, and about as flexible as steel mesh encased in concrete.

    It is the only way we are able to operate: spend the summer vacation (because everyone refuses until the very last minute and then some to relinquish their machine for a single hour to reinstall it) rebuilding the entire network with updates and upgrades, so everyone can enjoy a tested and working environment 7 weeks later when they return. To have some actual time off ourselves, we hire extra brains with hands to get it done in a week, and have another week for testing. That way there is little chance for error. Anything that does come up when the users are back, can then be fixed inside the first day or two on an individual basis, as it's usually very minor.

    We were actually told to 'do it the oldfashioned way' for the new location. So instead of the proposed (and thought-through, planned) setup of 4 load balancing virtual server hosts we have 12 single task machines instead at the so very last minute (weeks before launch) and complaints galore because shit was not online yet. We wish we could use thin clients and virtual desktops! even with the +200 individually quirky apps, it would save a lot of time. Managing several generations of desktop machines is simply crap with a two year old sultana on top.

    In the end it cost a lot more than the proposed setup, and it has reached critical mass. Workstations are falling apart, and all the money is gone, so no upgrades can be bought. We will be spending all of 2011 ductaping it together until 2012 comes around, and budget can be made for 2013.

    That's right.

    1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

      Yarp.

      Band-aids on top of Band-aids on top of Band-aids until guess what the only path through is to burn it all down and start from scratch. "Organic growth." Go from one server in one site to 40 physical servers and 200 virtual in five sites in seven years. Not exactly Google levels of growth...but then Google doesn't only have three Ops guys, either. IIRC correctly, Google still does burn it all down and start from scratch every few years anyways. They just have the manpower and the resources to transition rather than cut over.

      Man, wouldn't being a Ops guy in one of their DCs be neat? Has to be one of the coolest Ops jobs on the planet.

      1. Gotno iShit Wantno iShit

        Googleops

        Cool in an unlimited pub bragging material sense, you'd be involved in the biggest IT migration projects in the world that included all the latest tech and buzzwords. But wait a moment, what would you the individual do? Each individual will be responsible for such a tiny portion of a major transition I certainly and I suspect you too would find it immensely dull. Bear with me while I (unrealistically) extrapolate your cutover to Google proportions.

        One Ops guy might be tasked with developing the process to install one of the add ons for Firefox. The technical aspect of that will be over in half a days thought. That will be followed by months of procedure writing and progress meetings. Come the start of the implementation he'll have a small army of monkeys to log in each of the 100,000 user profiles and configure that one add on. All the ops guy will do is maintain a watch on progress. Yawn.

        To be involved in more than one small part you need to float high enough up the tree that instead of doing you are directing and then you will be totally hands off. You may have to decide for each of the applications or add ons whether implementation option a, b or c is followed but someone else will be preparing (and investigating, and understanding) those options. You as manager won't be near enough to the coal face to get your hands dirty.

        I know the situation I paint above is unrealistic; Google would never do something in that repetitive manner. The point is if you are resource rich a big project gets broken down into very small packets. If you are at the bottom of the pile you are hands on to an unchallenging scope of work, if you are higher up you cover a broader scope that would be interesting if only you could get your hands on it.

        I'm in control system engineering rather than IT but I move from small projects to vast ones and find the small jobs much more interesting. I find much more reward in achieving the bloody difficult, such as you did, all be it sometimes messy. When you are awash with resources someone always knows the answer whatever the question, everyone is expert in something so there's no challenge, no room to learn.

        Yeah your Doomsday weekend was messy but I bet you'll treasure the experience. The trick is to be in a company that has projects big enough to be interesting but only *just* enough resources to get the job done. I'll take rewarding over buzzword bingo 'cool' any day.

        1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

          Re: Gogle Ops

          I've been doing SME networks for so long now that "interesting" is cognate with lack of sleep. On any on the networks I oversee, if I hear someone say "that's interesting" I check the coffee supply. I realise that working for Google Ops as the lowly blue collar drone that my creds would get me would probably be boring.

          Oddly enough, I could do with a short spell of boring. :)

          There's truth overall to what you say. I thrive on the challenge of making something out of nothing. Sadly, it's a dying art. Computing is heading in the direction of appliances at all levels. Unless you have an iron ring HR types feel you unqualified to innovate. (Or apparently be paid a living wage.) What then for dinosaurs like me?

          If the future is fairly inevitably either managing appliances or herding clouds…cloud herding actually seems the less boring of the two. Much as I’d love to, I’ll never be able to afford to get an iron ring. So dreaming of being a Google Cloudherder seems as reasonable a future as any other.

          I’d take rewarding over buzzword bingo. I’d also choose “pays a living wage and will exist in 10 years” over rewarding. Both combined would of course be the best possible option.

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