Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain

It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory. - W. Edwards Deming

I respect one law over all others…the law of unintended consequences.

I can’t think of a better example than government laws and regs, where the real fun comes later after all hell breaks loose over something unexpected. I keep expecting something to turn around and work right, but with when it comes to the public trust, what looks like a benevolent hidden hand running things eventually turns out to be just another guy pulling levers and spinning dials without a clue.

My personal example: In my state, a couple of Governors back, we started outsourcing all state IT work to a gigantic computer contracting company. So with eyes tightly shut, a contract was signed and delivered. The plan was to save money, create jobs, improve services and make everyone look good. The result has been lost money, a screwed up job market, disappointed customers and yards of of bad press for both sides. Throw in a broken economy, and we have a train wreck. Something hard to watch but too macabre to turn away from.

The size of the thing skews the job market in a weird way. Projects that are priorties tend to create weeks of employment ads, recruiter calls and interviews. But when there’s bad press and or an argument over state fundng, the interviews disappear and cutbacks start. Reminds me of old movies where the workers file in and out of the factory gates, working one day, locked out the next. At least they had snappy 40’s dialogue to fall back on.

All that sturm and drang has created some cynical workers. Recently, a veteran of the contract wars showed up on my team. She’d been in big data center projects, then jumped to the state, the got rebadged, downsized, rehired, and finally hit the two-year limit. We all know about the two-year limit for non-employees, created by. . . wait for it . . .The Government!

(hint: Microsoft sued by Feds gets ruling that anyone contracted more than 24 months is really an employee)

What the state provides, the Federales can take away. Our new friend lands back on the street again, due to the arbitrary 2-year limit, arrives in our midst for the requisite number of months, and then will cycle back out again. Not only have we lost the social contract of work-for-security that our parents enjoyed, we now have built-in clocks counting down the 730 days until we have to leave, even before we get our first paycheck.

Which creates another odd consequence, the two-tier society. Itinerant workers don’t have the same status as full time employees. We temps often outnumber the permanent fully-employed by a wide margin, but they get the benefits, time off, parties, free flu shots and career paths. We get a check and a slap on the butt as we head out the door when our time is up. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Which begs the question, what’s the future of IT careers? Are we headed back to our agrarian past, with every worker an independent business like the family farm used be? Or will we swing toward the Big Contractor model where we become worker bees for one entity while really working for another. The third option, companies hiring people on their own payroll, is sounding nostalgic and old-school.

(hint: European courts have found that many countries - Spain was cited recently - as having well over 50% of workers actually contractors, mostly due to the EU employment laws that make it impossible to fire deadbeats after they’re on the payroll)

On this side of the pond, we still hold up individual liberty and responsibility as the model, but the IT market is global. Examples like this state-private IT contract show that we need better leadership here at home to avoid the disintegration of stable employment that the grey-beards in Europe have caused. We need to get us back to building careers in technology, rather than just job hopping.

Maybe we should elect leaders who keep at least one eye open when they sign on the dotted line.

Who Moved My Cheez-its?

I hate Scurry. Sniff is practical, inquisitive. But that other one is just a hyperactive little rodent.

In ‘98, when computers were all beige, and Gates and Jobs still hated each other and Sun was the golden child of the bubble, the story of the rats and the little people came out. Their cheese went missing, and apparently being Lactose deficient, Sniff and Scurry immediately ran off to find some.

After pounding down an all-cheese diet day after day, I’d be looking for a green leafy salad to unblock things. . .just to avoid awkwardness in a confined space, if ya know what I mean. . .and I think you do. But in the story there were no bathrooms, so maybe food followed function in the maze.

In any case the two rats took off on their creepy little pink feet to find more Winsleydale and Stilton, while the little people settled in for opportunity to come knockin’.

It all seemed magical, if a bit childlike.

Change was different 10 years ago. The bubble was swelling up nicely, so we all cruised across its overstretched skin, enjoying the smooth ride to a shiny future of tech job security. Changes in the market were exciting; it was what made us go find the big cheese that brought big raises back in ‘99.

Today, change is like opening the fridge and the light doesn’t come on. Squinting into the guts of the box, none of the formless shapes look appetizing. But we have to eat, and the fridge is where the food is. So we reach in and grab whatever job opportunity we can find, even if it’s half-a-loaf compared to our old bread-winning gig.

I kept thinking that we’d been through this before. Heck, in ’02 budgets for IT projects shriveled like forgotten grapes, but we rode that one out. This time, kicked out into the maze with severance in hand, I joined the legions milling around the job market like zebra on a river bank. But there was only one option, so in we went, fighting currents to make it to the other side and job security.

Back at the maze, we find handwriting on the wall, put there to give little people courage in the confusion of change. The first messages aren’t all gems: “Having Cheese Makes You Happy” sounds like Yoda in his early years, before he figured out how to warp syntax to sound sage. (”Happy you are, when Cheese you have”).

Around the corner, the advice gets better, if a bit deep for the likes of rats and lilliputians. “What would you do if you weren’t afraid?” I’m thinking, Not Die, first of all. Fear of large moving trucks and bungee jumping have kept me on this mortal coil so far. To paraphrase Gekko, “Fear is Good”. Still, it’s a more useful piece of graffiti than Yoda’s pre-teen advice.

Then it gets serious. “Smell the cheese often so you know when it’s getting old”. Aside from evoking disturbing images, that one could be useful. I may have seen the layoffs coming and jumped into a safe public tech position, insulated from the economic sturm and drang outside. But I wasn’t really like Sniff, so I kept telling myself the work isn’t stale so much as just getting sort of a strong odor. It was becoming Bleu cheese, or Gruyere, which my dad said smelled like gym shoes after they’ve been in the locker for a week. But I digress.

Overcoming inertia, anxiety and the worst recession in decades - we reach our (predestined?) destination. The memory of what we just went through can’t stop our old habits - we love having our cheese and eating it too - so we’re snoggers for the next bubble once again.

But there’s one more piece of writing on the wall. Not inspiring as much as sobering. Maybe the only takeaway from this whole experience.

“They keep moving the cheese”

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Dont. Stop. Swimming.

“Well, we might as well get this out of the way now. The employment numbers were uniformly horrible.”

At times like these, I turn to my kid’s video library for inspiration.
I give you: Dory, the blue-tang fish, who’s helping a clown fish search for Nemo, his son.

Just keep swimming…

“This was a very ugly labor market report, and there is no amount of lipstick that can improve its image.”

Just keep Swimming

When Dory realizes that they’re never going to make it without a change of plan, she adapts by repeating their goal over and over. To her surpise, it works and they keep heading in the right direction.

Just keep Swimming

“Restructuring at the Lloyds Banking Group could lead to 700 IT jobs being lost, it has been revealed.”

Just keep Swimming

“Newly minted American engineers are going into finance because tech jobs have beenoffshored.”

Just keep Swimming

“ Hey Mr Grumpy Gills
You know what you gotta do
when life gets you down?
Just keep swimming “

U.S. high-technology job losses are slowing.

Finally

As things get better and the destination is in sight, they still keep moving, and never stop reminding themselves to:

“ Just keep swimming swimming swimming
What do we do we swim, swim, swim… “

Conversation Tweets of IT Couple Working the Coffee Counter

Very private pillow-talk-tweets of an ex-IT power couple, taking the only jobs left in town…

Techbarista: got the job! seems easy enough but cappuccino machine leaks black tar…checking for buffer overflow

3DESlady: check ur training manual…

Techbarista: mine starts “All your base are belong to us”…Bad omen?
_

Techbarista: is it me, or does ‘venti mocha no whip halfcaff double shot’ sound like a command string?

3DES: so slow here I spent morning decrypting SSH link to home office. just idle chatter, so now rearranging R Bull, labels-front
_

3DES: still slow. homebrewing espresso mixed with red bull… Buzz On !!

Tech: yeesh, not good, don’t overclock yourself

3DES: Roger that, hands so shaky dropped pastry – now the icing looks like Dick Nixon.

Tech: EBAY?
_

Tech: called in sick today. Bosses garbled msg on vmail sounds like “Someone set us up the bomb”. What?

3DES: . mgr here is like, high school man, like, really. guitar hero jedi or so he claims
_

Tech: yawn. busy but routine, reminds me of nights working in the NOC.
_

3DES: where is mouse for the cash register? :p

Tech: check under the counter…mice like pastries

3DES: hahah…wait, eww
_

Tech: ‘sometimes a mouse is just a mouse’…freud

3DES: you mean fred, that operator on 3rd shift back at old data center. ate donuts & coffee 24/7

Tech: Yeah right, where did he end up?

3DES: started pest control company with his severance

Tech: fred? really? he didn’t know subnets from sql queries.

Tech: knows his rodents tho, so call him about that mouse problem

3DES: enuff with the mouse, besides, he sold franchises and move to FLA to play in a band full time
_

Tech: he was smarter than i gave him credit…guess sometimes a mouse is more than just a mouse

3DES: yep, build a better mouse trap, yada yada, ticket to paradise

Tech: I miss midnight donuts with fred. meet you at Kr Kreme?

3DES: ok, but no more talk about rodents…and NO coffee, plz

The Emperors New Clothes, or how to Dress Less for Success

Has there ever been a time in world history when dressing for work has been so bass-ackward?

In the grand pecking order of the IT workplace, the bottom spot has always belonged to the interviewee. Yet we show up wearing our finest, dressed like Cinderella going the ball. No matter that the rest of the office is in their Casual Fridays and Flip Flops mode.

At the top of the food chain, the Top Dog, the Cock of the Walk – to push the metaphor way too far - is sitting in the corner office wearing gym clothes. The one with the power and influence doesn’t even stop by the house to pull on some slacks. It’s the modern law of inverse proportion to the layers of clothing; The Less You Wear the More Influence You Have.

The irony seems lost on the HR folks, who soldier on with their advice to dress for the job you want, but would be shocked and dismayed if you applied in an outfit with a Nike swoosh on it.

So the job seeker, with no power or influence, is expected to fill out employment forms dressed like a Boston banker. All this while the assistants, receptionists, interns dress like Boston Legal, to make the office look professional. Of course, technical managers dress for what the job demands -no ties or heels or other impairments to occasionally crawl under the desk or behind a rack and poke about. Although they prefer the interns do most of the crawling.

And so it goes up the ladder…each rung dressing to show more importance by wearing less, until the person at the top is clad only in his or her pajamas, sucking on a sports bottle.

There was a time when being in charge meant looking like it. The emperor really did have clothes. Now the master and commander can only be spotted by the blinking, borg-like Bluetooth headset glued to his ear.

Maybe it’s an American cultural thing. . . Lessons of Vietnam and all . . . more stars showing on the collar makes us a target. Perhaps there’s security in blending in with the troops.

In any case, my dark blue suits gather dust when I’m fully employed and in charge. But when the paychecks stop coming, the jackets come back out and the ties windsor-knotted, until a new job is found. Then the process reverses and I’m back to khakis and golf shirts.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. It’s just a mystery how we got here, is all.

Onward Through The Fog…of Support Calls

“Mark! “

“You still there?”

My eyes snapped open.

The floor was sideways in my view, the phone lying a foot away, voices coming from the speaker. It was 2 am; I’d fallen asleep at home, on the floor, while the tech team was hard at work debugging a server problem.

Gad!

I held up the phone, clearing my throat to show I was awake and fell back into the chair. No one reacted. Their snarky comments continued without pause…”wish I could check out”…”guess he’s not a snorer”.

I said something pithy, trying to sound awake. They kept talking. I squinted at my phone.

The Mute was on.

The mute button is hard to spot at that hour. Scowling, I pressed it. The phone started dialing… “beep, boop, beepbeep, boop” …I could see the conference number marching across the LCD screen.

I’d hit redial.

Is someone playing ‘Mary had a little lamb’ on their phone?” a loud irritated voice said. I waited an eternity for the dialing to stop to punch mute, and started to apologize. My dry throat croaked out a useless syllable. I coughed, and gamely checked in.

“There’s our sleeping beauty. We were looking for you earlier,” someone said, “have a nice nap?” I blamed my silence on the mute button, but stayed mute about my impromptu phone-number concert. In the pregnant pause that followed, no one challenged my dodgy answer - the unspoken consensus was clear - they all knew.

My reputation had preceded me. In the silence they were remembering the time I tried to switch phones at midnight, and killed the entire conference call.

+

Deep Nights and Weekends

Working the midnight-to-zero-five-hundred maintenance window is a world apart. Those who live in that sleepless domain: the Firewall Engineers, Server Admins, Network techs and Data Center 3rd shift - they all accept this eerie existence as the price paid to keep systems running.
They act and behave apart from the rest of society, made unique by living at odd hours and their knowledge of things unspoken and mysterious. They’re the Deadheads of this generation.

I don’t see myself as a poser - the one guy always trying to fit in without really being part of the crowd. But truth is, my assignment is not to do actual work, so to speak. I manage and coordinate across hard working and expert groups, each living in the unending fog of jet-lag symptoms that are part of snatching short naps between Sev3 calls, and running on empty after 30-hour continuous support “issues”.

Has anyone studied the effect of waking up to a phone call at 23:55, heart racing, to a voice asking if you’re ready to apply changes a 00:01? There must be an astronaut study or survival training guide that explains how sleep deprivation and irate IT managers can break a body down.

They’ve found funding for stuff like studying the impact of booze on fish

I’d like to see a few bucks tossed in to determine the health of this Army of Darkness, working deep nights and weekends on critical systems.

They are, after all, the sleep-deprived few who keep the lights on for the rest of us.

The Tsunami of Data Keeps Rolling In

The IT world is losing its soul.

Or at least its buried in a avalanche of files and folders.

The game just a few years ago was Paradigm-Shifting and World-Changing. But that was then. These days new IT solutions have all the pizzazz of my dad’s ‘66 AMC Classic sedan. Apparently things are so mediocre that, when cool new ideas DO show up in the data center, they get a certain designed-by-committee look before the first update can even come out. The result. . .

Bland as a Suit From Sears.

Can anyone name anything that’s delivering what was promised?

The nadir of lost dreams is data…Irrational, unstructured, tiered or virtualized, we’re hoarding it like demented ants. Storing the junk we just can’t throw away is invading everyone’s job description. Vendors aren’t keeping pace, leaving us squeezing and parsing the bits until they’re packed together like teens at a Harry Potter book release. Desperate times.

Here’s my personal rogues gallery of recent disappointments:

Cloud Computing
Where’s the infinite bit-bucket? Sold as the soon-to-be home of all our stuff, to be replicated and available anytime & anywhere. Turns out the high cost (surprise!) of perpetually storing our photos and PDFs doesn’t make for a good business plan. Where’s the bandwidth? What with pasty guys in headphones and joysticks clogging the pipes with multi-player war games at all hours, we push hard to get the data through what narrow spaces are left.

Cheap Storage
We know there’s no rhyme or reason for tiers and backups of data that we “may” need. We even buy systems to explain why we have the stuff we have, when we don’t really know WHY we have it (SARBOX, to be blunt, sucks).
More drives mean more power needs (irrational data is not Green), which is why we have “power committees” to decide if we can plug in yet another NAS box. Even the big Internet players are so starved for juice to keep the drives spinning that they build data centers in Appalachia, just to be close to the belching power plants.

Shared File Formats
Does this bug anyone else? We were supposed to arrive at a file-sharing standard, but today there are dozens of file types are still bashing around the Ethernet like angry bees, and the file-endings are a spaghetti bowl of choices: .CSV, .TXT or .XML for data exchange; TIFF, JPG and creaky old BMP for posting or printing; .DOC, like comfort food, is ubiquitous but getting old - it’s time for DOCX. A flood of data and we still can’t just digest it, we have to chew first, converting, filtering and exporting back and forth until something gets corrupted and we’re back to the beginning.

Anti-Malware
Antivirus/Anti spam/anti-this/anti-that. Either they’re all defending our files from cyber evil, or (my opinion) the industry creates a hall of mirrors, where vendors and crooks are locked in mutual dependency.
We’re left paying protection money, adding firewalls on top of firewalls and spending zillions supporting fat-client installs to guard the integrity of that morass of data. Then, after all that effort, one valued employee clicks OK in an email link and it’s moot. The barbarians aren’t at the gate, suddenly they’re coming through un-patched Windows. And somehow we’re to blame for their behavior.

Yet we carry on fighting the digital Battle of the Bulge; while the pin heads back at HQ keep dreaming up ways to buy half-baked solutions.
As we’ve said for 40 years, if we can put a man on the moon, we should be able to [fill in the blank], that is to say, store the important stuff and toss the junk.

This isn’t new, this idea of integrity. I was there decades ago when a promise was made, and with focus and leadership it got done. Granted, it was on the moon, but even through the 60s with all the chaos and bad hair, a promise made was a promise delivered. No spin, no agenda, no ambiguity.

Today, whoever can execute and deliver on a promise to clean up our mess-o-data may not be in the headlines, but we’ll know they have the right stuff.

Liftoff of Apollo 11 (”Eagle”) From the Moon’s Surface, July 21, 1969

Ten things to NEVER put in your resume if you want to work in IT

Avoid the derisive laughter!
Remove these 10 unsightly blemishes from your file and get back on the job!

No, I didn’t make all of them up. . . just ask the HR folks.

1. URL to your “Timesheets: Copy-and-Paste tips” blog

2. College Diploma from a .biz domain address
Caveat Emptor

3. Current Certifications in any of these:
- PONG
- Luggable Computers
- CB Radio
- Windows ME
Actually I have that last cert, but like a certain birthmark, not many people know about it

3. Karaoke awards (Vegas gigs not withstanding)

Spock started it all, ca ‘68, but that’s no excuse. His song wasn’t as good as Data’s ODE TO SPOT, also a trend setter for impromtu performances of a geek nature.

5. Quotes from Jobs, Gates, or Ellison (unless it’s Harlan Ellison)
Which would be way cool

6. The words “Enron” “Madoff” or “PC jr.”
There are plenty of other great failures, not the fault of IT, but does that matter?

7. That firewall change you did during your (former) CIO’s conference call with Mumbai last year
Yes, this really was confessed during a job interview.

8. Former Webmaster of DotCom bubble corpses Yadayada, GovWorks, Flooz, or Peapod
And of course Pets-dot-com, birth of the billion dollar sock puppet

9. Job titles “Junior Interruptor” and “Non-resident Futurist“
I have no words for this nonsense

10. Salary requirements - before the 2008 crash
2007 seems like a lifetime ago, doesn’t it?

Dad’s Guest Blogger

I asked my college-age daughter Lindsay, to post her Father’s Day thoughts on having a dad who does IT. Here’s her response.

Greetings, blogosphere! Wow, this is great, you guys are really great. It’s so nice of you to come out and read this stuff. You’re beautiful.

I know you’re all here to check out my dad’s newest inspiring, intriguing, or simply witty commentary on the world of Information Technology. I understand he’s the star here, but guess what? It’s Father’s Day Weekend. As my father, I’d say he deserves a break. For better or worse, he’s left the task of entertaining you all to me, his eldest daughter, Lindsay. Nice to meet you.

My dad has quite a job on his hands. I’m not talking about the work he’s getting paid for; I’m talking about his role in our household as the go-to computer guru, our very own cyberspace superhero. Faster than a speeding modem! Able to conquer hours-long Google searches in a single click! And I don’t care what you say about Apple vs. Microsoft: whatever system you’ve got, no malware is safe under his bespectacled scrutiny!

I have been severely spoiled in this way; I have the knowledge and research skills of an entire IT department on the family phone plan. All my life, trouble-shooting consisted merely of calling my father over, and poof! Things work again. Now, I myself am fairly technologically illiterate. I don’t know UNIX from Linux. Still, I do know enough from watching my dad to understand what those my age who are “in the know” are capable of. In an age where hacking is a hobby my generation pursues when there’s nothing on TV, this information is key to my survival in the silicon jungle.

His love of all things analytical has rubbed off on me, too. Our shared adoration for the limitless possibilities of science fiction (I grew up on Star Trek shows – resistance was futile) has led to my own unhealthy obsessions with things like Mythbusters and Joss Wheddon’s Firefly series, not to mention a compulsion to keep Wikipedia open and ready on the screen at all times. Other genetic maladies include a severe lack of melanin and the itch to press “Ctrl+F” every time I’ve misplaced my car keys.

Stereotypes and generalities aside, having a tech-savvy dad has been a blessing. It’s not just having an efficient, dependable help desk on hand (which, let’s be honest, is a phenomenon defying all precedent). It is true intelligence. It’s having a father who understands a much bigger world than most even try to see, and isn’t afraid to explore and share it with the family he loves, who love him right back.

Hats off to you, Dad. Happy Father’s Day.

And happy Father’s day to all the 24/7, in-demand tech guys who still find time to nurture a child.

Calling Out Of Africa

A couple of years ago I visited East Africa with my daughter, specifically the Gulu region in northern Uganda, where war raged for two decades. Despite the torn up villages, when peace finally broke out millions of displaced families wanted to go home. Of course, like much of the developing world, they had no electricity or sanitation, and worst of all no clean water. It’s too far to walk to a well, and no way to ask for assistance out in the bush.

But quietly working out of sight of the UN banners and the giant food-relief programs are some amazing IT revolutionaries installing and supporting cell towers and phones. They open the world to a deeply isolated place by empowering villagers to get the help they need by simply making a call.

When we got home, I couldn’t stop thinking what might happen if the IT community could cheaply join “old tech” like, say, water wells, with the modern wireless world in a way that would make a real difference.

So in a fit of altruism, last summer I submitted the following true story in a contest for creative ideas using a new processor. It was nice to win a prize, but even more inspiring to hear from a senior manager, who called with a technical expert and asked if what I suggested is feasible.

…. Well? Is it?

“Safe drinking water for the world”

” Back at the village, after drinking from ditches and rivers for six months, the villagers met an engineer traveling with a mission organization and showed him the problem. It was repaired in less than a day and clean safe water flowed again in the village. After two decades of war, they had a safe place to live at last.”

Now go read “Three Cups of Tea”, then get some very smart friends and work together to solve a humanitarian problem using your tech knowledge. In the end you could discover that all the hard work you do with systems and software is most rewarding when it makes lives a little better.

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