CIO

Jul 2 2008   3:35AM GMT

9 Reasons Why Application Developers Think Their CIO Is Clueless

Posted by: David Vasta
Tip of the Week, CIO, Just Blogging

Link to Article in CIO

“How Not to Be Clueless

“My CIO is clueless.” These are words you don’t want to hear if you want to earn the respect of your application development professionals. So how do you avoid being a clueless CIO? Steer clear of these behaviors:”

Jun 13 2008   12:49PM GMT

IBM i Power Blades not selling….YET?

Posted by: David Vasta
IBM i, David on System i, i on Power, i, IBM POWER Blades, AIX on Power, System i, News, Linux, POWER Systems

COMMON 2008 announced the POWER platform. Which is of course just brilliant. The IBM i is now just an OS, and to beat all that IBM released some new blades that are POWER based, so in fact you could run any of the the greatest OSes on the face of the earth on them, IBM i, AIX, or Linux, so why are they not selling. I think it’s just a matter of time and IBM doing what they don’t do best, marketing.

I have tried everything to get the company I work for to replace some older System i units with Power Blades but they have the same fears that is pointed out by this article by Mark Fontecchio.

I would urge anyone who has a need for 515 and 525(520) based server to really take a long hard look at blades. I think over time you will see the blades are actually cheaper.

Mar 13 2008   12:37AM GMT

Bill Gates has no idea what he is talking about

Posted by: David Vasta
News, Microsoft Windows

First of all I am no fan of Microsoft. I have proven that fact over and over again. I do however respect Bill Gates, he is a smart guy with good form who knows his place in life.

But . . . Bill Gates has no idea what he is talking about when he says there are no decent Americans in the US willing to work for Microsoft. I know plenty of strong IT people who would work for Microsoft today if they had a way for them to get in and interview. I think there are a couple of things here going on.

1. Bill Gates is turning soft and forgetting about the country he has built his empire on, the USA, and is thinking he will be a global shill and pander to other “not so lucky” countries that would do anything to get here even work for less and not have as much “house hold goods” to move. It all comes back to money.

2. I would have worked for Microsoft if they would ever call anyone back. In the past 20 years I have read the Microsoft jobs web site and have found many positions I would like but have never even got so much as a call back on anything in 20 years. Getting into Microsoft, unless you are an H-1B visa holder, then they seem to be able to find you just fine.

3. Microsoft is now pandering to the country that is the second or third country to steal the most software from them. Most H-1B visa holders Microsoft wants to hire are from India, not Japan or China, but India and also a country that steals more software from Microsoft than the US.

4. Indians from India will work like crazy because they don’t want to go back to India and they don’t want to leave. If they work for $50 and hour 17 hours a day they and are only half as skilled as a seasoned US developer getting paid $120 an hour and only working 8-9 hours a day which looks better on the books? I have seen H-1B visa holders come over without any skills but the project leader who is India or the same nationality has moved them to the US only to have them learn the skills they need while in the US. Some I have seen come into the country as say Java developers, having never seen Java and work with a good developer so they they are lost in the shuffle, only later to find out the hard way they know nothing about Java, the team lead has been writing the code after work for them and they hold a position in a company a good hard working US citizen could fill but can’t. This happens a lot. It’s the H-1B visa shell game.

SO Mr. Gates. I urge you to look all over the US, there are developers here who are hard working US citizens and are willing to work for you for decent pay with decent work loads. PLEASE HIRE ALL THE US CITIZENS YOU CAN BEFORE YOU GO OVERSEAS. Another reason to buy an Apple I say!

Dec 22 2007   3:38PM GMT

System i Data Center Wish List

Posted by: David Vasta
System i, Linux, Microsoft Windows, Storage, Linux in System i, CIO, DataCenter

With Christmas fast approaching and I am still figuring out what I would like to have under the tree from Santa, I ran across an article that said what Enterprise Classed IT types were wanting for their data centers this year. I know if I had an unlimited budget, and don’t we all, I would want System i  Power6 and lots of it, V6R1, Lotus 8, Lotus Symphony to be GA and replace MS Office,Linux on System i to replace those costly Windows File Server and Print Servers, and the fastest robotic tape backup system money could buy, of course LTO4 would be in order. So past the things you might like if you could take the money out of the companies bank account or if money were not object. and read the Article I found and enjoyed reading.

LINK

Hope everyone has a Merry Christmas and a Very Happy New Year, I will be moving myself and my family next week, the day after Christmas from Colorado to Charlotte, NC and will be rather busy. I have some posts lined up and will make sure you have something to read and enjoy!

Dec 19 2007   3:21AM GMT

System i Salaries - Are they fair?

Posted by: David Vasta
Salaries on System i, System i, CIO, DataCenter

I have been a System i Admin for over 18 years. I have enjoyed every minute of it, but over the years I have seen something that does not make sense to me or other Admins in my shoes. The salaries have leveled off and are not going up at the same rate they were 20 years ago. While I am not poor or broke, I do think that System i admins are special people and due to the fact we are special we deserve a little better pay than most regular Admins.

While the System i is an easy system to work on they are usually in large IT shops and have lots of users needing lots of things from it, plus the bulk of the companies data lives on that box and it’s essential for the company to function day to day. While some servers in IT can be down the System i can’t.

So where does this leave us. While I am not going to looking up numbers and facts I can give you what I have in my head, life experiences. If I did put numbers and facts up I think this would be a News site and it really is just a blog, a place for me to think aloud and you to ponder.

I know live in Denver and when I moved here (Denver) from Atlanta my salary went down, but my cost of living went up. This is but one of my problems while in Denver. Before I moved to Denver I lived in Atlanta and my average System i pay was about $77K a year USD. Not bad. I did better some years but I would say that is still about the average in Atlanta. I am looking on job boards and it seems to be right in the middle.

Denver on the other hand is a bit worse. While I needed more money to live here I was not able to make as much money as I had in Atlanta. I would say based on my W2 and current job boards the average salary for Denver is $62K a year, still a decent amount of money but I am not sure how that works. How can I need less money to live in Atlanta and make more, yet in Denver where there is a shortage of System i Admin and a higher cost of living I can’t make enough to live like I had in Atlanta. If you take the cost of living into account in Denver I would have needed to make over $82K a year just to make the same as I had in Atlanta.

Word of caution to IT people thinking about moving to Denver for “Great IT Jobs”, I would caution you. That is all I am saying. The jobs here in IT are few and far between. I am talking about average IT jobs, not specialties like the System i or Lotus Notes. The bigger problem is people get desperate here and since there are few jobs in IT they take what they can get and the employers know that. They commonly scalp JAVA and C++ talent because they have been let go and now need a job bad. I would think twice before moving to Denver for an IT job, it may seem like the greatest job on earth but if you get let go you will end up working for whatever they will pay and it’s usually not good.

I see this problem in other markets as well. I have talked to people like me all over and the same stories are abound. System i Admins all make less than say an UNIX Admin or a Linux Admin when in fact our servers are just as important to the companies that run the System i as the companies that focus their IT infrastructure to UNIX based systems.

Are we being shorted? Does no one see our value? I am not sure…I have alwasy considered that IT people needed to form Unions, while I am no fan of Unions as they work today I think overall companies don’t pay IT people what they are worth. Most companies see IT people as overhead and not necessary and I have been told that before and pretty recently too. IT is an expense we have to incur in order to run. While I don’t agree with either of those statements and I have left those companies, I do think many places feel like that. They don’t see the true value of IT, and maybe it’s because we sit in a chair all day and don’t do any hard labor like lifting stones or digging ditches? Some places that are pure IT shops understand that if they don’t take care of the people they lose them over time to other places. Google.com is one of the places that is really a pure IT company. Everyone there is a computer person for the most part. Google takes care of it’s assets which are it’s talent. Every company in my opinion should take a long hard look at the Google model and adopt what they can in order to retain and motivate their employees.

While I don’t think we can strike for the obvious reasons, I do think we owe it to ourselves to up the anti a bit. Next time you are interviewing for a position and they low ball you because they think you will work there and are desperate please counter offer until they give you what you deserve. IT people and System i people are important. Find out what you are worth and add 5% just for good measure. If was all demand more for our skills we will over time increase the salaries of all other System i people around. It’s time to at least make as much money as the UNIX Admins out there pulling down over $120K a year while we provide the same quality of service on a cheaper server.

I would like to point out I am very happy with my current position and being compensated fairly.