[ale] Awful story...

[Jerald Sheets]

But Ken,

At what point does the impetus leave the employee and go to the employer?  If you continue just bow and do whatever, you assent to and encourage current behavior.

I have a recruiter friend that is a good guy...  he does his homework, and is the best I've worked with.  If he gets a similar statement from three or so candidates and he doesn't know what they're talking about, he'll give me a shout and ask for a detail so he best knows how to place this person.  Same for his companies he recruits for.

He also makes a point to people looking to go Linux that he needs to know up front what the work environs/requirements are like.  There are certain environs I won't work in (business clothes, for instance). If this is the case, he won't call me and waste my time and he won't recommend me and waste his employers' time.  

Once again our conversation circles back around to the responsibility on the part of the "recruiter middle" between the employers and the employed.  Why *DO* I still get Oracle DBA job inquiries?  Why *DO* I still get inquiries about senior Java development? (over a decade of straight UNIX admin of various flavors and support technologies.  NO Oracle DBA and NO Java development)

Because the ^$#&^#&* recruiters won't do their #$^#&*$ing jobs, that's why.

If I did my job as an admin with the care and attention I've seen out of some of the knobs that wind up on my phone, I'd have been fired and blackballed from the profession years ago.

Yes, I have a Windows VM to help out the local school and friends that have Windows boxes that ask my help, and I use it when necessary for a computer job I decide to take.  To imply the ego of the employed is the only thing that needs checking, though, is a little short-sighted.

This may not have been the issue in the story I originally posted, but dang...  At what point does business just need to progress?  Or at least not flip the bits that make life even harder for "other-technologied" people on their payroll?

Think bottom line.  I have to prototype many things I wind up implementing.  There's no money for a dev environment for me, but I only have a Windows box.  Now what?  I can't do the job for which I was hired without endangering something out there in the data center because someone in corporate IT is too shortsighted to A) buy a smallish env. for admins to prototype in or B) let the admin have a Linux workstation at his desk to do so.

Now, there's a Windows laptop required by the company and then you have to have your env.  If they don't want to buy one in the DC for you to work in, you may be able to secure a desktop Linux install in addition to your required company Windows box.  Now I've got multiple resource dollars tied up in what could've been a single desktop system for your Linux admin to do his job.

There *are* many occasions of waste in the single-vendor model if you're running Linux on the back-end.  You can't just use Linux because you saw it in "IT Manager Weekly", you have to own it and fully embrace it to get the most out of it for your company's welfare.  If you don't point that out to your management in a way they can swallow, you are just as responsible for the problem out there as they are.


--j



On Nov 16, 2009, at 12:24 PM, Ken Price wrote:

> On Mon, 16 Nov 2009 11:04:47 -0500, Pete Hardie <pete.hardie at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>> The part that really baffles me is that the contractor was fired for
>> asking about what he needed - he had not refused to use IE, just that
>> he was making sure it was absolutely required.
>> 
>> Someone in the chain is entirely too tightly-wound
> 
> I don't agree that he should have been fired for this.  That's a little
> harsh.  But then, he wasn't fired for asking about what he needed.  In
> fact, they were going to send him a windows laptop to make sure he could
> finish the process and start the work.  He was fired for not keeping his
> eye on the ball - he bypassed "chain of command" and contacted a different
> department to change [inquire about changing] things which were not within
> his job description.  He caused waves.  Linux/Firefox didn't work.  He was
> told he needed MS/IE.  He should stopped there, swallowed his pride, and
> used MS/IE.
> 
> I'm sure I'll get razzed for this, but what professional contractor
> doesn't have a computer or laptop with Windows laying around somewhere?  Or
> at least has access to one?  My work and home workstations run Ubuntu and
> my staging and production environments are CentOS.  I run virtualized
> (Virtualbox) copies of WinXP for QA on my Ubuntu workstation, keep an old
> (PIII-600) WinXP laptop laying around, AND an older (AMD Duron 650) Win2003
> Server.  Brand new Vista laptops can be had for $300 - I just bought one
> for my wife.  Come on.
> 
> As both a technology director, and a part-time contractor for fortune
> 100's, I'm not ignorant to the fact that Windows and IE still dominate the
> market.  Nor do I fail to realize that most large companies are still tied
> to Microsoft products on the front-end, despite their commitment to Linux
> on the back-end.
> 
> To be frank, I fail to see why everyone is up in arms.  You want a perfect
> world?  Compared to 10 years ago, mixed MS and Linux environments now
> dominate the landscape.  SCO is no more and SUN is hurting.  Linux has come
> a long way already.  Besides, IMHO, only in the last couple years has the
> Linux desktop matured enough to be a viable alternative to Windows.  As a
> contractor, sometimes the cost of doing business is concession.  Sometimes
> an unwritten job requirement is flexibility.  And sometimes egos need to be
> put aside for the sake of a paycheck.
> 
> I'm done ranting.  :-)
> 
> -Ken
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