Sysadmin Field Notes

February 19, 2004

I had a rough day, and have got a lot of ideas to get out, so this will be a little long. Blues riff in C, watch me for the changes, and try to keep up....

The corporate world (particularly when it comes to technology) does not have it's head screwed on straight. Managers can't manage, few implmentors can implement, and auditors can't audit. The end result is that all the fancy hardware and software we can bring to bear on business problems is at best wasted, and at times actively harmful to getting work done. Buzzwords on top of buzzwords, volumes of reports, studies, org charts, surveys, mission statements, and internal invoices for fake internal money that don't mean anything. A sea of words without purpose.

All of this comes at the expense of the user in a variety of ways, making working with computers typically frustrating and mysterious

None of this should really be news to anyone. What is news is that I surrender. I'm throwing in the towel (at least on a trial basis). I am, from here on in, going to do my best to not care about this dismal state of affairs. I've been fighting to get things done the right way, the efficient way, and to make people form arguments for their decisions for a while now, and I'm tired. Sometimes the oozing stupidity seems like it's crushing my body, making my head feel like it's going to pop off.

Now I'm not saying this in "I'm taking my toys and going home" sort of pouty way. No, the new plan is to try and work within the system, using the tools at my disposal to affect change. So I'm not so much giving up as trying a new strategy. I'm right at the breaking point right now, and I'm pretty sure things are going to get worse before they get better, so I've got to try something else.

I should coin a new word for this corporate silliness. You know it when you see it.

When a company spends $2 billion dollars and 5 years of development on a system that gets cancelled after a failed deployment to only a fraction of the inteded users, that's what I'm talking about.

When a company gives you a prototype application to test, and then tries to roll out the real one but it doesn't work so they just use the crappy prototype, and then the CTO gets a six figure bonus based on the "success" of this project, that's what I'm talking about.

When you've got a software tool that is heavily entrenched in what you are doing, and a few weeks before your project is due there's a management dictate to switch tools, and they stop supporting the one you're using, that's what I'm talking about.

There's the perfect word out there for this, I'll work on it this week and see if I can pluck it out.

Anyway, back to what I'll be doing to fight this in the future. I had been a rabble rouser; a ranting, raving, piss-and-vinegar filled advocate for analyzing things, and then. applying the solution that made the most sense for the owners. Although I discovered that managers don't like to be reminded that they are in the end beholden to the someone else so they changed their name to the much less powerful sounding "shareholders". I really have never made progress any place I worked.

So now, today I was hit by a slew of realizations, seemingly all at once (this is not a complete list):

• Things are not changing for the better
• Things are going to get worse before they get better
• Work is not my life
• But I need work to pay the bills

That's why I'm going to try something different. I don't know what shape it will take, but I can say there will be less (approaching zero) ranting about "stupid" decisions, more time spent discovering how the "system" works so I can effect change from within it, and more relaxation excercises. :-)

Besides, perhaps somewhere in these stupid decisions there are perhaps a few grains of useful thought that can be gleaned and applied? As much as a distaste as I have for them, those who develop those ideas probably have as much distaste for ours. Certainly there is decreasingly less value for me and my co-workers in dragging the same general concepts out and through the mud over and over and over again.

So from now on, I'm going positive. I can change the system, and I can make the company less wasteful with it's money. It's just not going to happen overnight.

We'll see what happens as I give this a shot. Less "evil", more "good". Maybe I should register goodrob.com as well? :-)