The Perils of Ramming Products Down IT's Throat 461
snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Paul Venezia takes issue with the all-too-familiar practice of management dictating IT solutions to admins savvy enough to know the fiat revolves around far inferior products, in this case Nissan North America's embracing of Microsoft's Hyper-V. 'Very rarely do unilateral decisions by CIOs make for solid IT infrastructures, and they are generally at odds with what the admins on the ground are communicating,' Venezia writes, noting that upper managers who succumb to vendor tricks face a far worse fate than an infrastructure based on inferior technology — one devoid of the kind of expertise necessary to make the best of their flawed purchasing decisions. 'If continuously faced with the specter of having to implement and support clearly inferior products due to baffling, uneducated management decisions, top-flight admins will simply head elsewhere.'"
Don't bother to RTFAs. (Score:5, Informative)
These links are all just speculation and fluff. There's no news in any of the articles. Don't waste your time RTFA.
FYI
Not Sure What The Point Here Is (Score:3, Informative)
"Many places are Microsoft-centric, but exactly zero are 100 percent Microsoft." By which he means... "They may run Microsoft products on the servers and desktop, but there's absolutely no way that they are using solely Microsoft applications and products in every part of the infrastructure, from the switches to the firewalls."
Well bra-vo. Golf clap.
Re:What if your admin is clueless? (Score:4, Informative)
At my work the sysadmin refuses to upgrade from SQL Server 2000 Standard Edition (which had its support discontinued several years ago
Not true. You can still get tech support for SQL Server 2000:
http://blogs.msdn.com/sqlreleaseservices/archive/2008/02/15/end-of-mainstream-support-for-sql-server-2005-sp1-and-sql-server-2000-sp4.aspx [msdn.com]
In fact, extended support for the previous version, SQL Server 7, ends 2010-12-31.
(some businesses really, really, really don't want to change SQL server versions)
though he still hasn't installed the latest service pack from 2004 or so),
Ok, that is pretty dumb.
despite the fact that we have a budget (and need) for a high end clustered system with a nice pretty SAN.
You can cluster with SQL 2000. And even without a cluster, it will run nicely on a SAN.
The execs are now pushing it because we're getting deadlocks constantly, but the admin insists that if everyone would stop using the database to do anything, we'd be fine, and refuses to upgrade.
Deadlocks can sometimes be avoided by adjusting your SQL code.
Frankly, the best reason to upgrade from SQL 2000 is native 64-bit versions, which lets you use LARGE amounts of memory for your DB. Not to mention DB mirroring.
Re:What if your admin is clueless? (Score:3, Informative)
This is happening because your "admin" is an inexperienced idiot. He is refusing the upgrade because he is afraid that it is going to make him look foolish when he doesn't "know" the new system.
Well, or, to be fair, he may be concerned the cure may be worse than the disease. Upgrading to a new major revision of a core system component has non-trivial risks. Now, if the admin isn't communicating those risks, that's a different problem. But it's not fair to immediately assume that he just doesn't know what he's doing.
Re:Had a chuckle at this. (Score:5, Informative)
'If continuously faced with the specter of having to implement and support clearly inferior products due to baffling, uneducated management decisions, top-flight admins will simply head elsewhere.'
Yeah, because the job market is just that good right now.
If you are "top-flight" the market has no control over you. Your job security is your knowledge and skills, not the salary you get every month.
Your knowledge and skills don't magically create food or pay your bills. If you choose to walk out on your current job (due to their utter stupidity or any other reason), you don't need job security [wikipedia.org], you need to get hired elsewhere. Your top-flight knowledge and skills may let you find a new job sooner than a fresh grad would, but I highly doubt there are many admins out there who can simply walk out of their current job and immediately into another one of their choosing in today's economy.
Re:Rant (Score:3, Informative)
Threat, fact, whatever you want to call it, doesn't much matter. If a company/executive/manager/teamleader treats their employees like crap, those employees will consider their options. For any halfway-decent employees, their options will include "get the hell out of Dodge" (no pun on Nissan from TFA intended).
Sure, only the best-of-the-best can walk on a moment's notice and pick their job of choice the next day, but all but the worst-of-the-worst can start seriously looking and find something else within a few months.
How does the author know what fraction of admins leave in a situation like this?
I don't think he intended it as a statement of hard statistics, just mentioning a basic attribute of human behavior - People will only put up with so much.
As an aside, I would point out that the options open to those actually trapped in their jobs should appeal even less to any company - Sloppy work because they just don't care; Deliberately reduced output (though nothing bad enough to outright fire someone over); Perhaps even going so far as to deliberately sabotage projects in a way no one could ever "blame" them for (in most IT-related fields, we have options to do exactly that literally dozens of times per day, most untraceable and almost always excusable as legitimate oversight). Having someone tell you to go fuck yourself and walk out counts as the best option (short of actually treating people like people rather than as interchangeable robots which exist solely to do your bidding), in most cases.
Re:Had a chuckle at this. (Score:4, Informative)
I don't know about top flight, but I can tell you this for nothing:
The industry is full of bottom-flight system admins. People who heard there was money in computing, people who got an MCSE through a company that "guarantees an MCSE in 3 weeks!!11", people who have all the experience that they should be great but still seem to be unable to do even the most basic tasks.
And a lot of employers can't tell the difference between these people and those who really do know what they're doing, even after they've hired them.
Re:Had a chuckle at this. (Score:5, Informative)
This sounds like a valuable lesson. Next time this happens, simply don't do the job at all, because it's a no-win scenario. Instead, immediately start looking for a new job.
Also, if you're a contractor, why would you work 100+ hours/week? Part of being a contractor is that they can't do that to you; they have to pay you for all overtime. If they don't, you get to sue, and since you have a signed contract in-hand, it's pretty hard for them to contest it.
Re:Confused (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Confused (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/evaluation/news/bulletins/datacenterhighavail.mspx [microsoft.com]
They specifically mention VMware ESX in the Microsoft article.
Re:Had a chuckle at this. (Score:2, Informative)
Bad management decisions don't result in an immediate loss of talent (unless the bad decision is firing the talented people of course), they result in a gradual drain of talent. Whether you've lost all your good people in a single moment of terrible decision making, or lost them over the course of the last year as they got frustrated and left, you've still lost them.
Somebody give me an AMEN!
I've been through this a couple times in my career, and in my experience it's anything but a slow process. There's often 1-2 people that are the keys to holding a tight team together, and once one of them checks out it can be a mad rush for the door. In once case, a top-50 ISV that I was working for lost over 1/3 of it's engineering staff (and probably 75% of its experience and tribal knowledge) in a 6 week period, all because one key person gave up. And yes, this was during a "down" time in IT.
Unfortunately, I am going through this AGAIN right now. The small ISV I work for had a board fight where one faction ended up taking control and firing ALL members of the executive staff with software development experience, and replaced them with friends and contract executives (yes, such beasts exist!). The resulting display of incompetence has been excruciating to watch, and we have already lost several key people. There are still a handful of good people holding the team together against all odds, but my guess is we are one more resignation away from the tipping point.
It's no fun, let me assure you.
Re:Had a chuckle at this. (Score:4, Informative)
I've been out of work since January 6. Although I do receive calls for jobs, every one of those openings get around 1000 resumes (according to the headhunters I've talked to) such that the competition level is high (1 opening for 1000 engineers). I haven't had a single interview since March, and don't really expect to get one until January 2010 when new spending budgets arrive.
>>>And don't say there aren't any, since last month offers have been great as far as I can tell.
First off I'll say what I want (I'm a freeman).
Second until you've tried looking for a job,
you have no clue. You're just guessing.
Re:Rant (Score:2, Informative)
it got modded up because [s]he said what we all were thinking. positive groupthink vibes = reward.
it's really not that complicated.