The Nine Circles of IT Hell 126
snydeq writes "Dan Tynan takes us on a tour of the nine circles of IT hell, a place 'not unlike the underworld described by Dante in his Divine Comedy.' 'But here, in the data centers, conference rooms, and cubicles, the IT version of this inferno is no allegory. It is a very real test of every IT pro's sanity and soul,' Tynan writes. From IT limbo, to tech lust, to stakeholder gluttony, to tech-pro treachery, the IT inferno is not buried deep within the earth, it's just down the hall. 'Thankfully, as in Dante's poetic universe, there are ways to escape the nine circles of IT hell. But IT pros beware: You may have to face your own devils to do it. Shall we descend?'"
Re:and salvation is in da cloud (Score:4, Insightful)
if IT only put everything in da cloud they would spend days with their 72 virgins
Well that's a pretty large IT group, but from what I see around here, it seems that most IT staffs are largely comprised of virgins...
10+ Circles (Score:5, Insightful)
The 10th Circle of Hell is when upper management believes that outsourcing everything will save them money and time.
The 11th circle of Hell is when someone in a high place reads a magazine and decides that the entire company needs to head off in some "new" direction.
The 12th circle of Hell is partnering with Microsoft.
The 13th circle of Hell is partnering with Microsoft.
The 14 circle of Hell is replacing the guy who partnered with Microsoft.
How to write one of these articles (Score:4, Insightful)
Have a chatty phone conversation or a drinking lunch with a consultant who's between gigs. Let him tell war stories. Organize according to some metaphor drawn from a widely known but poorly understood work of literature. Beat deadline, knock off early.
Lvl 7 Escape- Unrealistic in this world at present (Score:1, Insightful)
I think the Level 7 Escape comment says enough to either prove complete naivete or complete ignorance:
How to escape: Exiting the circle of company-on-company violence may only be possible via collective action, says O'Berry. "When you squeeze the ecosystem only to your advantage, not caring about the companies you've killed along the way, eventually people will say enough is enough," says O'Berry. "We need to balance our capitalistic nature with some form of societal responsibility."
In the last thirty years the only people saying "enough is enough" have have been everything from summarily ignored to blackballed for being an "Evil socialist who hates capitalism, job creators, and prosperity and wants to punish all the John Galts of the world who are smart enough to be granted their Austrian-school due; If they can't keep up with the invisible hand, then they should be content for the perfect theory of 'Trickle Down Economics' to provide for them".
The world is facing the global recession it is because these monstrosities have taken every opportunity to exploit more and more while convincing more than half the working poor that any regulations will keep them from being able to be rich "on their own merits" too, one day. Country-wide prosperity is at its highest (as it its HDI) when the political system shifts towards a parliamentary democracy and the economic system is mixed strongly dominated by modern socialist principles.
Unfortunately it seems that the high standards of living these systems evolve will undoubtedly create some myopic, avaricious individuals that have the intellect, skills, and stability (who conveniently forget that society directly and indirectly helped them attain these attributes) to work towards taking as much as they can, no matter how much damage it does to everyone else. To date, most modern developed nations are not fault tolerant against greed and it will take massive changes to implement systems that are, but it is of paramount importance that we do so immediately to stave off calamity.
There is a much larger percentage of the educated populace who feel that enough is never enough and their sophomoric narcissism ensures they feel entitled to make decisions that have immediate and direct negative consequences to their subordinates, the business, or the world at large, so long as it leads to their short term financial gain. The sooner we can, from the ground up, build our systems of business and governance to limit the amount of damage greed can do, the better.
Re:Not painful enough! (Score:3, Insightful)
The key here is communication, I find the more of my day I devot to communication at the cost of getting less stuff done, the better my position becomes. As a coder you can spend a week fixing a part of the system of your own initiative and good will, my point is... propose your project, document it, explain the scope to the best of your ability, as a side-effect its a lot easier to ask for longer time lines when you follow all these steps. The disconnect between IT and senior management is communication, the managers want to manage and know what's going on, but IT is too complex for them so they hire you. Make sense? There is usually a very uneasy trust between IT and senior management that you have to compensate for as well....
Re:and salvation is in da cloud (Score:4, Insightful)
No. The only salvation is professionalism.
I realise that I will be shot for saying this, but how come that the only thing that's running horribly in an entire company, is the IT department?
There is a way to just make near-bug-free software on time and the evidence for that rediculous claim is NASA.
I took the liberty of finding the answer to everyone's horror. But before you click on it, you do have to realise that your playground will be over once implementing the solution.
All text-only print-format before your head realy explodes out of anger (ofcourse): http://www.fastcompany.com/node/28121/print [fastcompany.com]