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Admin
Two WTF's here, The Consultant and Jamie.
No explaination needed for The Consultant, but for Jamie, maybe. As the story is written, Jamie just gave up before he started fighting. As a manager, he should have taken notes and then gone behind The Consultant's back while procuring support from the network staff. Only losing the battle do you resign.
Of course if he won, then it would be wholly on his shoulders to fix the issue post haste. Nothing like a trial by fire is there?
Admin
My gawd. My users would never stand for that sort of "comprimises". Talk about the Tail Wagging the Dog.
Admin
Damn it Darwin, give us a f'king clue on what to do with such a person...
Admin
I believe I may have worked with this consultant. If not him, his clone then.
I agree at least on the surface that it seems Jamie gives up a bit easily, but having worked with this type of moron and the people he's "influenced", even if he documented every crappy thing the guy did and proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the guy was a tool, it still would have been a hard sell to "overthrow" him.
The influencing powers of the incompetent are sometimes amazing.
Admin
Nepotism at it's finest?
Personally I would've tried my best to make a certain consultant lose his job. Seeding dissent into your co-workers is a great start ;)
Admin
»The application worked by replicating the live database to a database on the user's workstation, and then merging the live and local database when the user closed out the application«
OMFG. There's a reason why consultants are not emplayeed.
Admin
No need to wonder what happens if your workstation crashes at the end of the day before you close it.. I bet his fix for that is for everyone to close the application several times a day!
Admin
While I can certainly appreciate the opportunity for a fight in which you almost certainly cannot lose, I think Jamie was in fact smart enough to realize that while he could have won the battle, the war was most likely already lost at this company. If the users accepted the consultants ways of doing things, and management was doing nothing to stop him either, then it's easy to guess that the consultant's behavior was indicative of the company culture and overall incompetence as well. While it was easy for Jamie to judge the incompetence of the computer related stuff, it may have been harder and taken him longer to judge the incompetence of management, sales, operations, etc. I think he made the wise decision in getting out before his life became a living hell.
Admin
I have numerous (mom-and-pop-small-business type) clients that will blindly do what I tell them because they are just that computer illiterate.
While steering them in the right general direction, I usually wind up making some cost-related compromises, but I at least make sure that they understand, if in wide-hand-waving-terms, the ramifications of doing so.
This particular company seems to have blindly followed a lemming over the edge, and as long as they trust the Consultant (25 years is a long time), there's nothing Jamie could do to effectively undermine the guy (to fix things), and leaving was a prudent choice.
Admin
However, while on the job hunt, it sure would have been a fun battle.
and then gone behind The Consultant's back while procuring support from the network staff
Spoken like a true manager whose been caught up in politics before.
Admin
Calling the guy a "consultant" is an insult to incompetent "consultants", let alone ones that try to do the right thing for the client.
Admin
Far to many of you to quote.
The problem here is that he had a chance to test himself, who cares about the other managers etc, he should have at least treid to fight it so he would have that experiance under him for later. In that situatuation, win or lose you walk away with something more. Of course, as it is written, there is no real way to tell if he actually tried before walking out or not.
As for speaking like a manager that has been caught up in politics before, never have I been a manager, but I have been the lead architecht and actually got the CIO fired after presenting the evidence of his mis-management and re-appropriation of company resources for personal gain. Ultimatly I think he would have been fired anyway, I only hastened the action.
Admin
Nope, we do not "owe" the world the evangelical truth of development. Jamie's call was exactly correct - if he wins, the prize is fixing a horrendous mess where every change in code & process will be met with resistance, and subsequently blame for any past errors that creep through the fixes. Man works to live, she does not live to work. Fighting w/ a company that hopelessly foobar'd will only do Jamie's replacement any good. Jamie will be run out of town on a rail and the next person who comes in will have 15% of the battle and all of the reward.
It's not cynicism it's reality....
Admin
Yes but that responsibility is the job of a manager.
Admin
Where are these mythical consultants you speak of and how does one hire them? ;)
Admin
Ouch.
Sounds similar to my brief stint in management. My boss brought me in so I could "change things". He didn't tell me that the rest of the company didn't want to change anything.
Admin
<
The application worked by replicating the live database to a database on the user's workstation, and then merging the live and local database when the user closed out the application.
/>
Microsoft's Mendocino (now known as Duet) sort of works this way. Its probably not as lame as this, but every client has to have Microsoft SQL Express 2005 installed along with Office Enterprise. See the client requirements here (http://www.duet.com/Products/Technology/SystemRequirements/tabid/171/Default.aspx).
I went to a trade show and, after signing up for my free Duet coffee mug (that my mother-in-law ironically dropped and broke about 5 minutes after I got home from the trade show), I asked the guy at the booth WTF they were thinking when putting SQL on a client. He said he didn't think it would be that big of a deal.
I guess we'll have to wait for the very first reports of the inter-office SQL 2005 Express worm before they realize what a bad idea this is.
Admin
I've been in a similar situation before. I wasn't a manager but I had a lot of freedom to develop as I saw fit (essentially). It's funny how when users are showing how the current programs works and you say "Why can't it just do A automatically?" or something and their eyes light up. "Really??? You could do that??"
Then, I love the feeling I get from replacing the piece of garbage program with something and hearing the users comment on how much better it is.
Sometimes the fight is worth staying for. I can't say for sure if it was in this case, but the rewards (and you can get them and they are more than just money) are extremely gratifying.
Captcha: quality
Admin
A consulting firm I once worked for was brought into a $40Mill a year fabric company to look at replacing their store management software. Turns out the "consultant" was on vacation, the only time they would ever talk to another company. He apparently was the only keep of all password to all system and could destroy the company with a single thought. His store management system was a rube goldberg system involving scraping accounting reports with Snobol, then running the results through another language (I forget) finally importing into an Access database, exporting to another format, sending via modem to each store the entire database every night. This process often took 23 hours a days to complete and only worked 75% of the time (so stores were often days out of date). He also bought tinfoil covers for computers as a security measure. We passed (mostly out from laughter). The company made us swear never to visit when the consultant was there.
Admin
Something tells me it was more the latter than the former that got the CIO fired. Mis-management is common and regularly ignored. Misappropriation of funds, especially in a company that might draw media attention, is something that will get most people fired. In this case there was no mention of that second and the historic inertia of the consultant would have simply steamrolled Jamie. IMO he did the right thing when faced with a horrible situation that noone wants to do anything about. (Not to mention avoiding the 25 years of WTF code that he would have had to clean out).
Captcha: Paula - (consultant's sister?)
Admin
This sounds like an awful strange arrangement. Jamie competed (even though that isn't meant literally) against the consultant? I'd be interested to see how he presented alternatives. Either he was terribly inarticulate or the consultant's way really was the right way because they seemed to prefer it...
This reminds me of my wife's reaction to my critiquing something that readers of this forum (and anyone close to any engineering field) would agree has been very poorly engineered. When I say, "this shouldn't have been engineered this way" she just gets that incredulous look because to her, the fact that it is engineered that way ipso facto proves that it should've been engineered that way.
Admin
I don't get it. I'd really like to know what's bad about SQL 2005 express on clients. That's what it's for...
Admin
This is nothing new, nor a horrible idea.... It's been done for literally decades with various technologies. One common usage is offline data access. For example the sales guy on the laptop. User syncs up, unplugs, reads/updates, plugs in later and re-syncs.... I was working on technology like that back in the early 90's and it wasn't new then...
Not everything can be/should be online....
-Me
Admin
Actually, no. They were willing to overlook the resources (note I did not say funds) because they thought is planning and management were what kept the company going. Took me six months to prove it wasn't, and then only after I stopped patching his holes and let him fall apart during apresentation when things were not what he thought they were. Once I had management on board that his management was the cause of the problems, they were then able to use the resource usage as a reason to fire him.
Keep in mind it was all political as the CIO was also a stock holder, but in the end I had the support of every bit of management and the team under me and we were able to put a new system in place in less than a year then did everything sales wanted and more. This is after a span of three years of mismanaged projects that we almost completly scrapped during that phase.
Admin
you see that group of people holding up their hands? it's the users wanting to know why it's not working and they're asking *you* for the answer. it sounds like the "consultant" was a know it all anyways and his way or the highway....
<geek: go code something/>
Admin
Ah yes. I came into a company where the consultant who had my job didn't want to work for them full time (big clue #1) and was beloved of my soon-to-be manager (big clue #2).
Within a very short period of time it was made clear to me that I could never measure up to what the consultant did. Surprisingly the consultant stayed on for other projects and we got along quite well.
11 months of micro-managing manager later I was out of there.
She finally got to hire the consultant on full time, like she wanted to do all along.
He quit within a year as well because he couldn't stand her micro-managing ways (must have cropped up once he signed on) and because suddenly he couldn't do anything right.
Sometimes the label of "consultant" bestows great power. I prefer the "benefits and paid vacation" power bestowed by being an employee, personally.
Admin
So _where_ should data go? A big XML file? Now that's enterprisey!
And SQL Server 2005 is clamped down so tight on initial install, I don't know how you think that "inter-office SQL 2005 Express worm" is going to work.
Admin
It's not all that rare for developers to not think of concurrency issues. One major web collaboration app, out for years now, still has no code to handle simultaneous editing of the same message. When I pointed this out to the programmer he said "Interlocks are too hard to do", and "When I tried interlocks, the database tended to get locked up". meanwhile the user's forum was full of complaints about editing not "taking".
.
Admin
Jamie was better off quitting.
Even if he "won," which was highly unlikely, his "prize" would have been inheriting a bunch of crappy applications with brainwashed users who insist that Jamie's group is not doing things "the right way."
There are plenty of fish in the sea. No reason to stay with one that has ick.
Admin
Well, this job was a long hard downhill battle, especially when you consider that the IT Consultant and MD had also spent more than 25 years at the same synagog (I'm sephardi btw not conservative). I managed to have the company's primary database changed from one 127 column table to an efficient normalised structure (just), given the hissy fits and shrieks of the IT Consultant.
After eight months of arguing, placating, and writing position statments, reports and justifications. I was told to keep my hands off the IT Consultants project by the MD.
I worked very hard at trying to bring change, I turned the development team around from being an un-happy miserable bunch, to a confident group who wanted to achive, when I handed my notice so did they (and they now all have better payed jobs with firms who appriciate their desire to get things done).
Like Tal Afar, Ramadi or Faluja the small battles were won, but like Iraq it was a war I could never win.
Admin
OOhhhh.. Jamie, you just fail us..!!!!
Admin
Jamie himself has already pointed out that he fought it out for eight months. I'm pretty stubborn, so I probably would have done the same thing... at one time. Nowadays I know better, because I know what he was up against.
The consultant is what is known as a "hero." The hero is in such a revered position that everything or nearly everything he says is taken as wise without question, without analysis, without anyone examining it beneath its surface. Heroes can be programmers, architects, or sysadmins. In every case, they promote and enforce terrible practices, and in almost every case, they do it because they are clinging to the way they learned how to do it ten or twenty or more years ago.
The hero would never get away with the idiocy he or she inflicts if not for the staunch support of upper management, often just one high-level manager but sometimes several. Everyone below that level is usually aware that the hero is in fact a fool.
I used it as a learning experience. I keep an eye out for a "hero" environment in interviews. You can't always spot it but a lot of the time you can.
Admin
This situation is exactly how we get the loss of thousands of customer records, some with sensitive data. Someone steals a laptop. The less data that can leave the facility, the safer things are.
Admin
I would have hit Monster.com as soon as the administration problem came up.
Admin
It's always good to think about where you store sensitive data (or how much you're willing to expose sensitive data to concurrency issues), but I agree that the basic idea isn't bad or unusual in itself (although the implementation described here certainly is). Even caching data from some network source falls under this description principle.
The thought of having users syncing a days' work with the master database makes me wince, but I suppose all solutions have their drawbacks.
Admin
"The consultant's code required that users of his CMS application not only be administrators of their local machine, but administrators on the database server."
I come from the engineering/sysadmin side of the fence, and it still amazes me how many applications still assume users have full control of the machine. In some cases, we're not even talking about rinky-dink little apps...we're talking about nice big enterprisey applications. Getting some of them to work without granting admin rights is a nightmare, and sometimes just can't be done.
I think they're sending new developers to school in 1998. The time warp is right behind that door...
Admin
Heh, I actually made a program like that for my current employer.
Actually, it was an app for documenting servers via WMI and writing free-text docs. It used a local SQLite db, and a central SQL2005 server.
Works really well, too. But the sync-process in enough to make any decent programmer go blind in rage.
I cant wait to find out who gets the honor of maintaining it when I'm gone. (In a week. Apparantly, apprentice is another word for "cheap disk-swapper")
Admin
No, no, remeber the situation. There you have an incompetent guy (the consultant) talking to more incompetent guys (the managers). As someone pointed out earlier, this kind of bond is almost unbreakable. Incompetent people seem to have a secret language. I should know, I've been there.
Admin
Well, just last evening, a friend complained to me that database management is exceedingly difficult. See, he was trying to install MediaWiki on his website, and he couldn't see the point of all the users and passwords and access rights. I told him it's all about security.
Now, I don't blame my friend: he is not a developer. But developers are human too, and most people don't understand security. Add to that the very common "paradigm" of assumption based programming ("what do you mean, the file might be read-only?") and you have your answer.
By the way, you shouldn't be surprised if rinky-dinky little apps often assume less. As this forum has shown countless times, "enterprisey" equals "utterly stupid".
Admin
In my opinion, the problem here is not so much the applications expecting full sysadmin rights, but the OSes not having the possibility to grant rights on many different levels. If you look at Windows, you're pretty much stuck on your PC if you don't have local admin rights. Apparently, there's only two types of users: totally crippled normal users, and full-power sysadmin (good thing they managed to have the rights applied to each machine separately though).
Admin
The easiest way to get rid of this guy would be to call the relevant tax people and get them to check if 25 years of correct taxes had been paid, considering that that arrangement equates to him being an employee and not a consultant.
Admin
And its that exact attitude that allows these consultants to run rampant. If whenever someone sees a fault in their company they just decide to let it go because they might meet resistance or they will have to do more work to fix it, the crap will just continue coming through. At some point, someone needs to stand up and say "This is not right". And that person should be the manager. I mean isn't that really all they are paid to do?
I have nothing against an increase use of the feminine pronoun in places where a generic person is being referenced, but could you at least be consistent?
Admin
I was witness to a situation once where the Director of IT had skimmed ~80K in the course of a year by paying her husband for consulting services. She also had vendors who were pals fudge invoices to lump the cost of personal equipment that she took home (flat panels, etc) into authorized purchases (routers and switches). An employee discovered the whole mess, and at some career risk took the case to the CFO, including evidence showing the payments to the "consultant" going to a company with the same address as the director's house, evidence that the work paid for was never done, and a tape recording of a vendor admitting to fudging an invoice.
Well the company president thinks the sun shines out of the director's bottom, so she is still working there today and the employee is not.
Admin
The Real WTF (tm) is that Alex wrote "lead" instead of "led" :p
Admin
Just because "nail myself to the cross" is in my job description, doesn't mean I'm going to be there to do it when the time comes.
Admin
By creating groups you can easily control which users has the necessary rights to do something.
Admin
The real WTF is the use of the word "irony" in the above comment.
Admin
ah crap. Why are there reply buttons for each comment ?
Admin
If you're going to critize my grammar, I suggest first proofreading your own prose. Second, I suggest a dictionary where you can check the definition of 'man' prior to assuming that the referent pronoun must be masculine.
Third, not every person, managers included, wish to spend their lives fighting battles with superiors who only know their own name because they insist that their reports address them with it at the daily staff meeting.
Admin
And that is why what we do is not engineering.