The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

Reactions

by snoofle in Feature Articles on 2015-08-17

Data Security. We all need to deal with it. There are many tried and true ways of doing things. Many of the problems you'll encounter have been solved. Some of them will require creative thinking. All require a basic understanding of the difference between big thing and little thing. Not everyone possesses the ability to differentiate between the two.

R.J. works for a health insurance company. These folks have access to some of our most private information, and take HIPAA regulations to secure and protect it quite seriously. Any breach of security requires notifying customers of potential exposure, as well as reporting to government ~~imps~~ bureaucrats better not dealt with. Naturally, the bean counters from the board on down all repeat the mantra of protecting the customer data at all costs.

The Coming Storm

by snoofle in Feature Articles on 2015-08-10

As someone who has spent more than three decades working for all manner of huge financial-conglomerate IT departments, I've seen pretty much every kind of WTF imaginable. At every level. At every scale. For years, I chose to view it as getting paid for being entertained. But over time, it dawned on me that perhaps the reason these companies are so inept at IT is that they're so focused on the job of getting business done that they can't take the time needed to learn to think through a software development project in the way you need to in order to, well, develop software.

This time around, I joined a fairly small financial firm that has a reputation for being fairly laid back. Most of the reviews by current and former employees stated that the management allowed them the time to (reasonably) properly plan out and run a software development project. I spoke with several managers, all of whom assured me that the project was reasonably budgeted for the appropriate folks (developers, QA testers, business analysts, project managers, architects, etc.). Requirements were being mandated by an industry edict. My role was simply to be one of more than 100 Java developers on the project.