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packetqueue.net

Musings on computer stuff, and things... and other stuff.

Humor

October 23, 2017 Career Advice

We Broke I.T. Purchasing

Read­ing Time: 4 min­utes

“What is the dif­fer­ence between uneth­i­cal and eth­i­cal adver­tis­ing? Uneth­i­cal adver­tis­ing uses false­hoods to deceive the pub­lic; eth­i­cal adver­tis­ing uses truth to deceive the pub­lic.” — Vil­h­jal­mur Ste­fans­son

The process by which we in the IT indus­try eval­u­ate and pur­chase new equip­ment is bro­ken. The entire cycle from prod­uct incep­tion through mar­ket­ing, eval­u­a­tion, pur­chase and on to instal­la­tion, is almost as use­ful as snake mit­tens. And as far as I can tell, it’s only get­ting worse.

mar­ket­ing mon­ster

After spend­ing mil­lions of dol­lars of research and devel­op­ment mon­ey on the road to a final prod­uct, and need­ing to get to mar­ket as quick­ly as pos­si­ble both to recoup their invest­ment and to release some­thing, or any­thing, com­pa­nies turn to their crack mar­ket­ing depart­ments. For many peo­ple this is regard­ed as a whol­ly bad idea, and a process which should be set to the flame like a witch. How­ev­er, as the peo­ple of this opin­ion are not in charge of any­thing, the world march­es duti­ful­ly onward. Slide decks are made, white papers are writ­ten, hours are spent in the ser­vice of a great prod­uct name, until even­tu­al­ly the baby can be revealed and judged not on its mer­its but on its saleabil­i­ty.

Oth­er com­pa­nies, sens­ing that they are now behind the prover­bial eight-ball because they don’t have the newest Bin­ford 9000, rush to call the new baby ugly while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly trot­ting out their cur­rent prod­uct, now re-brand­ed as being the same as every­one else’s, only bet­ter in every way. Some­times there is a new prod­uct that can be wrapped in the appro­pri­ate lan­guage on launch, oth­er times its an old prod­uct being pol­ished like so many fetid turds. But at least the prod­uct is out, it’s com­pet­ing (maybe), and a mar­ket seg­ment is born.

Of course the ana­lysts must get involved at this point, lest the mass­es be con­fused as to what they should be buy­ing. They eval­u­ate the new prod­uct, the exist­ing prod­ucts with their me-too swag­ger, and any oth­er prod­ucts that might con­ceiv­ably be use­ful in round­ing out a new­ly formed slice of the sil­i­con val­ley dream. Things are stud­ied, ques­tions asked, prod­uct man­agers cajoled into fill­ing out forms and answer­ing ques­tions, chins are scratched, fore­heads rubbed, look­ing glass­es con­sult­ed. Final­ly, charts are made, resplen­dent in their mul­ti-col­ored, impor­tant sound­ing axis and titles, the win­ners and losers laid out for the world to mur­mur over in trade shows all over Las Vegas.

These are all impor­tant process­es and must be fol­lowed very exact­ing­ly. After all, with­out the mar­ke­teers invent­ing a name, or the ana­lysts cat­e­go­riz­ing those cohorts, how can a rea­son­able C‑level exec­u­tive pos­si­bly be expect­ed to be told what they should buy? Charts are very impor­tant here, ven­dor sales peo­ple equal­ly so, and ana­lysts are per­haps the most impor­tant of all. Short­change any of this process and bad things are like­ly to hap­pen; tech­nolo­gies might be eval­u­at­ed on their own mer­its and against the needs of the com­pa­ny instead of what every­one knows to be the cor­rect process, name­ly, buy­ing the best entry in the best cat­e­go­ry of the best ana­lyst’s col­ored charts.

 

*

“Damnit, John­son! Do we have the new foop-splort 52xy‑C port-box
bal­ancer?”

“Um, we could be look­ing into…”

“And what about mov­ing our stuff into the fog bank? Are we fog­ging yet?”

“I…”

*

The staff respon­si­ble for using equip­ment on the net­work, osten­si­bly those for whom the chal­lenges are well known, bear lit­tle respon­si­bil­i­ty for mak­ing a final deci­sion and are well-served by appear­ing to be on board, what­ev­er the final deci­sion. In fact, if they appear as not pay­ing prop­er feal­ty to the pitched tech­nol­o­gy they run the risk of being brand­ed a heretic, a crab­by mal­con­tent only want­i­ng to keep things the way they were in the era of the punch card, some­one to be shunned and hid­den away from any­one reek­ing of impor­tance. For those not inclined toward man­age­ment, and not desirous of being involved in any deci­sions going forward–including lunch orders, types of free drinks in the kitchen, fla­vors of cof­fee, work hours–this is prob­a­bly not a whol­ly bad thing. They’ll grow a beard, grow bit­ter, and even­tu­al­ly be found half deliri­ous clutch­ing a sta­pler.

How­ev­er, for those engi­neers who haven’t quite giv­en up on life, the mar­ket­ing, ana­lyst, and sales machine can be a jug­ger­naut upon which many careers are made. If exec­u­tives are on board, and why would­n’t they be, it’s prob­a­bly best to agree their clothes are quite love­ly thank you very much, or feign only mild con­cern, “I wish that came in blue.”

But, a few mil­lion dol­lars lat­er, and some cold nights search­ing for your soul among the crum­bled dreams of your bro­ken life, a pile of shiny new gear–or soft­ware, licens­es, and bro­ken promises–will arrive upon your doorstep, ready to be inte­grat­ed into what­ev­er remains of your appar­ent­ly old and bust­ed infra­struc­ture. It might not work, or do any­thing use­ful, or even real­ly inte­grate very well at all. But think of it this way, by the time you install it, learn it, and fig­ure out just what you can do with it, a new cat­e­go­ry will have been born and you can start the process all over again. Unless you’ve been hid­den away with your hereti­cal ram­blings and your sta­pler.

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October 24, 2012 Uncategorized

Open Letter to a Failed Job Applicant

Read­ing Time: 3 min­utes

“Life is hard.  It’s hard­er if you’re stu­pid.”  — John Wayne

Dear Appli­cant,

I know it must have hurt you to find out that you were not select­ed for the posi­tion you inter­viewed for with my com­pa­ny.  I know that based part­ly on my own expe­ri­ences look­ing for work, but also by the way you attempt­ed to high-five me when the inter­view was over.  Rest assured, the fact that you almost punched me and that I had to get my glass­es adjust­ed (turns out they aren’t made to hit the wall that hard) had no direct bear­ing on you not being asked to join our team.  I feel a cer­tain sense of duty, how­ev­er, and would like to see you suc­ceed in the future.  To that end, please con­sid­er my top­i­cal sug­ges­tions for improv­ing your inter­view per­for­mance below.

Timeliness–I under­stand that unfore­seen com­pli­ca­tions can arise at any place, and often at the most inop­por­tune times, which is why I did­n’t can­cel the inter­view when you were 35 min­utes late to meet with me and the rest of the inter­view team.  Life can hap­pen to any­one, and I was feel­ing a lit­tle for­giv­ing that day.  Thank­ing me pro­fuse­ly for allow­ing you to inter­view was a good start, but explain­ing to me how drunk you were last night prob­a­bly was­n’t your best move, strate­gi­cal­ly speak­ing.

Clothing–I know that in sev­er­al print and oth­er media out­lets it is a well-hack­neyed meme to eschew the idea of wear­ing a suit to a job these days.  Some even say that you should­n’t wear a suit to the inter­view.  I tend to dis­agree, but I do under­stand that now that I’m in my late 30’s I am offi­cial­ly an old codger from your per­spec­tive.  Let me just say this, then.  Show­ing up to the inter­view in a wrin­kled gap shirt, a pair of what I have to imag­ine are extreme­ly uncom­fort­able jeans, and some odd­ly col­ored shoes that may have been made out of recy­cled rub­ber boots was a regret­table choice.  You can prob­a­bly skip the tie if you need to, but you may want to con­sid­er a pair of good slacks, a but­ton-up shirt, and a coat.  You may be a fresh-out-of-col­lege hip­ster, but some of us aren’t.

Confidence–I admire con­fi­dence in peo­ple, I think it’s a good trait.  Con­fi­dence dur­ing a job inter­view is also a good trait, and I’m glad to see you have it in spades.  You should con­sid­er tem­per­ing that con­fi­dence just a bit, how­ev­er, and per­haps rel­e­gat­ing your sto­ries of oth­er-world­ly deeds to things you have actu­al­ly done, and not just things you have heard about.  Also, the phrase “back in the day” should prob­a­bly not be used to describe some­thing I remem­ber imple­ment­ing less than 10 years ago.

Questions–I have to admire the way you showed absolute­ly no inter­est in my com­pa­ny… none, nada, zip.  It takes a remark­able amount of focus and ded­i­ca­tion to remain that entire­ly dis­in­ter­est­ed in a com­pa­ny you, osten­si­bly, are inter­est­ed in work­ing for.  I have a hard time hit­ting that lev­el of indif­fer­ence on top­ics as mun­dane as toi­let paper col­or, so that’s some­thing.  For future inter­views, how­ev­er, you may want to come armed with some basic ques­tions that show you are at least aware of the com­pa­ny name.  Start slow, then work up to more detailed ques­tions like:

(1) What kind of com­pa­ny is this?

(2) What do you make?  Or sell?  Or do?

(3) Will I be paid?

(4) Am I expect­ed to wear clothes?

I do applaud you for hav­ing ques­tions at the ready, and for ask­ing them in a seri­ous man­ner, but I do ques­tion the con­tent a bit.  For instance, the few min­utes we spent dis­cussing what it *real­ly* means to take a ran­dom drug test, whether they’re tru­ly ran­dom or not, and how much notice you’d be giv­en were insight­ful to say the least.  Your con­cern about back­ground checks was also good to see, though per­haps not in the way you might have hoped.  The sto­ry about your wrong­ful arrest was col­or­ful, if not help­ful to your cause, and was 10 min­utes of my life I’ll nev­er get back.

Salary Negotiations–Here is an area where you real­ly shot for the moon, and that is com­mend­able on some lev­el.  Your tenac­i­ty in main­tain­ing your worth to my com­pa­ny, despite all evi­dence to the con­trary is a mod­el of con­fi­dence and self-worth.  The fact that your last job was as a help-desk tech­ni­cian for the local chap­ter of the there-but-for-the-grace-of-God soci­ety, that you had respon­si­bil­i­ty for two com­put­ers, and that you spent the major­i­ty of your work week in what I’d char­i­ta­bly call the cus­to­di­al indus­try notwith­stand­ing, you stood your ground and demand­ed a six-fig­ure salary.  As a quick aside, I have to apol­o­gize again for blow­ing cof­fee out my nose at you dur­ing this dis­cus­sion.  I assure you it was sim­ply a lin­ger­ing ill­ness and noth­ing to do with our con­ver­sa­tion.

In clos­ing, while you were not offered this position–or any future posi­tion, ever–I hope that my sug­ges­tions above will be tak­en under advise­ment and help you as you explore oth­er oppor­tu­ni­ties with–and I can’t stress this enough–other com­pa­nies.  Oh, and the posi­tion was filled by a guy in a suit.  He was­n’t as fun to inter­view as you were, but again, he had a suit.

Thanks

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November 6, 2011 Uncategorized

ADVICE FOR THE NEOPHYTE IT ASPIRANT

Read­ing Time: 4 min­utes

After 17 years in the indus­try I have decid­ed that it is time to pass down some advice to the new­er entrants in to the field of Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy.  If you’re just out of school with a fresh­ly mint­ed degree, look­ing for that shiny new job that leads to fame and for­tune, then this arti­cle is for you.  If you are look­ing to move up in the job you cur­rent­ly hold, then this arti­cle is for you.  Hell, if you’re breath­ing and have heard of a com­put­er before, this might be for you as well.

 

(1)  The first thing you have to real­ize about work­ing in Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy is this: it auto­mat­i­cal­ly leads to six-fig­ure incomes, sports cars, and attrac­tive women.  Most peo­ple won’t tell you this, and in fact go to great lengths to cov­er it up—much like we in the Seat­tle area tell peo­ple it rains all the time so you won’t move here—but it is true.  Any­one who denies this is either lying to you, or incom­pe­tent.  If you apply for a posi­tion in IT (cool-kids abbre­vi­a­tion warn­ing) you should def­i­nite­ly expect this as a min­i­mum pack­age.  If you don’t get offered all of these things up front, or hear any­thing faint­ly resem­bling an insin­u­a­tion that you might need some­thing called expe­ri­ence, run the oth­er way: this job is beneath you.

(2)  This brings us to anoth­er good point that we should dis­cuss right away: this notion of expe­ri­ence.  Expe­ri­ence is some­thing that peo­ple who’ve sat around at their job long enough claim you need in order to do what they do.  The real­i­ty, how­ev­er, is far dif­fer­ent.  Most of these so called “expe­ri­enced” peo­ple have long ago giv­en up on being use­ful, and are sim­ply wait­ing around to retire.  They’re slow, inef­fec­tu­al, and don’t know half of what you do.  They’re your par­ents age, aren’t cool, don’t dress right, stay home on week­ends, don’t come in with hang­overs, and sit around so much it’s painful­ly obvi­ous they don’t do any­thing.  Expe­ri­ence is just a word they toss out there to keep fresh young peo­ple who know more than they do from expos­ing their weak­ness­es to the sober light of day.  Scoff open­ly when pre­sent­ed with the need for expe­ri­ence.  Toss­ing in an “old” joke or two wouldn’t hurt either… it helps let peo­ple know you’re on to them.

(3)  Every­one knows that IT types in gen­er­al, and net­work engi­neers in par­tic­u­lar, are opin­ion­at­ed peo­ple.  All day, every day, we’re called upon to give voice to oth­ers’ tech­nol­o­gy inse­cu­ri­ties; to make them feel bet­ter by telling them what is good and bad in any giv­en sit­u­a­tion.  To tru­ly be successful—to tru­ly rise above the crowds of medi­oc­rity in the field—you’ll need to take this nat­ur­al predilec­tion for opin­ing and crank it up a few notch­es.  The best way to do this is to form as many opin­ions on tech­nol­o­gy as pos­si­ble, and then nev­er waver from them.  It works even bet­ter if your opin­ions aren’t based on any­thing use­ful like quan­tifi­able data or expe­ri­ence, but rather on ego.  You’ll also want to pick tech­nolo­gies to evan­ge­lize that either few peo­ple know, you don’t cur­rent­ly have in place (this helps tremen­dous­ly, because you can be the “expert” with­out hav­ing to get your hands dirty by prov­ing it), or that make you seem “cool”.  To wit, let’s look at point num­ber 4:

(4)  Tech­nolo­gies like Apple are ubiq­ui­tous in the net­work engi­neer­ing world.  They are good prod­ucts in many ways, but that’s not why you’ll want to use them.  You’ll want to use them because that’s what all the “cool” kids are using.  Old peo­ple with “expe­ri­ence” use PCs and you don’t want to be asso­ci­at­ed with that.  Hav­ing some off-hand­ed plat­i­tudes about why you use Apple com­put­ers is going to be good here; things like “I only use the best tool for the job” is a great one.  If chal­lenged, or heav­en for­bid proven wrong, above all else don’t acknowl­edge this.  Sim­ply wave your hands in a dis­mis­sive way and insist that some­how the thing you like about Apple real­ly hasn’t been dis­proven, and move on.  This doesn’t apply only to Apple, of course, you can use this tech­nique to make your­self look smarter than those around you with just about any­thing.  As I stat­ed, how­ev­er, you’ll real­ly want to pick as many tech­nolo­gies as pos­si­ble that don’t have much mar­ket pen­e­tra­tion in your com­pa­ny or cir­cle of influ­ence.  If you pick some­thing well-known to evan­ge­lize, you run the risk of being labeled as dif­fi­cult to work with.

(5)  On the top­ic of dif­fi­cult to work with, this can be impor­tant as well.  Agree­able peo­ple get nowhere in cor­po­rate Amer­i­ca, and you cer­tain­ly aren’t work­ing for any team.  The best thing to do with any new job is to imme­di­ate­ly estab­lish that you won’t play by every­one else’s rules.  The most effec­tive way I’ve found to make this hap­pen is to con­stant­ly com­plain about how much bet­ter things were done “at my old com­pa­ny.”  This applies even if, as is like­ly, your old com­pa­ny was just col­lege.  What this does is estab­lish the fact that you’ve seen bet­ter, you know bet­ter, and you won’t be held back by medi­oc­rity.  It also lets every­one know up front that you aren’t a team play­er, and that you’ll dri­ve the bus of suc­cess all on your own thank you very much.

 

There are many more tips I can share, and I’m cer­tain that this is prob­a­bly just the start of a mul­ti-part arti­cle.  It is, after all, incum­bent on those of us who have been in the indus­try for a while now to try to pass on all that we’ve learned to the next gen­er­a­tion.  There is far too much dis­in­for­ma­tion out there on so-called “suc­cess,” and I believe that what­ev­er I can do to debunk the com­mon mythol­o­gy, it is for the best.

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