Hi Steve,
I frequently run into people who remember the IBM ad about the servers being stolen, but they have really been consolodated onto the one mainframe. There weren't any follow on ads about how well that worked out for the company, nothing with the worried and frightened looking boss happliy going over the balance sheets, looking good at the customer meetings, getting promoted for his vision, winning recognition in the local community for going green. I am often reading one of th e fine manuals on transit and when folks look curious, we chat. Most say that they thought that the mainframe was gone now - they don't hear anything more about it. They are always surprised to hear about some of the mainframes here, in my area, and the kind of work they do. That IBM ad seems to be the last thing that many of the public has heard about mainframes. For all of the efforts any of us make, if the public isn't informed, and encouraged, they aren't going to go to work and talk about how they heard, saw, read that mainframes were more reliable, better suited to critical services, etc. With the z196 and z114 now in play, where are the marketers? It is insufficient for t hem to market only to the relative few who already know. The Super Bowl is coming soon. I'm hopeful, but I'm not holding my breath. Thanks, Linda ----- Original Message ----- From: "Steve Comstock" <st...@trainersfriend.com> To: IBM-MAIN@bama.ua.edu Sent: Tuesday, October 25, 2011 7:32:51 PM Subject: Re: Our community strengths On 10/25/2011 7:36 PM, Dale Miller wrote: > OK, so we squabble, and disagree, but it is my belief that this community has > in > its membership many of the giants who built a technological marvel that > underpins our society today, or at least would do so if > management could be induced to extend its event-horizon beyond the current > fiscal year, and to start counting real costs. Most of us have plied our > trade > in an environment where an unplanned outage or functional failure were simply > not to be allowed. Because we built systems to perform well and reliably, we > were invisible, except when we made mistakes. I'm sure I'm not alone in > experiencing the almost-every-day complaint from a clerk in a store that 'the > computer isn't working right today'. > I believe that we should be getting the word out that computers don't have to > act this way, and that we know how to build systems that behave properly. We > certainly face an uphill battle against the mind-set > among management that leads them to set unreasonable requirements for job > descriptions and set the salary schedules far below current going rates. It > really gets my goat that they use these machinations to spread the lies that > they cannot get skilled IT personnel. See > http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052970204422404576596630897409182-lMyQjAxMTAxMDIwNDEyNDQyWj.html?mod=wsj_share_email > > . > I retired when I could no longer put up with the asininity of company > politics, > but if I wanted to continue in my chosen career, I would certainly undertake > to > build my skills in database, communications, and UNIX, however distasteful > that > might be. I could go on for hours about the poor design features of UNIX and > current email and internet protocols, but if I needed a job, I would swallow > my > pride and start hitting the books. > Of course, with the current political climate regarding Social Security and > Medicare, I might have to go back to work. Perhaps I should have made larger > private investments, but then maybe I would have invested in Enron, AIG, > Lehman > Brothers, or Bernie Madoff. > > Dale Miller You'd think IBM would be interested in telling the story. But, sadly, that doesn't seem to be the case. I have been after many IBM'ers to launch an effort to win the hearts and minds of people in IT and to raise the level of awareness of mainframes (especially z/OS) in the general public. But they don't seem to care about it: they are either hopelessly lost or they have a future plan that does not include z/OS. -- Kind regards, -Steve Comstock The Trainer's Friend, Inc. 303-393-8716 http://www.trainersfriend.com * Special promotion: 15% off on all DB2 training classes scheduled by September 1, taught by year end 2011 * Check out our entire DB2 curriculum at: http://www.trainersfriend.com/DB2_and_VSAM_courses/DB2curric.htm ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
