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
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