Documentation is always the first casualty when proper maneuvers start as deadlines crest the ridgeline. Poor bastards.
One of my go to sayings, which I’m sure my teams hate by now, is, “heroism is not a strategy”
Or, as one of the loading screen tips says in the latest computer BattleTech game, “If you do something stupid and it works, it’s still stupid, and you got lucky.”
Matt_W
2016
Truth. Also, every IT department:
While I realize this is a bit facetious, there can be tremendous differences between different IT organizations. I’ve worked in local government, for contractors assigned to local government, in start-ups and in more mature enterprises. The local government org actually did a semi-decent job of investing in IT, at least for government, and while it didn’t pay great the benefits were outstanding. Most of the people I worked with are still there more than a decade later.
The startups did a good job being aggressive with new tech but tended to be lackadaisical with rigorous processes and polices and have a YOLO approach more or less to regulation (the hope nobody notices or hacks us approach). The current larger Enterprise I am in has gone through the growth phase and moved from good tech, weak process to good tech and strong process with a strong focus on compliance. Cybersecurity is a major area of investment, so we aren’t just relying on luck. Its been pretty cool to work through that transformation. Really makes me appreciate strong IT leadership at the C-level.
It might just be a somewhat uninformed position, but it’s incredibly expensive to do right, either on your own (whether learning and trying things out or hiring expensive experts) or by hiring people who know have it figured out. And automation of it is its own curse, as it’s one more point of failure.
And there are tons of points of failure, with lots of tradeoffs that impact things in unexpected ways. The real failure is decades of quick to market hacks with no demand for security infrastructure, and governments “having no money”/“having no business doing X” to do things right.
There are two types of IT budget discussions:
- “Everything is working fine, why are we spending so much on IT again???”
- “Everything keeps breaking, why are we spending so much on IT again???”
Looks like “Florida Man” has become “Florida Toddler”:
Lock up your guns, people. Gun safety is no joke.
Showing your age, Scott. Nobody uses Access anymore.
Hey, I earned my age! Also, I’m nearly positive that guy still uses Access.
KevinC
2024
As someone who works with legacy code a lot, you’d be surprised. And also terrified. But also surprised!
Granted, it wouldn’t be the types Scott was talking about. :)
There are, hmmm, hospitals using Access, so, hmmm, yeah. Schwarze null uber alles!
That guy wasn’t a technical guy, he was a CEO. That was the point, that marketing and business types were always challenging what you said you needed to accomplish something, by saying that they could do it in a few hours. Usually because they had one time in their lives made something with Access and never gotten over it.
KevinC
2027
Ugh, yeah, I know the type. The company I work for used to be owned by a megacorp and I still have nightmares about some of those meetings. We’re independent again and have been for almost a decade but we’ll still find ourselves swapping war stories of the Bad Times.
RichVR
2028
That is me. Once in college, never again. :)
I wrote stuff in Access Basic professionally on a contract job many, many years ago. I’ve been recovering ever since.
There are still COBOL nerds floating around, because there are still payroll systems etc. that run on COBOL and which no one can figure out how to migrate safely.
KevinC
2031
I had to work with a Jet database the other day. That seems fitting for a WTF 2021 thread! No one uses Access, hrmph!
