[OT] Why did "enterprise" crap seem to win? (re: Virtualization, Java, Microsoft, Outsourcing, etc.)...

[Doug Hardie]

> On 4 October 2017, at 21:29, Polytropon <freebsd at edvax.de> wrote:
> 
> 
> Reason 3 - three! three reasons! - is social appeal. Just imagine
> you're actually understanding your work, and you do it better
> than others, then you're not a "team player", because you "make
> the other branch offices look bad and lazy". That's why it is
> not encouraged to improve things.
> 
> Example from reality: I once worked for a shop where one person
> got a high wage for creating timesheet templates. Manually. She
> basically entered years, months, days and hours manually into a
> PC as if it was a typewriter. With additional microformatting.
> Every day. Every month. For years. When one of her coworkers
> suggested to automate the task basically by piping the output
> of "ncal" into a little awk script (he was a Linux person),
> he got yelled at for being "hostile to coworkers" and "threatening
> the staff". That's what you get when you use your brain.
> 
> PC on, brain off.

I have been in the programming and system development business since the mid 60's.  The more things change, the more they stay the same.  Nothing is new other than the acronyms.  These reasons also hold for senior managers.  Every senior manager who was competent was fired for showing up the others.  The more competent, the quicker they vanish.  Once a manager who was rewarded with a trip (including family) to one of the Caribbean islands came back to go to jail for the illegal activities he did to win that award.  He also cost the company a fortune is lost revenue.  There are many other examples I have witnessed.  It will never change.

-- Doug