Guest yobob1 Posted January 3, 2003 Report Posted January 3, 2003 McDonald's shuts down global networking project-WSJ What's this??? IT isn't our saviour? You mean we have to actually figure out how to make money selling burgers and quit screwing around with all this nifty crap? NEW YORK, Jan 3 (Reuters) - McDonald's Corp. (NYSE:MCD - News), in an effort to cut costs, has pulled the plug on what was seen as a major networking initiative to link its restaurants, headquarters and vendors, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. How many worhtless IT projects lay gathering dust after consuming millions? Plenty I'll bet. Boise, ID paid a princely sum for a new high tech 911 dispatch center. It flat didn't work and then the company wanted another huge chunk of cash to make it work. It's headed for the garbage can also.
Hypertiger Posted January 3, 2003 Report Posted January 3, 2003 IT is in the last half of the first stage of collapse... cutting employees and shrinking. The next stage, Kiss of Death, will be drastic wage reduction. Network Security costs should still command a good wage but construction and implementation will become dirt cheap... My brother in law gets paid 150,000 a year designing and implementing networks... He is a simple minded idiot with very little formal education in computer science. Soon these 6 figure smug bafoons will be gasping for air... Never have so many done so little for so much... They are doomed.
Guest AssMaster Posted January 3, 2003 Report Posted January 3, 2003 The vast majority of software engineers are not really entitled to the title, having no formal CS education and not truly being engineers. Hopefully, the difference between experienced, trained engineers and arrogant monkeys will eventually be recognized. And I wish to be evaluated a non-monkey at that time.
mksloth Posted January 3, 2003 Report Posted January 3, 2003 AssM, you're trolling with that kind of comment Training, the formal kind, has little to do with the making of a software engineer. Look at the code coming out of Microsoft as a standout example And they're all trained in fairly reputable schools... Formal CS education has little, if anything, to do with good software, or good hardware for that matter.
Guest soup1 Posted January 3, 2003 Report Posted January 3, 2003 I have a close friend who does IT consulting for Bearing point ( formerly KPMG) THey had a 150 folks on that project. In his words " it was quite a body blow to the firm"
mksloth Posted January 4, 2003 Report Posted January 4, 2003 F***ed Company had this project termination tied to Oracle yesterday. Guess both BearingPoint and Oracle are taking the hit...
Guest AssMaster Posted January 4, 2003 Report Posted January 4, 2003 Nope, not trolling. It is of course true, as you say, that an excellent "programmer", who can produce standalone application or small subsystem or components given a reasonable set of specifications, may come from any background. And the background has nothing to do with their competence. It is also true that there exists a variability of productivity between programmers of the same level of experience by a factor of 10 - a good one is 10 times more productive than a bad one. And beyond that, the design and development of large software systems - especially those which interact with hardware and must allow for entire product lines with high degrees of configurability and flexibility - requires a wholly different level of competence and experience. The title "engineer" requires certification in every other discipline except software - and even the title software engineer requires certification in some states. Those are also facts. An assertion on my part, is that engineering management has little in the way of discerning between the good and the bad, the productive and the non-productive, and the software engineers and the programmers. Like that any better? :grin:
QuantumOnion Posted January 4, 2003 Report Posted January 4, 2003 qo is a formally trained software engineer that writes code for proprietary network hardware. IMHO, formal education helps, somewhat, in that it provides perspective and some insight into various tricks, aka algorithms. Hence, options that might otherwise take time to figure out are known from the get go. But, there is a huge difference between knowing the standard tricks, and creating new ones. Indeed, sometimes leaning too heavily on knowledge of the standard tricks is an impediment leading to rote implementations. Creativity, thinking up the next neat new hack that scales an implementation 10 or 100 fold, is orthogonal to formal training and borders on artistry, or wizardry, take your pick. qo
Goldilocks Posted January 4, 2003 Report Posted January 4, 2003 Don't know many coders. MI doesn't have to many caves... lol. I do know Admins though. Out the wazoo. The two best networks I know of are run by guys with no certs and no formal college education. I am trying to grow my company in order to snag them both. I call these guys all the time for advice on networking issues. I hire them every chance I get for sidework. Meanwhile their bosses keep them ground down earning jack shit. It is insane. People are so brainwahed by the shitty educational mills. Certifications are worthless. You can pick up an MCSE after a month or two of dedicated studying if your out of work. A CCNA is not hard either (CCIE's on the other hand..... those are something to respect). how do I know what these things are worth? I have them... not the CCIE of course.... I do have a life. I have to have them for 'credibility' with clients. this annoys me no end. The certs harden your thinking into an official mold that often prevents you from seeing options that exist - as QO said. I have called MSFT, CSCO, or Sonicwall a dozen times in which they could not figure out a problem (Ok - CSCO only once and that was just because we figured it out first) only to have my friends with no formal education solve the problem within a few minutes with a mere backhanded effort. In fact, their workarounds often lead to greater stability (THE most important thing to ANY admin). Real experience should be all that frigging matters. It's all that matters to me.
Guest AssMaster Posted January 4, 2003 Report Posted January 4, 2003 Good point. Inate ability, creativity, and experience/training are requirements for which there is no substitute. Experience can substitute for education - many are self-taught. And I know many with M.S. or Ph.D.s in CS who do the worst work I have ever seen. Too theoretcial and poor real-world skills - paper tigers. Network guys, to me are primadonnas who treat their little world as if they were the priests of the "holy temple of all things worth knowing in which you shall not trespass". Very territorial, dictatorial and secretive. My suspicion as to the reason for this is that if anyone knew how simple what they do really is, they would all have to take a pay cut or be replaced by community college students. But I could be wrong. And of course, they probably see guys like me in the same way.
Goldilocks Posted January 4, 2003 Report Posted January 4, 2003 "Network guys, to me are primadonnas who treat their little world as if they were the priests of the "holy temple of all things worth knowing in which you shall not trespass". Very territorial, dictatorial and secretive. My suspicion as to the reason for this is that if anyone knew how simple what they do really is, they would all have to take a pay cut or be replaced by community college students." - This is true 99% of the time. Absolutely. The problem is that the 1% of the time that they are right about, the 1% of the shit they tell you to never touch, when someone breaks that shit..... Look out. 99% of what most admins do IS easy. It's the 1% of what they do that is hard that takes an overwhelming amount of experience to get right. For instance.... let the wrong person screw with Active Directory.... goodbye network....let the wrong person screw with a database or Exchange and you can forget about profits for the year. Most important of all from our perspective.... let the wrong person configure your security.... Goodnight Gracie. Nice knowing ya. It is amazing how thouroughly networks get compromised once they get advertised in the cracker world. It has never been more important to understand that 'the little stuff matters'. As security consultants it is our pleasure to come in and fix that 1%. We are very thankful to MSFT and friends for giving companies false senses of competency. It provides us with lucrative work. The problems are always fixable. Even if the fix is a network rebuild. (Yes, we have done this and no it is not worth the extraordinary amount of money you get paid. You literally have NO life until the problem is gone. 3-4 weeks of 3-4 hours of sleep a night does NOT make you a better person. It just makes you an incredible asshole. At least that's what people tell me. I, of course, have no idea what they are talking about.)
assteroid Posted January 4, 2003 Report Posted January 4, 2003 Aint that the truth. I got my degree from a diploma mill somewhere in Florida. While the other brain surgeons, in the hospital where I work, are sweating bullets about how to pay off their student loans, I'm cracking skulls with gay abandon. Cerebellum, cortex, amygdulla, blah blah blah.. these guys go on and on. Trying to impress, no doubt! Hell, it's carpentry. All you need is a little elbow grease and skill with the old drill! :grin: Sorry guys, couldn't resist...I saw the movie, "Catch me if you Can" the other day, about a 17 year old imposter who manages to pull off some amazing scams. Works supervising interns in a hospital, as a co-pilot. Becomes a master check forger. Fabulous...you've got to see it. A friend of mine was recently hired by a university in Canada to teach computer science for 4 semesters. She doesn't even have a degree in computer science. She is a genius, however. So I guess, especially in the boondocks, that accounts for something.
DogBoy Posted January 5, 2003 Report Posted January 5, 2003 "having no formal CS education " Hate to pile on here but I've been a programmer for 23 years now and the WORST people I've worked with were the ones with masters or phd's. And as for the education that the schools are giving kids in CS it's totally bullshit. I've trained MANY programmers over the years and few of them are ready for a large scale business application coming in out of college. To my way of thinking what they're teaching kids in CS today is an almost complete waste of time because in the corporate worls we've found they need SIGNIFICANT training to actually do their job AFTER they've got their degree in hand. Oh yeah they teach 'em how to write one real complex program using logic and techniques that are never really employes in the business world unless they're going to work at Los Alamos or something like that. But they don't teach 'em how to work in systems with 100's (even 1000's) or source files, many times poorly written like 15-20 years ago. Most programmers actually spens little time writing pieces of code like the college professor teach them. Instead they need to know how to manage large systems and sub-systems and testing, and communication, and documentation, and support. Interacting with people and stuff like that. In my opinion most kids coming out of college with CS degrees are woefully unprepared for the jobs that are available in the corporate world. CS profs seem to be training every student to work at some gubmint science lab where they write (sexy, complex) little pieces of code that it would take Einstien to understand. But the vast majority of programming jobs are far less sexy than Los Alamos. They are relatively mundane jobs that don't require much complex thinking but instead often demand simplicity and good ole' hard work.
Guest AssMaster Posted January 5, 2003 Report Posted January 5, 2003 That is how I knew the end of the bubble was nigh...when stupid CS grads were getting multiple offers of 80-100K plus option and trying to decide amongst the offers was not beneath their abilities. Considering they would actually be a DRAIN on productivity for the first two or three years and then probably switch to another company. Such stupidity. And such stupidity in hiring. And why hasn't the H1-B program been scaled back with all of the tech layoffs? Intentionally importing unemployment along with deflation? Such awful leadership everywhere from corporate to political. Save US Hillary! That will be the cry by 2008...mark my words. Then is the time to load up your guns, spam and gold and head outta dodge. Actually, that will be too late. She is to be the savior, ala FDR.
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