The computer, the "computer" and those who "understand us" - Part 2: The company capiscione
After the first part on ell'esperto next door , and 'time to talk about another large group of computer scientists (indeed, computer science, as most' often quoted by his friend Simon Vellei ) capiscioni the business.
They are distinguished by their style, not necessarily intended as clothing but as a way of being. They are often friendly, kind, smart and highly educated, not necessarily in a bad faith (indeed, almost never). Commercial born, know how to talk to the customer (and with the employee) but have a serious problem: computer will not understand anything at the age '? It 's not important, but usually between 30 and 55 years.
They have a mouth full of words (them) incomprehensible that, juxtaposed, might make sense. But they can not 'to use them correctly. Mentioning acronyms, terminology specific numerical factors rather improbable and, of course, millions of English words to define even the most 'simple.
They do not use the keyboard but the keyboard. Do not have a motherboard but the motherboard. They do not use a laptop but a laptop. They have the handheld but the 'handheld, which often coincides with mobile (phone, NDA). Dream of a cottage with a broadband connection and dream DVB-H.
Have a routing problem? No problem in a moment are in the website is correct and agree to spend 12 thousand euros in Cisco router (or other professional firms) with load balancing and replication of fully transparent channels in question are also buying channels VPN directly from the supplier of connectivity '(use the router becomes too little trendy) Â to get the maximum reliability and fault tolerance.
Comes around, the mountain and realize that the problem was only related to a network cable unplugged. Not matter, now have a respectable top network appliance and we may do the sboroni with customers and competitors. Then perhaps they do not know how to configure: No problem, take a guy with project contract at 650 euro per month and they manage the whole shebang.
A customer calls: "We would like a mail server, you have only to sort the internal mail. But I know nothing. We would like to limit remote assistance. Quote: hardware firewall, HDSL connection (no ADSL and 'too unprofessional for remote assistance), routers, allowing any type of remote access even with smartcards, fingerprints, tone of voice or smell, skin Server server (ie not a normal computer), maybe blade (you never know that we must increase the power ...) with 8 processors and 8 gig of ram, internal network from 1 Gbit and 1 TB of space 10 and RAID 10. Software? Windows Server Stra-200X Professional with super commercial mail server (which does not even support anti-spam plugins) and a myriad of other (expensive) Amen 'which are absolutely inutili. Cost? 35000 euro turnkey. No, VAT and 'excluded but hey!! Includes labor!!
Estimate accepted. The guy was so 'professional, confident and competent (with all those big words ...) which could not be trusted.
Buy ... uh ... sorry ... carry everything. But eventually you realize that nothing works and seek outside counsel. You go, smile when you discover that all this equipment must be used to sort three internal e-mails per day (an old 486 or any router from a few tens of euros running on openwrt would have sufficed), and give your advice. Ask "why do not you adopted hardware 'modest and GNU / Linux, cutting costs?". They can not answer, do not know that a mail server can be done in other ways. Any commercial farm daughters no one has ever told.
Dazed and confused, asking some summary information that is directly piped into / dev / null. Eventually found the problem: they have connected a network cable. They smile, pay, thank you and inside of them think: "yeah, that person in the leg. He understood what the problem was the first time around, I would never have succeeded. "A No, indeed. All those big words have filled your brain junk news. And now it 'overflows. Back to read the company brochures. That is' which is true literature information!
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simply fantastic
)))
Captain unfortunately much more often than not willing to admit this type of situation
July 8th, 2007 at 22:13I can assure you that the same problem exists in many other spheres of work.
July 9th, 2007 at 9:06The guy who shoots in a double nonsense and that came with the big car definitely has more 'modest success and sincere person (ie one who works and pay what is enough to feel satisfied with their work).
From design to medicine, from consultancy (in any field) to the projects.
Unfortunately people love to be duped and the only flaw is that those who work honestly not doing enough "the sborone ...
good job!
But it is also due to the different properties they prefer to throw away money needlessly while you can pick up the phone and scream provider quatrini turn the data you got them good men and there ... nothing works to change that mentality forming internal staff as they should, and using where possible (almost everywhere) other operating platforms.
August 25th, 2007 at 13:35This problem I had just joined the Company as currently, there were some external providers who tended to networking, and I could not understand why one day and there were no problems with a network but a collapse, whereas the bulk of networked applications is done with ... I know some quietly made sifting through invoices, to dismantle piece by piece throughout the network (64 acres) all wells resulted about everything ... 3 km of network cables unnecessary rolled here and there on flights of 100 meters ... it took me years to move along, then placed the plant network and two years there I put my hand ...
Hello,
if you can console my client has chosen Telecom as a business partner. For your website has been selected by Telecom Datacenter this configuration:
2 HP DL400 with a total of 4 CPUs and 6 GB of RAM
in load configuration balancig, widows 2003 Server and Oracle 10th.
You can understand what he spent.
I developed the web app [CMS, CRM and other pretty little things] in PHP and the Oracle client wanted necessarily [just bad fortunately use a layer for abstraction]. The performance of the system are greatly inferior to those of my development machine [p4 2.4 GHz with 1 Gb ram] with Gentoo 2007.0.
For months I ask a web server load balancing? 1000/2000 to manage access daily?
When I asked the telecoms engineers [are certified Microsoft III level, they said presentation] I laughed at him, saying that certain things "people like me" can not even understand it ... Oh well ...
Cmq you all my sympathy!
October 2nd, 2007 at 14:44A beautiful post and very true! Congratulations, is hilarious!
October 3rd, 2007 at 9:36[...] Apple) From Stephen after Part 1, the computer next door and part 2 with capiscione business, Part 3, the man with small and fragile, we will analyze another typical [...]
October 9th, 2007 at 20:36Good morning.
March 7th, 2008 at 10:27Regarding the comment by Lawrence (I quote) "... certain things people like me can not even understand, these guys might be right, there is really something that" those of us (a bit 'too technical) do not understand: and namely that we are in Italy.
Sifting through invoices (interesting work, being able to do) and some Chamber certificate my friend showed me that some overpaid consultants (and holders of supplier firms) are children or close relatives of board members of the company where he works (in practice , a pair of co-owners). Basically what (strategic) business spending from the budget (not brilliant) turn it into the pockets of family (my friend will do nothing: fear of losing their jobs).
In other cases, providers "are in the middle" with a manager.
In computing these tricks are easier, so no one understands anything.
It does not seem strange if "our production system does not stand up to international competition," as I heard.