title: The truth hurts: especially after you stop laughing link: https://onemoretech.wordpress.com/2012/06/24/the-truth-hurts-especially-after-you-stop-laughing/ author: lembobro description: post_id: 2892 created: 2012/06/24 14:57:38 created_gmt: 2012/06/24 18:57:38 comment_status: closed post_name: the-truth-hurts-especially-after-you-stop-laughing status: publish post_type: post

The truth hurts: especially after you stop laughing

Up on The Register Dominic Connor has an apparently amusing article, You're crap and paid too much for the little work you actually do, that in the reading is revealed to be a dead-on accurate analysis of the work world we techs live in (not the one we'd prefer). Quotes like this are priceless:

Your pay is an equilibrium between their fear of you leaving and greedily keeping the cash they could pay you. Do not kid yourself that your pay is a reward for work you have done, employers have less memory than a goldfish and your only lever is what you’re going to do. Any pitch for money must contain a mix of opportunities for your boss to look good flavoured with just enough fear that you might be leaving. The past is evidence for a pay rise, not a cause.

Is that entirely true? Is it really about higher-ups enriching themselves as opposed to having their their budgets drained, roster cut and top performers burned out because of massive price gouging and endemic fraud by vendors? Or this "war story":

... our work focuses on solving problems and this has led to a culture where pessimism and black humour over major screw-ups is seen as cool. At one bank where I was managing a project, a member of the board decided to sit in on a meeting as it was really important. He had no experience of IT people and so took me aside afterwards because he was worried that two of the developers would "self-harm". It was a bank so he didn’t care about them much as people, but he worried about my attitude that this was just normal programmer pessimism. Later at a status meeting one of my development managers said (and I quote) “... the server will die and we will be hunted down and killed like dogs”. Given that we were betting the firm on this system, it probably doesn’t shock you that the board member demanded I demote him.

Must have been an Oracle project. With recommended "partner" resources. If not "hunted down and killed like dogs", then surely "cast adrift and drowned like rats". And finally:

Each victory over the formless hell of Oracle is worthy of you picking up a box of chocolates from the supermarket and sharing them with people passing your desk. The £10 cost pays back very well as you build up an aura as “someone who gets things done”.

Now that's a sentiment I can give my unreserved support. Where chocolates don't do the trick try taking them out for Thai.

Copyright 2004-2019 Phil Lembo