Oh I know that feeling, so well.
I currently in a very interesting interview cycle with Honeywell regarding
their "must have ze Q clearance to work here" plant in KC. It vaguely involves
nuclear weapons in some form. So that's interesting. Friend of mine who just
retired after 30 years as an E-9 with TS/SCI, PRP, all the clearance letters
still had to go through a separate investigation. He listed me as a reference,
so clearly they're not too uptight. But, they didn't bat an eye at what it
would cost me to move back to KC, so that's cool. I've survived two phone
screens, there's a teleconference screen on Monday, so that's cool.
The HPC group at FSU is also sniffing around, they need an operations manager.
In a burst of kindness that really surprised me, my old boss at NWRDC has been
helping get my name in the "Just hire him already" pool. He and I are people
who get along well, he's a genuinely nice guy, but one of us working *for* the
other? Sort of a bad idea, just constant small friction.
<cone>
The clown show...oh god. Latest dumb:
1. They decide to send people home with the Cisco VOIP phones they use at
work. Not a bad idea, there’s some sense there. They didn’t start testing it
until a few weeks ago, and then they discover, SHOCKER, that most home routers
do not in fact provide PoE, and if you’re using WiFi…well, we’re not that
Tesla’d yet. So they send home 30 phones, they had 9 power injectors. It was
only on *Friday* they got clearance to order power bricks. (I literally warned
someone who told me about this plan while getting coffee about this. They said
“oh, home desktops provide PoE, it’s not a problem. Unless you have a laptop.
Sigh)
2. We were told there’s no money for DR for the rest of the year. In march.
Their entire DR setup is a single rack in another building on the campus,
(literally the “I keep my backups in my bedroom, the computer’s in the living
room, I’m set) and one rack at NWRDC. I can’t even with that. My boss has me
working up a plan to expand the NWRDC presence. I found out from them that
they’ve tried to work with the hospital over the years, but it’s been hospital
calls on Thursday, demands complete solution by Friday, when informed that is
not possible, call the whole thing off. Multiple times.
3. My boss’s boss, the director of infrastructure services, wants a complete
accounting for what we’re doing for the last two weeks to make sure we’re
working. This reeks of “my budget is in a hole; I need to fire people to make
up for it.” But we did as required. My boss’s theory is that since he and one
of the other people on the team are contractors, this is a way to fire them,
and keep the FTEs. To which I said “That’s the dumbest thing ever, YOU’RE the
diplomat in the group. I can’t even begin to keep my inside face on as well as
you can.” Keep in mind, this guy is an asshole, the one who wrote me up, but
seriously, putting ME in a room with people spinning purest fantasy about how
their DR is basically good to go? Yeah, I’m gone by the end of that meeting.
4. Did I mention that even with all the virtualization they’ve done, they
don’t have the tier 1 application databases on their own servers? They’re mixed
in with tier 3, tier 4, all kinds of shit. So basically, if we have to fail
over a tier 1 app, it’s going to fuck all kinds of things. They’ve had the plan
to fix it for at least 2 years, but that would actually cost money.
5. Their budget “Process” is called “The Mud Bowl”. Literally. That’s the
name of the meeting. Our CIO is a former HS Football Coach. He loves shit like
that.
6. We still can’t get laptops, they’re a fucking status symbol.
7. Because we are in a crisis and two members of the team are VERY familiar
with State and Federal emergency procedures and another one literally worked
for FEMA, we’ve been pushing people to do the right paperwork so that we can
get reimbursed for COVID-related gear, overtime, etc. The response? “This is
too hard. Why do we have to do this. We didn’t get any money from Michael, this
is a waste of time.” Well you dumb shits, you got no money from Michael because
you didn’t follow THE FUCKING PROCESS.
8. The director of infrastructure services is pissed that we’re not doing
“Zerto Tests” (WHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT EVEN MEAN YOU COBBLESTONE?) Because
doing failover tests of production systems at a hospital with a fragile-assed
infrastructure during a *pandemic* is SUCH A GREAT IDEA.
9. Because of IT’s complete lack of thought, our internal datacenter’s power
setup is no longer redundant. The UPS’s are at 60% load. They are going to add
*30 physical servers* to the mix. Which will push us to 80%. This is not just
bad, this is “fire people” bad. They’ve known about this problem for 2/3 years
now, no real plan to fix it beyond “yeah, we should do something one day”. Did
I mention there’s only one rack in their “DR room”? and that it’s not empty? So
there’s no way to fail this shit over once it’s set up.
I’d say it’s like watching a train full of pies slowly collide with a train
full of clowns, but that at least has some comedy potential. This, not so much.
It’s the first time in my professional life that once I get a different gig, I
may just flip my badge on someone’s desk, say “Peace out” and leave. I mean, we
got so reminded that FL is a “right to work” state, so either side can
terminate the relationship at any time for any reason…even in a tiny town like
Tallahassee, where everyone knows each other, I am seriously considering this,
this IT group is just that fucked.
The guy at NWRDC who had my gig at the hospital and begged to come back did so
because he felt straightjacketed by how the hospital does things (You can’t
change your desktop background but you can totally copy and paste across VDI
boundaries). I don’t think he was around to realize just how fundamentally
fucked this place is.
I do however now completely understand why the response from the actual
hospital security/emergency team to us is “Go Fuck Yourselves, We Have Actual
Work To Do” every time we ask them for info. They have their shit far more
together, (thank god), and have clearly gotten tired of dealing with the
cracked-out myna birds in IT.
</cone>
The vodka bottles get louder and louder every day.
-----Original Message-----
For all practical purposes I'm in forced retirement. About twice a year
some recruiter finds me on LinkedIn and gets all excited, and I get sucked into
an interview cycle. With Amazon it is once a year, and then every other
hyperscaler once a year (including my former employer) and then someone
interviewing realizes I'm old enough to be their father and it all ends
suddenly. I do get some saisfaction knowing that unlike racism, ageism will
catch up to everyone eventually... all those fuckers will get theirs. I just am
pissed because *I* never did it to anyone... as several folks here know, I
hired more than my share of old folks in my time. I don't care what or who you
are, if you can get shit done, I'd hire you.
______________________________________________________
A group becomes a team when each member is sure enough
of himself and his contribution to praise the skills
of the others. ~Norman Shidle
