Date: Fri, 6 Oct 2017 10:37:10 +0200 From: Polytropon <freebsd@edvax.de> To: Alejandro Imass <aimass@yabarana.com> Cc: FreeBSD Questions <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: [OT] Why did "enterprise" crap seem to win? (re: Virtualization, Java, Microsoft, Outsourcing, etc.)... Message-ID: <20171006103710.b15bae7c.freebsd@edvax.de> In-Reply-To: <CAHieY7T%2Bcm6SETonW2Q0xTdODzyxjTFHm=Kz4aZw7sENcBWOCw@mail.gmail.com> References: <CAHieY7RLYQZU0enKe9OF0Ruw2A7vRi59rkoBpvGf2aLngkFw_g@mail.gmail.com> <20171005062919.88a3db9c.freebsd@edvax.de> <CAHieY7T%2Bcm6SETonW2Q0xTdODzyxjTFHm=Kz4aZw7sENcBWOCw@mail.gmail.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Fri, 6 Oct 2017 00:25:17 -0400, Alejandro Imass wrote: > On Thu, Oct 5, 2017 at 12:29 AM, Polytropon <freebsd@edvax.de> wrote: > > Allow me a few comments. It will be mostly statements from my > > very limited individual point of view and experience. > > > > > > On Wed, 4 Oct 2017 10:10:04 -0400, Alejandro Imass wrote: > >> Why did C++ and Java seem win over C and shared object libraries? > > > > Java is the new COBOL, 'nuff said. > > > > [...] > > > > > The reason is simple: Good work doesn't pay. > > > > Seems that now I have a lot of work to comb through this thread and > pick out the gems in all the great feedback, but this one in > particular struck a very strong chord with me. It's interesting that (1st) I'm not the only one to notice, and (2nd) the problem isn't specific to Germany... > This email from which I'm writing is from a moribund company which I > founded around 10 years ago in which we developed some amazing > technology for a few companies, some of which went on to be pretty > successful, although our humble little company failed in the end. YOu mention something that I think is worth emphasizing: Just because you have a good product / service / idea, it doesn't imply you can make money with it. A typical conclusion: You can make money with crappy products / idiotic services / stupid ideas as long as you find someone willing to pay money for it. In the corporate context, this means that excessiv advertising and PR has to be added, and of course you need the ability to "shift down" the costs, which means that a final costumer (not neccessarily yours) has to pay the full price. When you walk around the world with open eyes, you'll easily recognize where you (as a private person) pay the bills to kepp all those bullshit companies alive, and this is because you have no choice. You cannot say "I'll deduct 20 % from my utility bill because you're using highly expensive shit software, and I don't want to pay for that." And guess what you Internet access really costs? Not more than 10 % of what you're actually paying. > The fundamental reason we failed is because nobody was really willing > to pay for great work. Our business model was flawed from the start > because we gave our customers a lot more than they were paying us, and > the competition would deliver mediocre crap (at best) for more money, > and our customers didn't really care either way. That exactly is an important statement. Our typical wage is just a fraction of what our boss makes with the results of our work. Let me add something: Efficient work isn't honored. As I said before, employees (even programmers who are sometimes thought of as "creative minds") are expected to be "do what you've been told" kind of persons, push the button, turn the screw, write the value into this field, don't ask questions. Nobody says: Don't make yourself (or your coworkers) superfluous, but that's probably also true. Just imagine a task is "timed" to fill 8 hours of work. But you find a way to do it in 1 hour. Will you get a reward! No, you'll be punished for "not engaging" with "the goals". Now let's make this less harsh: Let's say you do the 8 hours work in 6 ours and want to leave. Hell no! You cannot leave! There is work to do! What kind of lazy and unsocial person are you?! But your coworker needs 10 hours for the same task. Look how passionate he is! He identifies with the company philosophy and does excellent work! Now guess who gets promoted. :-) As good work obviously does not pay, in conclusion: What would be a reason to actually _do- good work when mediocre work is fully sufficient? Now you could say: As an engineer, I have certain standards I _personally_ adhere to. And you will say this maybe for some months and years. But finally, "corporate culture" will have drained all your self respect, and for the peanuts they pay you, you'll finally crank out all the crap they want - but keep your standards, quality, creativity and enthusiasm for your side projects. IF YOU PAY PEANUTS, YOU GET MONKEYS. Yes, it is that simple. If good work would result in good pay, we'd see better software around, especially in the enterprise world where money never really is a problem. > They never really understood our passion and elegance, and in > retrospect, I get it now. How could they really "get it"? For example > when I would talk passionately about FreeBSD and mod_perl and 6,000 > concurrent requests per server, the answer was like "well what do you > think about WSO2, I heard some XYZ company from Wall Street uses > that"... shouldn't we be moving towards that architecture?" Honestly, > what can you answer to that? where do you even begin to explain? I > mean, what part of 6K request per node didn't you get? This fits the "don't care" indoctrination. No own thoughts. But refering to Wall Street companies is always "good". They cannot fail! They prosper! (No further thoughts of if this is right, or why this is.) Solutions aren't being searched within the own potential (provided by qualified and motivated personnel), but instead in external products and services. I think this is because nobody really wants to take responsibility, and with a pile of external dependencies you hardly understand, it's always easy to blame somebody else... > We were the underdogs, selling something that nobody really wanted to > buy: great work. It was the nonconformant people, the tinkerers, the thinkers, the dreamers who created all the technological innovation that society takes for granted. It was not the suits, the "looking good man", the yes-sayers, the bean-counters or bone-heads. > In the end customers don't really care about good technology or > elegant systems. All they care about is eye candy and buzz words. Yes. And strangely, this always seems to work. Even if you don't have a product that matches the customer's needs, you'll be able to sell him crap with good talk, colorful documents, a nice "Powerpoint" presentation and fake recommendations. I didn't believe it until I saw it myself. More than once. So in the end, the customer's employees have to work around all the problems that the software solution includes. Those who decide about what software to use aren't the ones who are going to use it later on. There are also cases where no decision is possible due to idiotic regulations. For example in schools. The government issues a list of "approved" software and "certified" service contractors. Those solutions are expensive, prone to break, heavily insecure, and more or less belong to a museum (or country fair horror show). You'd be surprised how many pupils (and few passionate teachers) you'll find in local school computer clubs who could do a much better job for fewer money (as no external "service contractors" are needed), but they aren't allowed to even touch the "certified" solutions. So while software in administration and classroom permanently bluescreens, data gets lost or stolen, the parasites get money. Their contracts say things like "if something breaks, it's your fault, and we are not liable for anything." Those kinds of "approved solutions" can be found in many other contexts. > So I > finally gave in, and sold what was left of our team to one of our > customers that did really well, and we continue to do the best work we > possibly can, but sadly limited within the realm of "enterprise" > system development, and out of all things in f-cking Java. I've recently dealt with an installation where a working environment consisting of mainframe + skilled programmers is to be replaced with "query generators" written in Java on local PCs - introducing a complexity of O(n) for administration -, and those who are aware of it already predict two significant problems: (1st) the speed of resolving customer queries (often quite complex) will rise, and (2nd) for changes (happens very often), the external company supplying the Java solution needs to be addressed, as of course they only serve binary blobs to be used locally on the individual PCs. Until now, you simply needed to call one of the programmers and tell them what you need, and they would write a program for you and send the output. I have no idea how complex it will get now after being "modernized" to Java... > Warmest regards to all! And a heartfelt thank you for confirming that > I am not the only one frustrated about all this. Definitely not. We who suffer are a silent majority. :-) Related war story, happened this year when the "Wannacry" et al. crypto trojans caused problems: 2:30 in the night, phone rings. Big boss: "You must come in immediately, out while production has stopped!" I say "Okay, I'll be ready in 30 minutes, don't touch anything" and collect my equipment and am being picked up by the production supervisor himself. He says: "I'm so sorry we have to wake you up. Did the boss tell you already? Production stopped. Somehow our system got infected by some crypto trojan. Maybe you can find out who is responsible." Arriving at the site, getting production system up again. Checking the office installation: All PCs re-installed cleanly (user data lost, of course, as the server and its local backup were also reset). I ask: "Has someone been here before me?" Big boss: "Oh yes, we have a consultant for that. He's very qualified and has lots of good certificates. He's my neighbor's son. He's good with PCs, you know? He does PC all the time!" After I explain to him that all possible evidence from the PCs has been lost now (and also the firewall and logging mechanisms have been wiped!), I cannot tell him what actually happened. His reply: "But I want to know who I can fire for this outage! Tell me who did it! I must act!" (Sometimes, morons seem to think IT is magic.) The production supervisor said that he objected the wiping of the office PCs, but is told "Shut up! That is not your responsibility! Go back to your machine park!" by the big boss. Luckily, I don't have to deal with the surprised faces of the office personnel that arrives next morning when they see their "pictures" are gone (term applies to desktop background _and_ files they are working on), as an intern (!) is their actual IT staff. Poor soul. So: Now guess who got paid properly! :-) -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20171006103710.b15bae7c.freebsd>