TJT
Mr. Poopybutthole
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IT/Software career thread: Invert binary trees for dollars.
- Thread starter Traak
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Guest, it's time once again for the massively important and exciting FoH Asshat Tournament!
Go here and give us your nominations!Who's been the biggest Asshat in the last year? Give us your worst ones!
Kuro
Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
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Heh. First place I got in at makes signs for businesses. IT is handling ~100 users, ~15 remote users, mostly just microsoft suite stuff plus the various graphic design products, but they have a bespoke old VBscript "command center" that runs on top of the sql database and is uncommented crap written by a now dead person. It has random weird errors or all the time, and the head of IT spent like 80 hours last month trying to figure out what madness was keeping the monthly reports failing since we added a new sales person (Turned out it had been many years since any new sales people joined, the table generated for the report was hard coded to be the people who were employed and in the sales system in 2015, so the SQL was all fine and tracking his data correctly, but the script on top of it struck itself in confusion upon seeing an 11th salesperson)
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TJT
Mr. Poopybutthole
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TJT
Mr. Poopybutthole
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I do love some shadow IT archaeology now and again. It would probably be easier to make an entirely new solution than deal with some nonsense like that.
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Fucker
Log Wizard
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IT archaeology has some interesting stories, interweb is full of them. A company I worked for had an old guy in the corner with a Sparcstation and a Sun server. No one knew what he did or what the Suns were for. I guessed he was being kept on because he was close to retirement. He retired, and the computers were a mystery. Obviously not doing anything otherwise someone would have been trained on his job. His computers were shut off to exactly 0 effect.
I started a company with two other guys. I wrote a specific use bit of software. Keep in mind that I am not a coder by trade; I picked it up along the way. The code was fully commented and its functions documented. I leased it back to the company. The company was sold and with it, my software lease carried on. I got checks for that software for a long time....up until a few years ago when it must have been deprecated. I still have no idea why they didn't rewrite the thing from the get go. That company got purchased by another company, but my software remained. Thus the IT Archaeology bit of the conversation.
The amount of iWaste at huge companies must be staggering if things like this can slip through without being questioned.
Noodleface
A Mod Real Quick
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I think I worked with this dude. He had sun servers in our lab and no one had ANY idea what he did, but he was always doing SOMETHING on them. He got laid off, they got shut down and removed and nothing happened.
He was a weird dude too, always wore two different colored shoes of the same type of shoe. I've never met anyone like him. No idea what his job actually was
TJT
Mr. Poopybutthole
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The highest paid tech worker I knew at General Motors was an old dude they kept around for no other reason than he knew how to use this particular software. A now defunct piece of mainframe software that GM's mainframes put into place in the 80s. By sheer happenstance when this guy started his career in the 80s the office he happened to work in used it. The software itself was called NarrowCast or something.
It's important to understand that the late 70s and early 80s mainframes running GM's auto plants are all custom jobs built by IBM. They all have variants of the same custom operating system that is unique to these mainframes. Not some linux distro we all know and love but some complete bullshit that only exists on physical documentation GM has down in their archives. There is no other way to learn the various commands, features, ins and outs of these systems as they are proprietary to the company. For whatever reason the Boomer developers of the time developed a bunch of control mechanisms that used NarrowCast.
This old guy is probably still getting north of $300k+ a year to sit on his ass and do nothing except when they need someone to fix those old mainframes.
It's important to understand that the late 70s and early 80s mainframes running GM's auto plants are all custom jobs built by IBM. They all have variants of the same custom operating system that is unique to these mainframes. Not some linux distro we all know and love but some complete bullshit that only exists on physical documentation GM has down in their archives. There is no other way to learn the various commands, features, ins and outs of these systems as they are proprietary to the company. For whatever reason the Boomer developers of the time developed a bunch of control mechanisms that used NarrowCast.
This old guy is probably still getting north of $300k+ a year to sit on his ass and do nothing except when they need someone to fix those old mainframes.
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Palum
what Suineg set it to
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We demoed all these major vendors. Ended up with Nintex. Happy to answer questions if you have any, though obviously we didn't acquire Outsystems so I only have impressions.
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Palum
what Suineg set it to
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Yes we're deploying a lot of no-code for back office processes (accounting, purchasing, payroll, HR, recruiting, etc.)
No code and low code are somewhat marketing lies. It's true that you can create certain solutions without any custom "code" (at least in some platforms), but even then you have to understand program control flow, logic, integrations, data structures, etc. in order to create anything substantial.
To give an example, we have a no code workflow for purchase requests, and in order to make meaningful human readable and informative instance IDs for process tracking, we had to use regex to replace GUIDs. There's no earthly way random accountant person is going to figure that out on their own.
What this means for us is that some management, some devs and some BAs work on developing solutions as DT projects come up. Most business users are completely incapable, but a few may be able to manage some admin and updates.
Feedback from my devs is that it's really effective and time saving IF your solutions fit the box the platform offers. For us we went with Nintex over Outsystems (and others) because we had a high focus on paperwork reduction. Nintex has much more robust form building/controls, whereas Outsystems has more "app focus" (like MS PowerApps). It reduces a lot of technical debt from random one off web apps to handle one piece of paper some guy made 15 years ago.
Khane
Got something right about marriage
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Its always surprising, and simultaneously not surprising at all when companies like this are able to break into market and sell products like this.
"No Code!" "Low Code!" "Host it in Azure!"
It's like the people buying these things have never actually looked at.... anything in Azure. That's all everything is nowadays. Workflows instead of code snippets. Shapes instead of text. Are they just not aware of what Azure Data Factory or Logic Apps or Event Bus or... or... or... is?
"No Code!" "Low Code!" "Host it in Azure!"
It's like the people buying these things have never actually looked at.... anything in Azure. That's all everything is nowadays. Workflows instead of code snippets. Shapes instead of text. Are they just not aware of what Azure Data Factory or Logic Apps or Event Bus or... or... or... is?
Mist
REEEEeyore
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The people who approve and/or actually write the checks to buy this shit have no idea. That's why every company is filled with shitty XaaS products, including the plethora involved with deals I'm attached to, so I will shut the fuck up now.
Palum
what Suineg set it to
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Building shit from scratch takes time. A good low/no code platform lets you deploy similarly situated workflows and apps much quicker and with easier maintenance. Most of MS Power Platform is miserable and not worth using, but building it from scratch in Azure isn't worth it either.
It isn't a good solution for everyone, but it is a great solution for some.
Khane
Got something right about marriage
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I'm not sure what you mean. Azure Workflows all do the same thing and specifically things like Logic Apps have tons of pre-built functionality. "Development" in azure is done via a web browser with drag and drop shapes. Well, you can get plugins for VS and would want to for git/repository support but the point is these "low code" products aren't doing anything special at all. Unless its some super niche, industry specific thing.