MCSEs...

Well yes, but that's just another example of the same - selling a
product which doesn't fulfil any useful function for the customer,
i.e. which fails to meet their requirements.

What, as in, most of what it does actually performs no useful function
whatever?

Yeah, perhaps we could.

 

oink.

 

that, and most managers don't have a balls to say "no" to clients.

 

what, no "armalites"?

 

try doing IT in the financial sector. That's great.

 

Your dings, sir.

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BT, DT, GTTS.

TBH I'm not sure it's _that_ different from other fields. Individual
managers/departments will insist that their role is the only one
that's important; IT resources will be allocated on the basis of who
shouts loudest; real user requirements will be hidden behind a wall of
bells and whistles that impress the managers but no-one really
wants...

certainly the same across retail, banking, FS, pharma, engineering...

 

Yep, done that, around the turn of the millenium I spent 9 months
working on a contract for one of the big banks.. it was spesh.

 

what you've described sounds about right with my (past 6.5 years)
experience of IT within a financial services company, though you've
left out the bit about in a large(ish) company, projects take place at
the speed of a charging glacier.

However, IT in certain other sectors is pretty different - say for
example, in new media companies (I've had a few, but then again, too
few to mention). And in a 24/7 broadcast environment it's completely
different again[1]

[1] I worked[2] at BSKYB for about a year, and they were novel insofar
as they had two completely separate IT departments, constantly at war
with each other.
[2] OK, I turned up and the paid me an obscene amount

 

One of the "up in the air" positions I'm after at the moment is paying
good money doing essentially the same job as I was previously doing,
but with a direct competitor of my previous mob. I'm not totally sure
I want it[1], but the "good money" bit would make it extremely hard to
turn down if I do get offered it. The one I'm going to West Brom for
next week is in a almost completely different domain[2]

[1] I didn't apply for it as such, they asked me in for an interview.
[2] FM

 

although it helps with project management, apparanently it can
unfortunate side-effects (making other managers look bad can be
detrimental to one's career...)

 

You are *not* wrong. Politics works, sadly.

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Catman MIB#14 SKoGA#6 TEAR#4 BOTAFOF#38 Apostle#21 COSOC#3
Tyger, Tyger Burning Bright (Remove rust to reply)
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www.cuore-sportivo.co.uk

 

I was pretty sick of working for the French anyway ;-)

 

And once they've started, it's almost impossible to stop them, even if
it's patently obvious that a multi-million pound failure is likely,
and a no-score loss is the best possible outcome.

Yeah, I'm not surprised at that. Closest I came was interacting with
ad and market research agencies when working on the Pru's "I want to
be" campaign back in '89-'91. Being contracted directly to the
advertising dept, even to the extent of the boss thereof personally
writing checques for my monthly invoices, we were able to completely
bypass any official IT involvment and therefore acheive quite a lot.

Similar in my current position - we've been largely autonomous from
corporate IT, except that they supply and maintain our machines and
their interaction with other systems, and have been able to develop
something really quite special over the last decade. Now we've got a
huge multi-project program going to try and replace it the whole
world's involved (like, 70-oddd people, FFS) and it's all going to
shit.

Ah well, at least I'll be able to say I told 'em so.

 

Just say no.
Learn some FORTRAN and get into the engineering sector.
Engineers and science bods are far less tolerant of manglement bullshit.

 

"manglement" is one of those words, like spelling Microsoft with a
dollar sign instead of the "s" that marks the poster out as a moron.
So it was a bit superfluous coming from you.

And anyway, I have been "manglement" for the past 5 years. Middle-aged
coders are much like those who still use buses.

 

Ace wrote in uk.rec.motorcycles:

IME it's usually because the expectations don't usually match the
requirements.

 

Isn't that what I said?

Honestly, if you'd only read and tried to understand the spec...

 

And that's another problem entirely. Everyone goes on about how
important documentation is, so you generate huge quantities of the
stuff.

That then no-one reads.

 

Sure. But it keeps us in a job eh?