back once again

March 4th, 2008 | by jg3 |

So maybe you didn’t notice, but this server disappeared for a few days.

I know I’ve been threatening to migrate to a new, faster box for a long, long time and today, finally, that day has arrived.

I’m undertaking this effort because it needs to be done, but partially also in protest of the inanity that is the DFR (read: TPS) reports that I’ve been tasked with at work.

We use large and expensive ticketing systems to keep track of what is going on for a reason. If they are too cumbersome or convoluted for managers to use, they are likely too cumbersome or convoluted for front-line employees to use, too. If my role as a “senior engineer” means that I have the capacity to extract information from one system, paste it into a Microsoft Word template, and e-mail it to a distribution list by 8:30 every morning, I don’t want to be a senior *or* an engineer, at least not here.

Thanks for reading this venting. Now I’m going back to working on my resume.

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  1. 2 Responses to “back once again”

  2. By zinger on Mar 5, 2008 | Reply

    Compulsory schedules, status reports, and other trappings of micromanagement are a sign of a sickness in the department management - or at least a perception of sickness. They rarely seem to actually produce or achieve anything, and seem to get used more as a justification of continued existence (look at all these pieces of paper, see how important we are!).

  3. By jg3 on Mar 5, 2008 | Reply

    That’s right. There is sickness, and this may help to address it. However my main frustration is that in spite of the millions of dollars spent on poorly designed and poorly implemented systems to contain information, upper management insists on being informed via some other parallel system. The decision to create more work for the operational staff instead of putting the development staff to work to improve the systems in place is a symptom of what?

    Incidentally, the name of the new system collides with an existing new system name. That highlights that the folks who authorize the outlay of huge amounts of dollars to create these systems are unaware of what systems already exist.

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