One thing I’ve noticed, over the years, is the habit of people blaming technology for the problems rather than taking a look at the processes behind the problem. A personal example A big example, for me, was when I was part of the Unix enterprise authentication team. The technology worked, and it worked well. It was resilient, reliable, fast. We literally turned off the infrastructure in one datacenter and all the clients correctly failed over to the next nearest one.
This isn’t my normal tech-ish posting; this is a more personal view at how Corporate America and tech startups and the like are abusing their workforce. I don’t mean the sort of abuse seen in the service industry (below minimum wages needing to be supplemented with tips; excessive overtime; all that stuff). I’m talking about white collar tech jobs. The sort of jobs I did; likely the sort of jobs you’re doing (if you’re reading this blog); office workers…
We all know what imposter syndrome is. We may all have suffered from it at some point. I know I did. We may even know, rationally, that this isn’t a sensible thing. One good representation of this was from David Whittaker Yet despite this whenever I started a new job I was always worried that I wasn’t the right person for it; that I’d fail to deliver.
Recently I wrote about how I got here without knowing what it was I wanted to do. That was a prelude to the other half of the equation; I may not know what I want, but I do know what I don’t want. At this moment in my life, I don’t to work. At all. I want to have the luxury to be able to lie in, to read a book, to stay up late hacking on some code or whatever…
One of the most annoying interview questions is “where do you see yourself in five years time?“. I hate it. I have no vision of the future like this. Hell, I barely know what I want to do tomorrow. I’m good at foreseeing the future, honest! So my first job, straight out of uni, was with a small Greek shipping company. I learned a lot there ‘cos I had to do it all.
Else-net there was a discussion on how “security” is generally seen as a blocker; they’re seen as gate keepers and people who just say “no”, or who may be focused on regulatory compliance and not actual security. Who needs Mordac, the Preventer Of Information Services when you have a security team?! The thing is, “security” isn’t a monolith, and it’s not a one way street. Many teams I’ve only really seen security from a megacorp perspective, both from the companies I’ve worked for and the people from other companies I’ve spoken with over the years.
I get email… What are your thoughts about making a career out of specialising in Unix? It seems like you’ve done quite well… Interesting question… Realise that I started doing this 30 years ago. At that time there was no Windows (Windows 1.0 was around the corner). We had DOS. Networking was mostly serial based; if you were (un)lucky you might have had Banyon Vines or Novell or some other proprietary network stack.
One of the exciting parts of the “new world” of cloud is the ability to green field solutions. We don’t have the legacy requirements and so we’re free to do what we want. Or so the evangelists would have you believe. The past lingers on The reality is that many people are closer to a brown field environment. The organisation their team is embedded into has a tonne of reporting (“is your machine patched?
This is an odd post for me. I’m terrible as a manager. I’m terrible as a team leader. I think I’m good as a teacher and mentor, but that’s a different role. Lead by example, teach what I know, learn when I can. I’ve definitely not been in the military. And yet I’m about to write about effective leadership… or maybe bad leadership. Finally I get to see The Last Jedi.
