Tech Vs. Business? 607
An anonymous reader writes "I've recently found a spot in a large company, and I'm noticing that here a lot of people on the technology side are very anti-business. Tech makes up about 40% of the total line of business staff, but the whole LOB is only a tiny percentage of the larger company in the financial industry. I personally haven't seen this before in prior jobs, but I'm told that this animosity is commonplace. So I come to Slashdot to find out if others have experienced this adversarial relationship between business and tech, and if so, what was the effect on the overall success of the business?"
Re:FP (Score:2, Funny)
> First pizost.
So is that pro-business or pro-tech?
The effects here (Score:5, Funny)
So I come to Slashdot to find out if others have experienced this adversarial relationship between business and tech, and if so, what was the effect on the overall success of the business?"
Yes, it is extremely prevalent here! On the other hand, it doesn't seem to have had any negative effects. Actually, standing in the way of various technologies seems to have made our business more successful!
Opinions here do not necessarily reflect those of my employer, Exxon Mobile Corporation.
What do you mean, Anti-business? (Score:5, Funny)
I'd like to know what you mean by anti-business. Many suits have no knowledge of anything technical, and so make requests and demands that violate things like 'logic' and the laws of physics. When the tech staff attempts to point this out, they are often told that they are being needlessly obstructive. Pleas that it is the universe that is preventing them fall on deaf ears.
Is this what you mean? Is an insistence on following the laws of physics "Anti-Business"?
Re:Does it matter? (Score:5, Funny)
Since it's the financial industry you probably won't be working there long :P
Well, someone has to be there to shut off the servers and sell them for scrap on eBay...
Re:What do you mean, Anti-business? (Score:3, Funny)
Uh-oh. Sounds like somebody's got a case of the Mondays.
I'm anti-business (Score:3, Funny)
Correction, I'm anti-YOUR-business. My company is GigantoMegaMonopoly Inc. and we're going to EAT you.
Re:Does it matter? (Score:5, Funny)
What servers? We never had any servers *whistles nonchalantly while walking to brand new Mercedes*
Re:Been there done that (Score:3, Funny)
You got one up on our shop!
Re:common place (Score:5, Funny)
We can't all work for your parents.
Re:common place (Score:5, Funny)
Lisa: That's spacious reasoning, Dad.
Homer: Thank you, dear.
Lisa: By your logic I could claim that this rock keeps tigers away.
Homer: Oh, how does it work?
Lisa: It doesn't work.
Homer: Uh-huh.
Lisa: It's just a stupid rock.
Homer: Uh-huh.
Lisa: But I don't see any tigers around, do you?
Homer: Lisa, I want to buy your rock.
Re:What do you mean, Anti-business? (Score:4, Funny)
Every time I watch that movie, I think that scene would have been a perfect opportunity to borrow a scene from Hi-Fidelity, where the main character imagines severely beating the guy who his girlfriend has left him for. My version of the scene would go something like:
Female Temp: Uh-oh. Sounds like somebody's got a case of the Mo-
Peter Gibbons punches temp in the face
Peter knee's temp in the stomach
Female Temp falls down
Peter, Michael, and Samir all kick her repeatedly
Samir grabs the printer and drops it on her
Peter Gibbons shown with blank expression on his face...
or maybe that's just me...
Re:Programmer Priests (Score:1, Funny)
Ha ha ha! You finally figured it out. We have a magical bag of computer goodies -- perfect software, computational results, comprehensive reports -- and we hand out little shreds to you according to our whim.
We decide what's possible, we decide how fast the computers run and how long it takes to produce your results. When we say, "Unfortunately, we can't do that in the requested time frame," what we're really thinking is, "Suck it, slave!"
We love to tease you by pretending our tasks require time and work, and we even play the pity card by pretending that we take pride in delivering things as well and quickly as possible. Ha!
Of course, instead of just hearing what's possible, how much it costs, and how long it takes, you'd really prefer to listen to us give comprehensive explanations of why those things take so long. Nah, that would be too easy. At least, it would be too easy to provide you with succinct, convincing explanations that make perfect sense to you. That wouldn't feed our power trip. Instead, we pretend that the explanations are technical in nature, requiring understanding of "bandwidth" and "processing speed" and "datasets."
We never get tired of toying with you, not even when you abuse us, deprecate our competence, and question our sincerity. Bwa ha ha ha!
Re:common place (Score:2, Funny)
Re:common place (Score:4, Funny)
You really shouldn't feed them. They're like stray animals, if you feed them then they won't go away.
Re:common place (Score:1, Funny)
re:
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when a basic desktop computer can get rid of every moving part, there is less to replace and maintain, thus less IT workers needed
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I've never had and IT incident involving a moving part. Unless you count electrons and bits as moving parts.
Re:common place (Score:1, Funny)
Re:common place (Score:5, Funny)
I don't know exactly what a "helldesk" is, but I'm pretty sure I've had to call there a few times. There was always the faint odor of brimstone when I hung up the phone.
Re:common place (Score:4, Funny)
Re:common place (Score:3, Funny)
looks? dress size? or, being slashdot, age?
Comment removed (Score:3, Funny)
Re:common place (Score:4, Funny)
Exactly.
By the way... have some spare change? I need to make a call.
Do you have some change?
Change? Chaaannngeeee?? Chaaannngeeee??
learn from joelonsoftware (Score:3, Funny)
somewhere, he says that whenever you demo prototype software to higherups, have an obvious problem, like a mis spelt word, so they have something to point to and feel important about
same thing about the it dept: every week, something that is easy to fix only if you are an admin but looks hard and is clearly the users responsibility should break
Re:common place (Score:5, Funny)
And the product never changes.
oh yeah, it changes. it's all over the place. 120V yesterday 116V today in fact this morning it was 58.9hertz instead of a solid 59.99 I usually get. I bitched that lady out hard for 20 minutes that my clocks will now be 1/2 a second slow all day.
Once it dropped to 114 volts.. but that is another story.....
Re:common place (Score:1, Funny)
How many MILLION MSCEs do we have in the world now?
According to Microsoft Learning [microsoft.com] the answer is less than 1 million. And that includes NT4, Windows 2000, and Windows 2003 MCSEs.
Oh, and you misspelled MCSE.