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The absolute worst scenario happened

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Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#301

Post by giantrobot »

ISL wrote: post #255
JKCalhoun wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there another industry where a few employees with "domain knowledge" can sink a company? Asking because, while, yes, throwing money at the problem might be a solution, I think the obvious bigger issue is how does one allow themselves to get into this situation? Or rather, how does one avoid getting into this situation. Because it seems to me that the software industry of late has become so mired in esoteric layers…

> Or rather, how does one avoid getting into this situation. Documentation?

The issue with "documentation" is there are never enough resources devoted to it at most companies. When given a schedule it only covers the main project goal(s) and no time for documentation or refactoring or any quality of life improvements.

Significant documentation is also not something easily written in slack time. With any non-trivial project good documentation is a full time effort. It also needs to be updated as the project evolves lest it become out of date and incongruous with the behavior of the system.

There's dreams of in-line documentation but that's only going to cover individual methods and classes and not necessarily whole modules or major subsystems of a project. It's also not going to necessarily cover in-line documentation from other parts of a project in different languages e.g. comments in config files.

There's lots of technical ways to help documentation but there's no replacement for documentation being a high level project goal with resources allotted to it.

Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#302

Post by yabones »

erikstarck wrote: post #46

This reminds me of when the Danish mega-corp Maersk was attacked by ransomware and had all of their computers locked and decrypted with no access. All computers except one, which due to a power failure had been offline the whole time. This computer had the critical DNS information needed to restore the network. Only problem: it was in Africa, in a country that required Visa which would take weeks to apply for and rec…

Not just DNS, it was their entire Active Directory Global Catalog. If it weren't for that server, they would have needed to re-create their entire user database, all of their endpoint & server management policies, and it would have been almost impossible to safely restore their Exchange email database. They got very very lucky.

Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#303

Post by gregmac »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #252
tw04 wrote: post #88

I actually don't see any issue that isn't simply a matter of money. Everything they list that's an issue seems to revolve around the fact that the employees with domain knowledge for the system have left the company. Reach out to them and hire them on as contractors. If they left under bad terms because the business was a bunch of dicks, expect to pay 10x market rate. If this is truly "fix this or the business is out…

Is there another industry where a few employees with "domain knowledge" can sink a company? Asking because, while, yes, throwing money at the problem might be a solution, I think the obvious bigger issue is how does one allow themselves to get into this situation? Or rather, how does one avoid getting into this situation. Because it seems to me that the software industry of late has become so mired in esoteric layers…

At the highest level, this is a leadership issue. There's a lack of someone at a sufficiently high level (eg: C-suite) that properly understands technology, and that's probably caused by the rest of the leadership team not understanding their limitations.

At a lower level, it's allowing individuals to become knowledge silos (or having a bus factor [1] of 1); lack of documentation; not having+testing disaster recovery plans; neglecting systems, code bases, and platforms; letting technical debt accrue endlessly (or worse: not even realize that's what you're doing).

How to avoid? Make sure there's a strong, competent technology leader with a vested interest in the company succeeding, and empower them to make the changes they need to.

What should that person be doing? Making sure all the stuff I just said doesn't happen.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor

Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#304

Post by freeone3000 »

smnrchrds wrote: post #289
Symbiote wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU sets fairly high tariffs on food imports, since food security means we must maintain local food production. Australia does not use this approach, and instead seems to have pushed other countries to eliminate their own tariffs for the TPP.

What tariff does is that it moves the price point at which the retailers switch to imports a bit higher. Tariff does not eliminate the ceiling. There still would be a ceiling on price, determined by international commodity price + X% tariff.

So the tariff needs to be high enough to be absolutely ruinous. See, for example, Canada's tariff on dairy. Since Canada runs a cartel on dairy producers, Canada does set the domestic price of milk at $4/gal. This is incompatible with the US subsidy model, where it prices out to around $1.50 a gallon -- so there's a 270% tariff on dairy imports. The great thing about numbers is there's always a bigger one.

Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#305

Post by throwthescene »

tw04 wrote: post #88

I actually don't see any issue that isn't simply a matter of money. Everything they list that's an issue seems to revolve around the fact that the employees with domain knowledge for the system have left the company. Reach out to them and hire them on as contractors. If they left under bad terms because the business was a bunch of dicks, expect to pay 10x market rate. If this is truly "fix this or the business is out…

Throwaway purely so that I can comment. I've had this happen before.

Years ago I left a rather awful company - I left on great terms with my boss, though I hated the company. I was the last person who knew how to release X product. While I documented everything, after I left, the wiki lost its mind, backups apparently weren't a thing, and the director of IT moved to Bermuda.

Fast forward 6 months.. a contractual obligation existed to release the software. They still hadn't successfully built (yup autoconf, make and friends), let alone know where to build it. I got the call you always dream about, 30 days prior to the release being due.

My boss asked me to do him a favour - I reminded him that I quit due to a lack of promotion and raises. He asked what I want, and I asked for 125K, which clearly he scoffed at. Then I reminded him that it was a 10M deal they'd signed, because we had an all hands. The CEO got involved and screamed at me for 'torpedoing the company'. I walked out and calmly informed them both along the way the price was now 250K, non negotiable.

I ignored every single mail (and legal letter) sent me way. With 10 days left, they agreed. I had the company deposit a cheque in escrow with lawyers of my choosing. We signed contracts, and I did my thing. Four days of work. It was well worth it.

Dougie, if you're reading this I hope your cringing.

Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#306

Post by cammikebrown »

kbelder wrote: post #293
raffraffraff wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason I buy expensive eggs, milk and cheese is that I know that the supermarkets fuck over the farmers. I never buy the supermarket brand, unless it's the last one on the shelf. The price difference is sometimes 1.5x but unless you're really "broke" broke, you don't notice the difference. It's a few cents a week.

I always buy the supermarket brand, even though I can easily afford more. It's not because I want to save a few pennies on each purchase; it's helping to drive prices down on all overpriced goods, helping out those really in need. Same reason I avoid organic whenever possible. We don't need boutique food.

I agree much of the “benefits” of organic food are not really true or meaningful, but I do try and buy local when I can.

Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#307

Post by csomar »

kolbe wrote: post #186
NewLogic wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The exact same thing is happening in Australia in regards to farmers and fruit picking labour. With international borders shut they are unable to exploit foreign workers and complain that young adults are refusing to relocate for $5 an hour hard labour jobs.

Farming is low margin. Farmers don’t get to set the price of their products, and they aren’t handed billions in capital to burn through or 1000x multiples on their profit in the public markets. When most businesses say they can’t hire someone and the reason is because they don’t pay enough, the underlying cause of their low pay is usually because that’s what the company can afford. Sure, farmers could pay $10/hr, but…

> Farmers don’t get to set the price of their products

Actually farmers could set any price if they colluded to manipulate the market. People will buy food at any price and everyday.

Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#308

Post by smnrchrds »

freeone3000 wrote: post #304
smnrchrds wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What tariff does is that it moves the price point at which the retailers switch to imports a bit higher. Tariff does not eliminate the ceiling. There still would be a ceiling on price, determined by international commodity price + X% tariff.

So the tariff needs to be high enough to be absolutely ruinous. See, for example, Canada's tariff on dairy. Since Canada runs a cartel on dairy producers, Canada does set the domestic price of milk at $4/gal. This is incompatible with the US subsidy model, where it prices out to around $1.50 a gallon -- so there's a 270% tariff on dairy imports. The great thing about numbers is there's always a bigger one.

Yes, you can do that. It's not something the farmers strapped for workers can do, but the government certainly can. It would not be particularly popular in most political climates, so passing such laws in democracies are always difficult. But as the Canada example shows, not impossible.

Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#309

Post by tofuahdude »

throwthescene wrote: post #305
tw04 wrote: post #88

I actually don't see any issue that isn't simply a matter of money. Everything they list that's an issue seems to revolve around the fact that the employees with domain knowledge for the system have left the company. Reach out to them and hire them on as contractors. If they left under bad terms because the business was a bunch of dicks, expect to pay 10x market rate. If this is truly "fix this or the business is out…

Throwaway purely so that I can comment. I've had this happen before. Years ago I left a rather awful company - I left on great terms with my boss, though I hated the company. I was the last person who knew how to release X product. While I documented everything, after I left, the wiki lost its mind, backups apparently weren't a thing, and the director of IT moved to Bermuda. Fast forward 6 months.. a contractual obli…

I love this with all my heart. You did exactly the right thing at every step.

Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#310

Post by lisper »

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #262
NewLogic wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The exact same thing is happening in Australia in regards to farmers and fruit picking labour. With international borders shut they are unable to exploit foreign workers and complain that young adults are refusing to relocate for $5 an hour hard labour jobs.

Here in america farmers hire illegals to harvest crops, claiming that no american would do the work. This has always struck me as a really terrible excuse. I'm sorry, you can't simply break the law because you'd have to pay an american $20 / hr to do the work. Sure, it means that your tomatoes are more expensive, but also, now there's a hell of an incentive to apply automation to the problem yes? If you don't like th…

> reform immigration

That's easier said than done. The problem is that in order to reform immigration you have to do one of two things:

1. Start treating people fairly, with the result being higher food prices, which will make some of your constituents very unhhappy

2. Codify the current class structure into law so that you can continue to exploit cheap labor legally. The optics on that are really bad.

Exploiting people off the books is the path of least resistance for everyone, including the workers (manifestly so, or they wouldn't risk life and limb to be here).

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