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Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

david.newgas.net

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Re: Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

#211

Post by Sam6late »

ffsm8 wrote: post #163
orochimaaru wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have y'all hit the "can genai do his job?" phase yet... Early on I used to try to explain that things don't work as advertised. There are a lot of advantages but you need a human reviewing and directing. These days I don't even bother. Call it being desensitized to the bullshit, but I'm waiting for some fancy AI agent to take out stuff in a way that no one can do anything. Past that I don't see a way for C suite to w…

> Past that I don't see a way for C suite to wake up. Didn't you mean to temporarily realign? I mean give it 2 years and another manager to show up, ready to get their bonus for the next attempt at it. That's our reality and how we've structured our markets

I think it is that cycle where old projects will eventually seem less important with huge budgets for new projects by a new manager, that will have bigger allocations, and the bonuses will follow along with the brownie points to that genius.

Re: Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

#212

Post by patkai »

danans wrote: post #201

What's the old saying? "Behind every great fortune lies a great crime." Most common people throughout history made their living working in the systems owned by aristocrats whose wealth was usually built on both corruption and theft. Guess that hasn't changed much.

Behind many, but I sincerely hope not "every". A trivial counterexample is Warren Buffet: he simply saved and invested. Or consider inventors with patents.

Re: Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

#214

Post by wisty »

bit-anarchist wrote: post #144
b40d-48b2-979e wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Having morals doesn't mean you must self-sacrifice. If you have no obligations, you have no obligations .

If you only have morals when it's at no cost to yourself, do you have morals?

Re: Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

#215

Post by t43562 »

vintermann wrote: post #173
jfengel wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Managers love the idea that contractors can be fired more easily than employees. Except that this flexibility comes at a cost; people insist on being paid more to have an insecure job. The uncertainty never goes away. You can pay someone else to suffer it, but it will always cost more than dealing with it yourself. And that can be ok. Just don't fool yourself into thinking you're getting a bargain.

> Managers love the idea that contractors can be fired more easily than employees. Except that this flexibility comes at a cost; people insist on being paid more to have an insecure job. This is true, but it's not the whole of it. In some cases the manager goes to a cabin in the woods to drunkenly shoot at moose with the head of the contracting company. It's a saying that "the purpose of a system is what it does". I…

There's always going to be a slight mismatch between the supposed aim of any organisation and the incentives of the management and every single employee unless they're all shareholders and even then...

Re: Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

#217

Post by arkh »

orochimaaru wrote: post #121
shoo wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

when i worked for an australian bank, one co-worker in a nearby team had been working on the the banks systems as a sysadmin for over a decade. the bank would go through cycles of "we need to reduce our headcount and outsource everything" and then 4 years later "we need to reduce spend on contractors and retain more knowledge and expertise in house". he'd survived multiple waves of it, switching back and forth betwee…

Have y'all hit the "can genai do his job?" phase yet... Early on I used to try to explain that things don't work as advertised. There are a lot of advantages but you need a human reviewing and directing. These days I don't even bother. Call it being desensitized to the bullshit, but I'm waiting for some fancy AI agent to take out stuff in a way that no one can do anything. Past that I don't see a way for C suite to w…

Just got my morning coffee and read "genai" like some elusive Japanese person's name.

So, can Genai san do his job?

Re: Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

#218

Post by t43562 »

aksss wrote: post #203
shoo wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

when i worked for an australian bank, one co-worker in a nearby team had been working on the the banks systems as a sysadmin for over a decade. the bank would go through cycles of "we need to reduce our headcount and outsource everything" and then 4 years later "we need to reduce spend on contractors and retain more knowledge and expertise in house". he'd survived multiple waves of it, switching back and forth betwee…

Something I hated about working in corporate America was surviving multiple leadership regimes, watching the same lessons being learned over and over, having to recount history to new regimes, it got really tiring, and particularly dealing with the attitudes and self regard of some.

I have often thought this - a wave of people learn something and on come the next wave to relearn it all. They can read books but they don't really "get" what the books say and have to learn it all from personal experience all over again. It's not just America.

Re: Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

#219

Post by yowo »

I have a serious question for everyone who reading through comments: If you get a great paying position in a business that is clearly managed by too ambitious people and will never succeed, given that you are legally not a part of the potential fraud ring that you can't prove, just an engineer closing issues and merging patches, would you reject it?

Re: Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

#220

Post by jimnotgym »

em-bee wrote: post #113
spwack wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think of it the other way: If you have been given a $1 million budget, as a manager, your job is to purchase $1 million of Useful Stuff. The rank above you has decided "we need $1 million of software, go buy that." They don't know exactly how much stuff costs, so they use a dollar value as a rough proxy. If, as manager, you cut corners to save money, you're doing the wrong thing. They want the software! They don't to…

i think anther scenario is more likely: you say you need a 1 million budget to run the IT department, but you only spend part of it, then next year if you ask for 1 million again, they will say, but last year you only spent 700k, so we are going to give you only that much. but the problem here is how budgets are assigned. instead of a fixed number it should have a lower and an upper bound. at least X, but no more tha…

Or certain project related items in the overall budget have their own budget. If (when) the project slips into a future accounting period then so does the budget.
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