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The absolute worst scenario happened

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Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#261

Post by criddell »

Accujack wrote: post #256
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…

It's slightly more complicated than that, depending on how much time has passed since the creators of the system left, but you're correct in general. Usually, since admitting that they were stupid to let all the knowledge of the system walk out the door requires more emotional and intellectual flexibility than managers who let this sort of thing happen possess, the biggest obstacle isn't even the money... it's gettin…

The person who started the thread added this comment:

> The company that built this ERP solution went bankrupt 6 years ago, and we don't have the source code. It uses PostgreSQL and MySQL, and also has a built-in key-value database for which none of us has any credentials. We don't have the source code for this software (it's built in C and delivered to us as compiled packages..).

Sounds like finding their old employees wouldn't help. They need to find old employees of the company that wrote the system and hope they kept a copy of the source code.

Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#262

Post by wing-_-nuts »

NewLogic wrote: post #167
drclau wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really related to the subject of the article, but your comment reminds me of employers in Romania complaining they can't find people to hire, while they offer small salaries and people just leave the country for better paying jobs abroad. The solution to their problem is really simple: make better offers.

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 the law, maybe pressure your representatives to reform immigration instead of just hoping everyone turns a blind eye to your exploitation.

Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#263

Post by sedeki »

K2L8M11N2 wrote: post #207
tadzik_ wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Poland it scales over time: you start off with 2 weeks notice (for both sides), after a year or so this jumps to one month, and after 3 years it jumps to 3 months, or something like that. I've seen people quit right before their 3 year anniversary just so that they don't fall into the 3-months-notice period. I haven't worked much on regular job agreements (been contracting or "contracting" most of my life), but ge…

What do you mean by “contracting” in quotes?

"Tax minimization" or worse, I suppose.

Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#264

Post by abruzzi »

le-mark wrote: post #14

It’s easy to imagine there are a lot of these type of time bombs out there, particularly in really old legacy systems (> 20 years for example). I was at one place where even building the application for deployment led to a one week outage when some core people were laid off.

Up until 5 years ago, my employer's primary system (government, property tax assessment, billing, and collection) was from a company that had gone belly-up in the early 90's. We fortunately had the source, but it ran on a VERY legacy database called Unidata because it had originally be developed on the Pick operating system. Unidata was/is a Multivalue Database with a built in BASIC programming language. By the time 2014 rolled around there was one programmer in the organization that understood the system, and he was responsible for all code changes. I half-joked with management that we needed an insurance policy on his life/ability to work, because if we lost him, it would put us in a very difficult position, and that software accounted for 90% of our revenue (as well as a lot of the revenue that went to all the local towns and school districts for their operations.) That employee was also nearing retirement (he is retired now.) Fortunately we were able to successfully migrate off of that application, though we keep a minimal license pool to the old system so people can validate pre-migration data against post migration data.

Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#265

Post by smnrchrds »

intrasight wrote: post #250
smnrchrds wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kinda sounds like saying "why are poor countries poor? Can't they just pay everyone more and then they won't be poor?" I get what you are saying but I don't think this will work if the problem is country-wide. You can't just magically increase everyone's wages in a country.

1. The problem isn't country wide. 2. Don't have to increase everyone's - just those with a "shortage". Companies want a market economy - except when it comes to salaries.

> 1. The problem isn't country wide

Sorry, I though I was on the Romania subthread.

Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#266

Post by wing-_-nuts »

smnrchrds wrote: post #245
CydeWeys wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have to eat food. Food in aggregate has one of the most inelastic demand curves imaginable. If the price rises because the production costs increase, people will still buy food. They might buy different food, and you'll see a decrease in acreage given over to labor-intensive crops, but that's just the free market at work.

The thing is, if farmers in Australia increase wages and thus their product becomes more expensive, the product on supermarket shelves will not become more expensive. Rather, supermarkets will import food from another country. Food is, with few exceptions, a commodity. The producer does not set the price of the commodity, the market does. I am telling this as an engineer working in the Canada's oil and gas sector. Si…

I consider food security a national security issue. Produce is one of the few areas where I would consider a tarif justified. Every country should be able to feed it's citizens with the food grown there, or they risk hunger when cut off by war or natural disaster.

Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#267

Post by vbezhenar »

drclau wrote: post #132
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…

Not really related to the subject of the article, but your comment reminds me of employers in Romania complaining they can't find people to hire, while they offer small salaries and people just leave the country for better paying jobs abroad. The solution to their problem is really simple: make better offers.

https://youtu.be/-Jh0EN1De4Q

sorry for pun. But that's not always a solution. Sometimes employer is greedy. Sometimes his business just does not allow to pay enough salary.

Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#268

Post by rantwasp »

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?

nah. documentation only goes so far.

you handle this by having and exercising a disaster recovery plan and having (and listening to) competent people that would spot this issue in a jiffy.

Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#269

Post by yrgulation »

jiggawatts wrote: post #133
mysterydip wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

honestly, "password" would be my first guess.

Oh come now, there are password complexity policies in place in any modern software! Try: password123.

Oh please, even such a crappy place knows better.

Its Password123. Adding capital letters makes it more secure.

Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#270

Post by thitcanh »

phkahler wrote: post #254
asdfman123 wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the problem is this: it might not make economic sense for those specific companies to hire people at a higher rate. Companies aren't going to say "I guess we're inefficient and should just die." They're going to fight to survive and thrive, which is what you're seeing. Then again, some companies ARE just cheap. You never know.

I was at a hotel with crappy service and asked about the problems with house keeping. The manager told me everyone in town (Traverse City MI) was trying to bring in foreigners to do housekeeping because they couldn't get local labor. They said the standard is 30 minutes per room per day. I figure at a very generous $50 per hour (100k / year) it should run $25 to have my room taken care of. Now that doesnt cover the s…

You make no sense. No one will pay $25 to clean a single room in a hotel. Just because your room is $150 it doesn’t mean that “there’s plenty to pay everyone 100k/year.
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