Hi, I'm an IT professional and I hate you....

Got your attention didn't I....

Well folks, that's what a whole lotta people think of IT these days and the problem lies with 2 things.  Bad attitudes and bad management.

I found this article the other day and I was moved to respond.  I got kind of long-winded but that tends to happen when I'm calling out BS.

See if you find something you recognize in your own organization....

Blah, Blah, Blah, a bunch or words nobody will ever listen to.  The problem with IT's image is the same as it's always been and I've been in it for 25 years.  IT is looked at as a necessary evil precisely because that's the role IT management has accepted.

I can count on one hand the number of IT managers that had any idea of what the company they were supporting actually did or even cared, for that matter.  People know when you're just going through the motions and act accordingly. 

You might as well be an appliance repair tech not a partner...

Many organizations just hire career managers with little to no IT experience and no concept of how to effectively manage an IT team.  They're either just occupying space before moving on to the next job between seminars or buried in busy work because it's the only way they can justify their own job. 

Worse, they make poor  hiring decisions based on skill checklists and nothing more.  Ability and attitude rarely come into the mix because their hiring process is akin to choosing a combo meal at Mickey D's.  Ultimately you end up with a team populated by people that are just there to collect a check and do the bare minimum to get by.  Most IT people I've met hate their jobs because they get overworked, underappreciated and have no support and no direction from their management. 

End result, poor service and bad attitudes towards their users.

I find it amusing that Sears Holdings is held up as a stellar example of good IT.  A bankrupt company that had to spin off a tech subsidiary to provide anything of value to the parent company.  I can remember many a line I stood in when the POS systems would go down in the stores with IT indifferent to their plight. 

How could you possibly expect any kind of direction from a disinterested IT leadership anyway? IT managers are supposed to set the standard but all too often that standard is pretty low regardless of how many ITIL plaques grace their walls.  If there's no foundation, no belief in the job then why should the subordinates be any different than the leader?

There are far too many people in the field that forget that IT is a service business.  A profession that exists at the pleasure of those it serves.  I could care less what a whizbang you are with AWS or Azure or how you can quote the OSI Layer verbatim if you can't apply it to the people you serve.  Tech is amorphous and ultimately irrelevant outside of its use as a tool.  But for too many the tech is more important than the job it's supposed to be doing and we only realize that when someone from the C-suite is inconvenienced by it.

End result: A vicious cycle of IT's own making.  Shrinking budgets and poor perception of their value.

As an IT professional you're defined by the level of service you provide and if your heart isn't in it, it's going to show.  The job is too demanding to not be invested in the people you serve.  Their success is your success because you make the magic happen.  Attitude ladies and gentlemen, is the key and most of the IT organizations I've seen have a poor one.  

No wonder the perception is negative!

You get what you give, that's how life works.  If IT's attitude is adversarial you will get treated in kind.  If you're giving your all and people know it, their attitude towards you will be positive.  I've seen this and put it into action everywhere I've worked and the only trouble I ever had was with those seat warming managers I mentioned earlier.

Put the right people in the right places, get rid of the chair warmers and watch the magic happen.

The crime of Avarice....The 2018 AZ primaries and bad IT

It seems that perhaps the laissez-faire attitude toward corporate IT training may finally be coming home to roost.

In the recent 2018 Primary elections in Arizona there was a serious issue with the deployment of voting technology in Maricopa County.  As many as 62 voting sites were affected with estimates of over 100,000 voters being inconvenienced or worse.

For the project, Tempe's Insight (A large IT products and services company) was chosen as the primary contractor.   After looking over this article and supporting sources it seems fairly clear to me what went wrong.

In short....  

Inadequate training, bad management and an over-reliance on outsourcing led to a debacle that will likely end in the courts when all is said and done.

The passage below from the cited article states what I believe to be the crux of the issue.  It relates what a contracted tech experienced during the deployment.

"... training of subcontractors mirrored Insight's "regular" employee training consisting of watching a 15 minute video and a multi-page instruction sheet that was to be printed out.   In addition technicians were required to view another video on the use of Insight's  SmartPhone APP which was clearly identified as being in BETA.   In other words, not in final WORKING form.  This "APP" was to be the "preferred" means of communicating and managing assigned jobs.

At no point in this process was any other training provided to the subcontractors meaning technicians unfamiliar with both the equipment and Maricopa County election procedure were expected to somehow "magically" set up a site without ever having touched the equipment they were responsible for.  The backup plan, that same printed instructional document and vague references to a support hierarchy which as we now know was insufficient."

It's fairly obvious in this all too familiar accounting of the technician's experience that  training was woefully inadequate to the task at hand.  Not to mention support and communication channels.

I've seen this movie so often over the past few decades that I won't even pretend to be surprised.

It takes me back to the days of the "paper certified" IT professional whose training was limited ( by design ) to little more than was necessary to pass the certification exam.  Leading to individuals ill prepared for the challenges they'd face outside of the ideal scenario.

Yes, education is a personal responsibility but when your business model depends on having people ready for what you're going to throw at them you don't leave it to chance.

Or a training video...  IBM started doing that in the 90's and guess what, they don't sell computers any more.

If it's that important you'd better be sure everyone's on the same page.  Unless what Maricopa County saw on Election day is your idea of success.

I'll be honest, my personal opinion of Insight has never been very high.  They evolved from the same swamp that birthed 1000 other flaky computer part vendors back in the 80's.  By the time they became "legitimate" and changed their name to Insight I was just beginning my professional IT career and already wary of them.   

My every brush since has been an experience in either frustration, arrogance or incompetence.  Sometimes all 3 at once.

But then, what can you expect from a business founded on the principles of undercutting the competition at all costs.  

Google Hard Drives International if you want a history lesson on the company's roots.  Not exactly shining.

In any case it appears to me that Insight was once again more interested in profit than doing the job right.  Their defense?  "We're not responsible." 

Look suited morons...

You don't send a tech to something as important as a polling place armed only with inadequate training from a 15 minute video and flaky smartphone app.  

Add to it inconsistencies in the command hierarchy, failed communication channels and scheduling chaos and you get the mess we see here.

All the tenets of a company that puts no value in training, planning or project management.

What's ironic is that such "training" these days is actually considered generous compared to the status quo. 

Worry about nothing but the bottom line and you get bottom of the barrel.  

Insight, don't expect quality if you aren't willing to invest in what it takes to get the job done and that ISN'T a 15 minute video and abandonment of your field techs.

What it IS, is investing in adequate training that includes hands on labs and a firm grasp of the escalation tree (among other things) long BEFORE election day.

Google's IT support Certificate

 

It's understood that to be an IT professional you will never stop learning. Technology and processes change on what seems like a daily basis and the only way to keep up is to...well...keep up!

I've always been a proponent of lifelong learning no matter what you spend your days on.  What I'm not a proponent of is wasting time not to mention hard earned money especially when the only beneficiary is somebody else's bank account.

Which brings me to the newly announced Google IT Support Certificate.

I'll cut to the chase, I don't like it.  For reasons even more egregious than my general disdain for the entire certification industry money mill, my premise is simple.

While most professional IT certifications are of dubious value these days existing primarily for the ancillary revenue stream they provide to their brand at least they aren't treading the same path as so many of those now defunct diploma mills.

Google claims its new certification is literally the magic bullet.  They make outlandish claims about job placement, salaries and the supposed prestige of the Google name on the certification.

It's the 90's all over again where the business of education was more about "business" than "education."  Admission reps sold overpriced degrees that nobody respected ultimately leaving bewildered students holding the bag for 5, sometimes 6 figure debt.

And it's happening again.  Certifications are a tool not a measure of value and a new generation seems poised to fall for it.

Which is why I produced the video below where I detail every lie, misdirection and utter absurdity of this new certification program.

Training is important, where you get that training even more so.  

The Geek Closet - Netfinity Project

I was rummaging around my geek closet....

You know you have one.  That dark little room crammed with discarded tech that you haven't touched in years but you "may have a use for someday."

In there I have a tapestry of my career in IT.  From bins of cables, cards and their associated connecting tissue to stacks of hardware long since retired to "someday" status.

Someday has come for you....

About 10 years ago while working for one of my clients during an upgrade project I purchased their soon to be unused and obsolete server hardware. 

I knew what I was getting into having actually installed these servers years before.  I had some vague ideas about what I'd do with them but nothing definitive.  

For all I knew they'd never be more than impromptu jack stands but I saw an opportunity even if I didn't know what fruit that would bear.

Within a few months I did manage to find a purpose for a few of them when I went into business with a friend of mine.  But after a year the business passed away into obscurity like so many others and they returned to the geek closet.

Until the other day.

I opened the geek closet and gazed upon these once mighty hunks of iron sadly sitting idle under stacks of similarly situated techno-cruft.

No, I needed, wanted, to do something with these servers and as luck would have it I was desperately searching for new content for my IT channel on YouTube.

Thus the Netfinity Project was born.  

It's a new video series that covers my attempt to re-purpose a couple of these old servers and gives you some insight into what I consider to be the golden age of hardware and IT.  From the late 90's to the early 2000's IT was all about the hardware and the only talk of "clouds" and "as a service" had to do with rain and valet parking. 

Hardware got better because the software demanded it.  Hardware is unquestionably better now but it lives in bland, clinical warehouses far from view.  An abstraction out of sight and out of mind.  

There's something sad about that.  I remember the pride of IT Manager's throwing open the doors of the server room.  This was where the magic happened, a tangible representation of the greatness of his enterprise.  Whirring, beeping, lights flashing and disks spinning.  You could almost feel the heartbeat of business within those cold server cases.

It's worth documenting and to some extent resurrecting if I can.

Thus the video series where I go through the highs and lows of making some old IBM Netfinity 5000's relevant again.

Check out this blog for regular updates on the video series.  The first few are below.  Enjoy!

Why Security will always fail

I just made a new video.  It's about rethinking how we approach security so I won't rehash it here.  Suffice it to say that the reason security measures fail is not due to a device or a piece of software.  It fails because we don't value the most critical element of any security policy; the people.

Couple that with the careless and needless collection of private information for purposes that have no justification for having it and you have a recipe for disaster.

Watch below...

Microsoft's flawed update strategy

Let's talk about updates.  Specifically, lets talk about updates in the context of Windows 10.

When Microsoft launched Windows 10 it was supposed to be the cure-all to the Woes of Windows.  It was to be everything to everybody regardless of your chosen device.  It would be the gateway to what you wanted to do instead of the sandbox (or litter box) for the things you HAD to do.

When it works it can be all that.  Unfortunately, it really isn't.

I've listened to the pundits and Microsoft apologists for over a year now.  How they go on touting its merits while in the same breath decrying their frustrations.

Simply put, Microsoft can't be trusted with the power Windows 10 gives them.

I've had my own frustrations with it having seen my production machine blue screen for no apparent reason over a dozen times in the past year.  In the 3 years prior the same machine running Windows 7  may have done it twice.

I'm tired of constant updates churning in the background while I'm trying to do actual work.  Sick of waiting 15 minutes for a system shutdown because Windows decided it was time to do some housekeeping.

My eyes bleed at the sight of full event logs warning of failed telemetry connections.  All because I refuse to turn my daily workflow into an episode of The Truman Show.  Spybot Anti-Beacon takes care of that but the price is endless bitching.

My PC is not a lifestyle device, my data under my and nobody else's purview. I expect to control my own environment.  I have no use for Cortana.  Quite simply, I don't have the buying or search habits to make it or anything like it benefit me.  Meaning I have no reason to be so forthcoming.

Am I a troglodyte?  Hardly, I just prefer to not have Microsoft curating my search results or my computing habits for that matter.  Even if they do consider it a "Feature."

But Microsoft doesn't see it that way.

The best example is the update process.  It's common knowledge that Windows 10 has essentially taken away your ability to exercise any disposition of updates.  Even if they brick your device.

Take the recent update that disabled millions of webcams.  We've come to find out that it was all due to one lone Microsoft Engineer who took the unilateral action to remove a codec without bothering to pass it through Q&A.  ( Thurrott said that on Windows Weekly 487 BTW)

I appreciate employee empowerment and all.  It works great for the auto industry in fact most auto workers have the power to stop an entire assembly line if they see a problem.  What comes next is a structured process to address it.  

But nobody makes the ultimate call by themselves.  Unless they work for Microsoft that is.  Where one poorly executed update can be unleashed on millions of devices worldwide without as much as a peer review.

If you're using Windows 10 there's no doubt you've spent at least a few minutes observing the update process.  It's all very clandestine: even the event logs won't provide you any illumination as to what's going on.  You just sit and watch that screen, cross your fingers, and hope the update goes well as it reboots 2, 3, 5 times...

The latest atrocity?  The endless loop of death from KB3194496 that for many users will never install correctly without first manually applying an out of cycle patch ( <--that links to it BTW) 

We reap what we sow and the crop is a load of manure.  In the old days we could just simply uncheck the update once we found out it was problematic.  Today we have to beg the good graces of Microsoft to acknowledge the problem in the first place.  Meanwhile our workflows and production goes to hell while Microsoft whitewashes it's official response.

I could care less what Microsoft's "telemetry" is telling them about the severity of the issue.  If they can't get a patch right why should I trust their telemetry as an indicator of anything?

Laissez-faire may be great for Free Market policy wonks but it's got no place in a platform that 20% of the planet relies on to actually accomplish something.

The user base should demand that the next patch they release give us back control of the update process.  At this point it's obvious Microsoft can't be relied upon to do it themselves.  

Here's a proposition...

I'll meet you half way Microsoft.  Let the users curate their own patches but turn off Cortana or the Store while it's disabled.  

I think that's a fair compromise and for those invested in the Microsoft way of doing things, it would be a reminder to turn the updates back on when the inevitable storm has passed.

I lost a client: Trials and Tribulations of IT consulting

I lost my biggest (and for all intents and purposes last) IT consulting client this week.  

Now truth be told I wasn't making all that much there but it was better than nothing and to me it was an investment.  One made with the prospect of more hours as their business grew and more referrals.  I'll cut to the chase.

You roll the dice on any investment and this one didn't pan out.  Revenue went down instead of up, the client downsized and the one referral I got from them stiffed me for a grand in billable hours.

The writing was on the wall long before the sad email I received this week, however, and I'd been expecting a development like this for awhile.  

Slow payment, resistance to new projects and curt communication are all signs that you're on the way out and lately they were happening more often.

The relationships I build with clients are both blessing and curse.  A blessing because I get the benefit of the doubt and continue the relationship.  A curse because I'm expected to suffer the consequences of any malady that occurs along with them.  That means discounts, free work and in some cases a zero sum game. 

Even then sometimes it's just not enough.  In this latest case the client figured that a relative could do what I was doing for free.  I can't compete with free and won't try.

That said, this client was no different than any other long term engagement in that I had an intimate relationship with their business.  I knew more about where my money was coming from than most in my position would.  That's not by accident either.  The cornerstone of my business is knowing how my client does their business and doing whatever I can to support that.

It's simple, if they make money I make money.

After nearly two decades of IT consulting I've lost three clients.  Two including this most recent were due to budget issues and one was pure politics.  I've had other short term and what I call "hit and run" clients over the years but those never appealed to me.  If I can't build a relationship and instead get treated like an appliance repairman then I'm not interested in sticking around.  

Saying, "I lost the clients." is a bit harsh, however. As none of those exits were on bad terms and all of them were after at least a five year stint.  Even the so-called political exit was nothing more than getting caught up in the fallout from events that had nothing to do with me.  I worked for them for over ten years by the way so do with that what you will.

Personally I believe you have to be doing something right to stick around that long when your services are always at the top of the bean counters cost-cutting list.  That and the longer you can stay away from on-demand clients the better.

I've never been a big fan of "Hit and Run" IT mostly because it never pays well and you end up fighting for every penny.  All the while losing your shirt in the process.

Ultimately you end up hating the people you're trying to help which is an internal conflict I'd rather not have.  So I look for longer engagements. There's a price to pay for that when you're on your own, however.   I keep my active contracts limited to no more than 3 as any more means I can't provide the level of service a long term relationship demands.  

That also limits a fallback position which is where I'm at now.  You don't have much of an opportunity to scare up leads if your phone is constantly ringing.  Worse if those clients aren't generating any referrals you're trapped.  Which gets you to...here.
I'll be honest, I just finished an online application for Autozone right after filling out one for an IT manager with a fortune 500 company. 

At this point, whomever calls first wins!

Yeah, it's that bad....

There's both wisdom and foolishness in the way I operated my consulting business and I've been called on the carpet for it more than once by my consulting peers.  They say I get too involved and care too much when I should just be focusing on extracting as much money as I can.

They want me to be like them, appliance repairmen.  Sadly, they may be right as they're usually puling down 6 figure incomes while I'm living on 40 cent Burritos.  A tech martyr was not what I was going for....

I've mentioned before that I had a sense of activism when it came to IT.  It's what drove me to getting into the field as I didn't care for the bad (and deserved) rap it got for being full of ego maniacal jerks. 

 I wanted to change that perception through my own actions and for awhile it yielded positive results.  As time wore on, however, I found I really wasn't reaping all the benefits I'd hoped for.  While I truly loved all my clients I knew that at some point they were going to take advantage of my good nature.  

You sleep in the bed you make and if your client relationships are built on more good will on one side than the other then you're not leaving yourself much leverage to change them when the time comes.  

Let's face the reality.  There's a sense of organizational narcissism that pervades the corporate space that only respects a similar narcissism in their business relationships.  It doesn't matter how large or small, it's always there.

That's because nobody really has the time to think about the human condition when they're trying to run a business.  Rather, they want definitive answers that can easily fit into the bean counters spreadsheets populated by well defined metrics and "milestones."

Even if that isn't realistically possible or fair that's just how business is done.  It's Texas Hold'em and somebody's got to pay the blinds.  As a consultant, they'll try to make sure it's you.

Which is why instead of success I end up a martyr.  

I seem to keep making the same mistake in choosing my causes.  

IT is a cold calculating field by it's very nature and the most successful in it are similarly defined.  That's not going to change anytime soon.  In fact that's what's expected and any departure while initially welcomed ultimately turns out badly for the pseudo-activist.  

I do the same thing with video games.  On my other blog I constantly rail against the injustices of big video game publishers and the relative blindness of their consumers that pump billions of dollars into inferior products.  

Nobody cares about making the world right for patrons of computer support and video games.  

But don't get me wrong, I'm no sucker.  Well, at least not willingly.  I just have an overheated sense of fairness.  

So what do I do now?  Does Don Quixote stop poking at windmills?

Yes, yes he does...

Look, don't get me wrong.  I love tech, I love IT, I just can't stand most of the people that work in it.  Most of them are with very limited exception the very stereotype of the narcissistic, egotistical IT jerks.  As far as I'm concerned they're all in dire need of a fat lip which I'd dearly love to provide.

Over and over again...

But on to more productive thoughts...

My only hope is to either get out of this masochistic madness or do what I initially set out to do and get into higher levels of IT management leaving the hands on drudgery to the ego maniacs. 

It's the reason why I have sixty thousand in student loans and spent Twenty+ years in the field even when it was probably wiser to get out.  If I can't lead from the trenches maybe I can lead from the mountain.  I certainly couldn't do any worse than the inept morons I've met with who currently occupy those positions.

I don't hold out much hope of that, however.  The most likely outcome for my future is pushing alternators and car batteries for a living.

I say that because I've interviewed with many of those whose jobs I'd ultimately seek to occupy and found them to be largely unimaginative, unimpressive and inadequate.  Meaning nothing has really changed in the world of the IT professional if it this is what business is looking to for leadership.  

So I suppose I can't really blame the lower level IT guys for being such jerks when lead by such uninspiring folk.

As such, the landscape being what it is, that door will likely never open to me.

That's OK.   I've liked cars far longer than computers for most of my life.  So long as the bills are paid I can take those well honed customer service skills and apply them to a field where they can be put to better use.

Will I continue IT blogging?  Probably, if I find something interesting to share or if my IT fortunes improve.  

Right now, however, I'm feeling very jaded.  I look at IT like an Ex-spouse with whom the divorce was amicable and without drama.  I may like her but it's unlikely we'll get back together unless something extraordinary happens.

Microsoft Buys LinkedIn...Another shot in the foot

If you've spent any time looking for greener professional pastures in the past few years your path has undoubtedly crossed with LinkedIn.

Touted as "The Facebook for business" the social networking site promised the same kind of experience in the professional world.  Career consultants and HR types lauded it as an invaluable resource for connecting with the hiring movers and shakers in industry.  It was supposed to be the missing link between casting your resume into the void of Monster.com and a lunch date with your potential boss.

Which it was.  That is, so long as you actually knew someone.  

Just like any other social network its usefulness is limited by the people you actually know.  The sad reality is you're more likely to run into people you never want to see again than anyone that could give you a leg up.

Worse, over the years LinkedIn has become infected with the same resume-stacking, quota chasing,  recruiter types on the job boards that send you emails like this...

"Hi Everyone,
We have Informatica Architect available @ Charlotte, NC area. He is looking opportunities only @ NC, TX and GA areas. If anyone is having requirements in that areas. Kindly share me the job details along with the client information. We are marketing around $75-80/hr c2c.
Thanks for your time…

Thanks,

Spammy D Recruiter
Ph: 555- 555- 0412 
Email: spammy@spammyrecruiter.com"

Yeah, UMMM, I'm actually looking for work not hiring and that other thing....I live in Arizona....

So what does this have to do with Microsoft?  Are they looking to take on ZipRecruiter?

Unlikely....

It's just the latest reach into the dream of ubiquity dearly held by Microsoft CEO's.  They already have a hand in Facebook, Android and gaming.  They've owned the office for years and this latest purchase is proof of their intention to keep it.

The most likely outcome from the $26.2 billion dollar deal is to absorb the analytics capabilities of the LinkedIn platform and place yet another useless live-tile flashing in the Windows 10 start menu.

So how has all this buying paid off for Microsoft?

A look at their buying habits reveals that they're better at acquiring stocks than companies.

Let's compare and contrast....

Microsoft makes $34 billion off Android Patents, writes off $9 Billion for the Nokia Acquisition.

Microsoft invests $150 million in Apple  ultimately saving the company and enjoying a tidy profit when the stock splits and they sell it a few years later.  Oh yeah, and they have a guaranteed space on a competitors platform for Office.

Microsoft buys Skype for $8.5 Billion and turns an innovative, lightweight VOIP solution into a bloated mess with a paywall making it among the most hated services in its portfolio.  

Next, they kill off the beloved Windows Messenger after buying Yammer for $1.2 billion.  Once positioned as Messenger's hipster "Facebook-esque"replacement it was never heard from again outside of an Office 365 subscription. 

It seems Microsoft's acquisition strategy is to buy up companies that are just past their heyday, gut them then take a write-down later.  Kind of like when IBM purchased ROLM and  Lotus.

LinkedIn is no different.  It's only useful to those HR types that have to meet a contact quota every week and enjoy self-congratulating articles about what a good job the industry has done commoditizing job seekers like so much cattle at an auction.

Mark my words, this isn't a good thing for Microsoft.  At least no more than Nokia was going to win them market share in the mobile space or Skype was going to supplant Cisco's VOIP offerings.

But all is not lost!  Take heart friends because every time Microsoft screws up another tech company the resulting void proves to be a boon for the open source community.

Which is almost as bad but at least you're free of Microsoft's incessant sales campaigns and licensing boondoggles. 

I got off LinkedIn a couple of months ago precisely because the service did nothing for me but fill my inbox with spam.  It's a service in decline which made it a ripe target for Microsoft. 

Meaning a change in ownership, especially when its Microsoft, won't make it any more attractive.

I'm just not interested in turning my next job search into another Microsoft marketing opportunity...

Desktop Video Capture with MSI Afterburner: Update - How to exclude interfering programs with RivaTuner

Way back in December of 2014 I made a video about capturing your desktop with MSI Afterburner 4.x.

For power users capturing your desktop on video isn't any big deal except when you discover that capturing game footage is very different from capturing a Powershell tutorial.  In short it won't happen without some tweaking.

The original video covered most of what you needed to know and to date is one of the most popular on my IT Mostly YouTube channel.  But it  soon became evident within a few weeks that people needed a little more.

Specifically, what to do when something gets in the way of Afterburner like say, Dropbox??

There were a lot of helpful comments for the original video.  So many, in fact that it was the inspiration for a follow-up.

Which is what you have before you now.

This short Update to the original Afterburner Desktop Capture shows how to exclude specific programs from interfering with video capture.

So without further delay, here's the update everyone was waiting for.