BOFH: Who us? Sysadmins? Spend time with other departments? BOFH logo telephone with devil's horns "And these are the Systems people – Simon and Stephen," the Boss says, leading a smiling man into the office. "Simon, Stephen, this is Daniel. Daniel's the Company's new internal relationship manager." "Our what now?" "The new Internal Relationship Manager." "Did we have an old …
A pillow is for amateurs, get enough complainers; and enough caffeine and salty snacks, and you can get the new hire to die from a heart attack.
That does drag the meeting a bit however, so you can go by the old tried and trusted method of find stuff they posted online that will get them fired.
That does drag the meeting a bit however, so you can go by the old tried and trusted method of find stuff they posted online that will get them fired.
If they haven't posted anything like that, then feel free to post something for them. A BOFH can pull that off and not leave an evidence trail.
> work with divisions of the company to help foster workplace relationships
There was a lovely quote in The Week UK last week:
The great mistake made by
intelligent people is to refuse
to believe that the world is
as stupid as it is.”
It sounds like this Internal Relationship Manager will help in two ways. First as a personal example and secondarily by showing the sysadmins what all the other people in the company are really like.
I expect tears, but not of joy.
"I for one can't wait," the PFY says. "We'll finally get the chance to work closely with people and pool our resources to share the costs of any new equipment we might need."
Why did my mind instantly jump to the delicious irony of a department paying for the new surveillance equipment the BOFH and PFY will be using to upgrade their capability, based on their increased access in this new co-working heaven (hell)
But you do get a shiny new logo and possibly a new mug
Last week it was 'Net Zero' and '100% of our energy comes from renewable sources'... well yes, you can get 'bio' diesel for the hundreds of company vans/trucks, but what about the oil for heating the buildings and the diesel for the standby generators to cover outages in the '100% renewable electricity'
I'm tired of pointing out that our latest new 'company values' are the same as the old 'company values', except you have chosen new words for the 'values' and simplified from 6 down to just 5... and the associated new logo looks like noise on a TV screen and the different colour may 'signify inclusivity' but having the blobs of different sizes and randomly placed does make it look like a token gesture
Hans: "Do you not see that if we kill him with the pill from the till by making with it the drug in the jug, you need not light the candle with the handle on the gateau from the chateau!":René: "Simple plots are always the best."
'Allo 'Allo, 'Gâteau from the Château' episode
Our team had 4 people in it, and it needed about 12, so some work was not being done - and our customers complained.
We were offered a senior person to help "understand the users and their problems". We had conversations like
Him: These users say they need a faster machine for their builds
Us: They don't need a faster machine; their current machine is lightly loaded all the time. The problem is the source is on a remote system the other side of the Atlantic. If they cached it locally then the build would be faster. They dont know how to do this.
Him:These customers complain because the network is wrong.
Us: They are trying to use the wrong configuration. They need to change their definitions - and think it will be quicker if we change the network rather than them fix their configuration.
We gave him some of the smaller problems to fix and he was very happy.
After a month he reported back... they need an extra 10 people to do the work. He almost wanted to join us because he learned so much.
Several times I have had 'experts' brought in 'to help out'.
These experts learn that they actually know very little, learn a lot then f-off, never to be heard of again. When they've gone, peace and quiet resumes, leaving the opportunity to do the job, finish early and ---->
Some years back, at a certain pharma in Kent, we had a "company" decide or was offered to tender & was determined to prove they could undercut the rate the current MSP's were being paid by one third to half, this was of concern to most of us due to working as part of the clients internal team with little or no interaction with our "management" as contractors (The MSP had one permy on site). More importantly were we going to be shown the door\suffer a rate cut.
It was obvious the way this prospective company's mindset was going:
New cheaper bodies, that we can switch, rotate & deploy them at will to other clients* as needed or not even have them on-site at all until required.
After about a week or two on site, in which time they learned that the requirement of full background checks, multiple various regulatory courses, individual site H&S & it's build process's courses before they even got to the site knowledge part** & realised that they couldn't just pull "Tom, Dick or Harry" from one client halfway around the M25 to go sort out "Izzy's latest issue in building 225" without all those pre-requisites in place & decided with a vast amount of egg on their formerly overconfident & glowing faces with brick-able smiles that they couldn't compete at all & if anything having to bring on a whole new team would actually them cost more than their projected profit was going to be.
*Funnily enough, this is the mindset of my current employer, that I can potentially just drop my "Onsite required presence for an outage" to go & do something 2 hours away for a different client, granted the idea is that it's for sporadic events, but goalposts do change.
**We had a new guy brought in & he spent three weeks on this before being pulled by the existing MSP for some reason (He wasn't happy at time he spent being wasted).
My previous job was "outsourced" to an MSP who then outsourced the actual work to a group of network "experts" overseas. The MSP had convinced manglement that they could do a much better job for slightly less money. Yeah, sure.
About 4 months after I was let go, the entire network was crypto'ed - desktops, servers, they even went into the network switches and firewalls. They paid the ransom, then got whacked again a few weeks later. Their network was completely down for 2 or 3 months while those overseas "experts" tried to get things back under control. I heard that the MSP had to bring in another group to put things back to rights.
"Experts". Riiiight. Because people are as interchangeable as Lego blocks.
I almost wish I'd had some hand in that, for closure if nothing else, but sadly, their incompetence needed no malevolent assistance from me. The Russians/NKoreans/Nigerians/Uruk-Hai/Underwear-Gnomes pwned them good and hard for a long time, in ways far beyond my ken. It was, well and truly, popcorn time for me.
I did have a professor call me up one day and ask point-blank if I thought the "experts" had done it. I told him I had no idea, but it was doubtful as they really hadn't seemed that bright when I'd worked with them before I was let go.
Devi Sridhar has been a guiding light throughout Covid, calm, rational and informative. The best thing in Scotland since, well, hills and rain? We don't have much going for us. I admit it, I love her and will fight any of you for the chance to kiss her feet.
She just mucked up seriously today by asking for an end to internet anonymity because a scientist was driven to suicide by internet trolls. No, Devi, no. Trolls don't drive you to suicide, only family and friends can.
"I know a lot about that subject, but I know nothing about this subject I'm about to pontificate upon."
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/aug/12/scientist-taken-own-life-health-workers-covid
I down-voted you because what you posted, sad as it is, has absolutely nothing to do with the article. I wish I hadn't now.
You are a pretty frequent commenter, and I have watched your posts over the last few months going from being apposite, intelligent and witty to angry, confrontational and a bit incoherent. Throw in your references to suicide, and I worry. If you are struggling, get some help. It *is* out there, although I know asking for it can be hard.
I don't know you from Adam, and if I am speaking out of turn, my apologies, carry on as you were. In thirty plus years of taking part in Usenet groups and forums, I have seen too many good people fall by the wayside.
Well, thank you for your care and concern and apologies for worrying you. You are obviously a nice guy. I first came close to suicide when I was nine, next when I was thirty three, not since - but failure is always an option.
It's a BOFH article, comedy essentially, I didn't know I could go off topic. Honestly though I do go off topic on serious articles all the time lately so your downvote is valid if misplaced,
I've been on the internet since the mid eighties, haven't slipped off it for long, and I've rarely seen a good person fall. All too often they just disappear which is scarier. Everyone just forgets them. They're dead, they died! So do we all.
I bore myself lately. I can't keep up with the tech in these articles, but I can tell you one thing - you don't have to regret downvoting me, you can always upvote me. Smiley face.
Salman Rushdie was stabbed in the throat yesterday. Overrated author, but not his throat! I think we should make it illegal to stab any throat even your own. I don't like to think about it but if you ever have to stab me, shoulder blade, left shoulder preferably. Not my throat.
'Ow about me own throat, eh? Mind if I cut me own throat? I can let you have this bloody good sausage inna bun for 5 pence, sausage with named meat* 2 pence extra, mustard 10 pence extra, and that's cutting me own throat!
*Spot! Here Spot! Come on boy, where ya at?
Taking the 5th, Horseman,
Thankin you for 'apposite'. My new word of the day. I learned all of my grammar and most of my vocabulary in forums such as this. I constantly correct everyone else because that is how I learned, not my teachers. My worst mistakes were getting some words exactly the wrong way around. Bipartisan, prurient, and worse. I still can't say phenomena, still can't spell it either. Still get angry and embarrassed when folk point that out. Fe No Men Ah.
I reread my original post that you downvoted, that nine others downvoted, and it still looks perfectly reasonable to me despite the disdain. A respected and worthy Scottish scientist is arguing against internet anonymity, and I disagree. I would argue for internet anonymity in all cases. Maybe I made that argument a bit jokey, or on the wrong thread, but honestly that is one of my better posts. I know, I ken...
"What you write is both original and good, but what is good is not original, and what is original is not good" - and that's not even an accurate quote.
Actually I experienced a very unique mental health\de-stress event yesterday that is apparently done two or three times a year at my current location of employment.
A local charity brings puppies on-site for those that want to interact with & pet them (With a view to prospective adoptions). Learning who the dog lovers were broke down barriers & caused interactions with people whose paths rarely cross.
Our company does! Well, the free pizzas (or other food) every once in a while. Unfortunate;y, it also causes divisions between office based workers and those us out in the field who rarely if ever visit offices and don;t get any of the freebies.
We occasionally get to see pictures of senior manglement visiting remote offices to hand out t-shirts/mug/chocolate advertising our latest product/service... we never get to see them
We would just like a lick of paint around the building, toilets that flushed properly every time (as for the urinals!), all the dodgy light fittings upgraded (not just having to report them individually)... not asking for much...
"Actually I experienced a very unique mental health\de-stress event yesterday"
So did I, one of the women threatened to slit the throat of a shit stirrer (Moss Side lass, so don't think it was a light hearted bit of banter), a fork lift driver threatening to punch a jobsworth and a manager storming out.
And that's just the ones I witnessed
Ahh. Factory life in crazy hot weather.
To be honest, I am wondering who introduced a student of very esoteric not to say illegal tastes to a Humanities academic in Manchester University, with the result being a paper concerning the "researcher" wanking over UK-illegal child pornography.
That got published somehow in April, and the brown smelly stuff has just hit the fan now over on Twitter, so I'm now wondering just who set all this up.
There is a strong possibility we have a BOFH present somewhere.
I've seen fights break out with meat cleavers between two workers of different ethnic groups in a slaughterhouse, they were surprisingly only suspended & lost Christmas\New Year statutory holiday pay & reinstated & the moment they encountered each other at the turnstiles to clock in on their return to work, they started again (HR had wisely decided to put them back on the same shift - Without knives fortunately this time).
Another time we had a Canadian Govt Food Inspector, who would step onto the grated mezzanine floor\deck before descending to the main production floor, he was required to wash his hands & he would shake dry them, droplets of water would drip onto this poor female foreign worker below, usually running down her neck.
She reached her tether, complained & the government worker was taken aside to be told, please stop doing that..
Unfortunately for someone else as he stepped onto the elevated section of floor, before he even got his hands wet, a droplet of water from the roof, hit her square on the neck, she swiveled on the spot with the meat cutting tool she had in her hand & attempted (Fairly successfully) to disembowel his foot.
...or teach people the things they were supposed to learn as toddlers. Wash your hands properly, with soap, then dry them. This guy may have "washed" his hands, but I despair at the numbers of people who think "washing" their hands is a quick wipe under the running water then walk out shaking dirty water all over the place. Those drips may or may not have been contaminated water.
"...one of the women threatened to slit the throat of a shit stirrer (Moss Side lass, so don't think it was a light hearted bit of banter"
If the throat was still *whole*, at the end of the day, it *was* banter !!!
Although, I personally would avoid dark alleys for a few months, if on the receiving end of the conversation !!!
:)
should always take a good book to these sort of meetings.
Amongst my recommendations is
"The Necronomicon discussed, with experiments for beginners" (get the light leather bound version, you can claim its human skin)
Although nothing in there is as bad as when the new manglement fad is espoused by the bean counters and put forward as THE way forward at which point you propose the game favoured by your PFY "murder in the dark" and it is oh so very dark at the bottom of the lift shaft........
Sleep well all
I'm in a bit of a bullshit job myself - advising people on how to do things they wouldn't need to do if it wasn't for people like me requiring them to do those things.
But what a fscked up fsck! There actually are Internal Relationship Manager jobs out there! Can people in such jobs even qualify as sentient beings?
That's done in a competition, like 400m hurdles[0] or javelin[1]. For Stick In The Mud the competitor gets placed in a Standard Olympic Mud Puddle to a prescribed depth, then the opposing team tries to pull him out. The number of pullers starts with one, and is increased until the stickler is extracted; the one who needs the larger number of pullers win that round.
[0] but now with stacks of paper
[1] with an oversze fountain pen, and it's not just for greatest distance, but there's an inkwell you have to try to get the pen into.
I've experienced the BOFH dynamic from both sides. For years I was in s/w development, then support, and I grew a hatred of users.
Then I threw it all in to be a structures inspector on the trunk road network; an it heavy job but I didn't have God powers over the it any more. I grew to hate the it department.
Then the it department introduced an it problem busting initiative where they went round the offices talking to users and trying to fix problems on the spot.
They fixed a lot of irritations (eg you've got wacom hardware; obviously you need the drivers and not the Microsoft generic crap; we'll sort out the politics later) and got a lot of brownie points and good feelings.
I realised that in a lot of cases the problem was middle management fearful of stuff they didn't understand, not the individuals who in most cases were just trying to do a good job (on both sides).
I would like to see one day Simon meet is own Moriarty. A seemingly standard bureaucrat but underneath we find like sees like, culminating in an attempt to introduce him to an open window with a skip of glass shards below only for him to make an enigmatic escape to battle another day.
The start of this felt like it could be building in this direction, and although ends well (as always) it would be nice to get a recurring provocateur of similar standard to Simon, to truly challenge him.
I believe this happened a few years ago when there was a female sales manager who managed to get Simon's managers to sign up for whatever waffle of the day she was selling. I believe she outwitted Simon a few times, with the end result being that she was promoted out of dealing with anything within BOFH's purview , thus saving Simon from having to resort to the carpet roll and quicklime.
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