Techie left 'For support, contact me' sign on a server. Twenty years later, someone did The effort and application of tech support people are often forgotten, which is why each Friday The Register offers a new instalment of On Call, the reader contributed column that reminds us all of the moments in which you triumph after being asked to unravel the asinine. This week, meet a reader who asked to be Regomized as " …
A former employer contacted me some time after I'd left asking if I knew the administrator passwords for some NT boxes used for SolidWorks 3D CAD.
As they'd made me redundant I wasn't that inclined to help anyway but I pointed out that the computers had been sourced and set up* with no consultation with, or input from, my IT department so why did they think I would know passwords for them?
*My only involvement was rescuing the supplier's van after they'd thought it a good wheeze to drive over soaking wet grass so they could "post" the kit through a window rather than carry it 20 yards or so through the entrance. My old and battered Range Rover was well up to the task of pulling them out but I don't think our building management were very happy about the ruts left by the van!
I had something similar in a school.
I worked as a kind of roving technician/consultant for schools and ended up with dozens of them, working one each day or half-day every week.
Eventually, after many years, one loved me so much that they outbid all the other schools to have me full time (it is no exaggeration to say that they had to argue with a London Borough HR/Finance department in order to create a brand new payscale for the desired salary because no such payscale at that level existed at the time for support staff, and there were major ructions over it - until I witnessed the head basically say loudly and clearly down a phone line something along the lines of "I'm the head, you're just the Borough team in place to support me. I'm choosing to hire him, I don't see what that has to do with you and your systems being unable to cope with that, just resolve this"... I was put under NDA and apparently in that Borough was the only support staff on a special, unadvertised payscale that nobody else had... Anyway...).
I worked for them for a while but then the school changed and they employed lots of very daft teaching staff who didn't understand IT (and one who was given the title of IT Coordinator - which is basically the person on teaching staff who interfaces with the actual technical IT manager, etc. - who then tried to tell me my job while knowing absolutely nothing) and things began to get silly.
So I walked. It was a shame, but there you go. One of the governors was an IT guy in the city and we agreed it would be best if I handed over to him - at least in terms of knowledge - and then they could pass on anything to the next guy they found. So that's what I did, I made a CD-R with all the documentation of the network, and handed copies over officially to the head and to this governor.
A few months later, I was in another job. I got a phone call from that school. It was the IT Coordinator guy. He *demanded* the main network administration password. Never gonna happen. It lets you see salaries and HR notes and the like and there was no need for it (this was back when things were divided into "curriculum" and "admin" networks and he basically wanted the master passwords to everything). He was adamant and kept pushing and got quite angry on the phone.
I asked why he needed it.
Flashback 6 months prior when he'd just started. He demanded - without prior consultation, authorisation or notification - that the school must buy a bunch of portable MP3 recorders. Absolutely vital. Critical. More important than everything else on the entire network that was running the school. I refused to authorise it (not really my place to authorise academic IT anyway, but it wasn't coming out of my budget for sure, so he'd have to convince the head, not me). He got really quite shirty about it.
A month later, he comes to me grinning with a cardboard box full of brand-new "MP3" recorders. Smug as hell. I mean, I was expecting that, mate. It's not smug to have convinced the school to do exactly what I told you you would need to do. He demanded I make them work on the network computers. Yeah, I don't think you understand how they work because they have nothing to do with the computer, really, they just record the audio and then act like a storage device. But, yeah, sure. I take the box.
He then asked me for the administrator password. We don't give that out to teaching staff, no. He got shirty again. I asked why he needed it. Apparently he had bought, without authorisation again, a piece of software for the kids to bring in the audio and edit and save it. Okay. I mean, I don't know why you think you need the administrator password (I'll install it, thanks, it's my job) or why you had to go behind people's backs to buy that stuff (and I wouldn't have bought that software and was explaining why when he just stopped me mid-track and told me to "just do it" and walked off).
So I installed the software across the network (cue this massive all-staff email from him boasting about his new project and how everyone should start using it, etc.), and I tested one of the recorders. It did exactly what it was designed to do. So I authorised them and gave them back to him.
The first lesson with them, he came storming in. Turns out the "MP3" recorders only recorded in WMA copy-protected format. I mean, it literally said that on the box and the website description. And the software only accepted MP3 files. I mean, it's the kind of thing an IT manager would check before allowing you to purchase them and authorising such a purchase, but I was cut out of the loop on that one. He demanded that I fix it. Nope. He insisted that I give him the administrator password. Nope. Somehow he believed that would magically fix these things that ONLY recorded WMA and the software that ONLY opened MP3. Ensue a massive several-week-long argument between me and him about it.
In the end, I went as far as I was prepared to go (being the only IT guy on very good hourly rates, I was both extremely busy with actually important stuff, and not willing to waste my time on trivia like that, and the head was generally in agreement). I made a network folder. Any WMA saved in there would trigger some software I wrote, which would convert the audio to MP3 and a minute later it would magically appear in another folder on the network as an MP3. Literally Save it here from the recorder, then by the time you open the software, you can open it from over there in the right format.
Not. Good. Enough. I was told quite clearly, several times, loudly, by this guy.
I was months into having had enough of him (and he was one reason I left), so my support for this project ended there and I wasn't interested in the fuss he continued to make.
So now fast-forward to when I've left that school, am working elsewhere, and I'm being disturbed at my new employer by a long ranty phone call demanding the network administrator password. To get his MP3/WMA software magically talking to each other without having to save it in between (he just wanted the MP3 software to "see" the recorder and pick up the WMA's that it couldn't open, automatically). I told him no. He got extremely irate. I explained (again) that it wouldn't do anything, but also that I was absolutely not going to give him any password - I didn't work there any longer, it wasn't my responsibility and no way was I going to compromise the system.
He then insisted that the head at that school had ordered that I give him that password and that nobody knew it so the school must have it, and he'd been chosen to be the custodian of it. Highly doubtful, I knew that head and he's the one who'd championed my salary - he'd just call me if that was the case. I called him out on the lie. I said he'd have to ask the head for authorisation and I'd have to hear it from him, because I don't believe he'd authorised it. He screamed at me down the phone for some time and demanded how I "would ever possibly know" what the head had ordered or not.
"Well... for one, he already has that password. It was in my handover that he signed off on. For two, the governor also has a copy of that password, just to ensure that someone had it somewhere else. And three... the reason that you don't know this is that it was explicitly discussed on handover and I was told to never give *you* any access or password ever."
The governor, being an IT guy, had understood the "problem" with the MP3/WMA thing immediately and I'd warned him on handover. He was the one who said "Under no circumstances give him that password", and the head was present and agreed. We handed over knowing that it was never going to work, and that he was never going to be party to the privileged details because he just didn't know what he was talking about.
So the big long phone call which he'd made without the school's knowledge, to demand the network administrator's password, to get his embarrassing pet project that had never truly worked the way he intended to work properly, and claiming that the head had authorised it? I can only imagine that got him into big trouble. But he didn't get the password from me.
I checked the school website and their staff list about a year or so later - he was gone.
Yep. Where I was I did that to a current engineer who was bring rude, this was over 10 years ago now. Only on call for a min, told him if he carries on being rude I hang up, he carried on, I hung up. Had been there long enough I wasn't gonna take shit anymore. After thinking I had to accept the abuse.
My "working in schools story" is the day a teacher came in with a magazine cover disc containing a "free" (trial) copy of Logmein Backup that he'd brought in from home, and excitedly announced he'd found a way to save the school money and told me to cancel the Redstor renewal. I wrote the resignation email the same afternoon.
If the school management were prepared to act on an idea from a member of the teaching staff about a critical IT function, then the school had quite significant problems with or without your presence so possibly a good idea bailing.
I say this as a teacher with 35+ years on the clock.
I had a similar experience with a client I had while working at an MSP...they always requested me specifically and eventually they decided to hire me, they offered me four times the pay (my original pay)...the trouble was, my contract stipulated that I couldn't work for a client within 18 months of resigning and had to give 6 months notice, their contract stipulated that if they wanted to hire one of the techies involved in their contract directly, they had to pay 12 months salary to release me...this was around 2008, so everyone at the MSP had been offered to either take a 50% pay cut or voluntary redundancy (based on time served and existing salary)...so all of us that remained were on absolutely trash money...the oldies close to retirement left with a nice severance package.
Didn't stop them...they sat me down with a team of lawyers who instructed me to resign, but not say where I was going and keep schtum...my employer offered me £100 to stay and no payrise...the day after I resigned, my first day of notice, a team of 8 lawyers turned up to have a meeting with the CEO and COO of the MSP...within about 2 hours I was being whisked away in a limo to start my new job as the EMEA IT Manager for this client...promoted from a crappy low paid third line / projects post at an MSP...they didn't pay a penny to release me and I didn't have to serve more than 3 hours of notice because the customer had an outstanding bill that was massive and they threatened to not pay it...I later found out the bill was for £400k.
A month or two after I was smuggled out by a bunch of vampiric lawyers, other people started leaving as well...apparently my escape tipped the balance and created a precedent. The main reason people were still hanging around was because of the 6 month notice period...it was preventing people accepting other roles because other companies hiring didn't want to wait 6 months...my exit showed them that they could just hire a lawyer for a couple of hours on the day they handed in their resignation and tell them to fuck off...one of them unfortunately did have some legal action thrown at him when they got really desperate, but it fizzled out to nothing.
Company eventually sold out for buttons to a larger MSP. Directors walked away with basically nothing. One of them ended up managing a Costa near Oxford Street...went in their one Christmas and bumped into him. I was meeting up with a former colleague from the same place...He gave us a traditional seasonal greeting when he spotted us, he called us a pair of "cunts" while he was wiping down the table next to us...he may have been a little bit sour.
About 2 years after leaving a company I got a call from one of the electricians,
Do you remember when you put in the gps time server?
Why
Someone was doing some work ripping out old cables and it no longer works
It is somewhere under the floor outside the comms room and goes through a window frame to get outside
Which one?
Don’t ask me I left 2 years ago I can’t remember the building layout
Almost as bad as discovering I was still the ripe admin (with a valid account) for the companies public ip range - knowing them I probably still am 5 years later.
>Almost as bad as discovering I was still the ripe admin (with a valid account) for the companies public ip range - knowing them I probably still am 5 years later.
In all seriousness:
If you think this is likely (and from what I've seen of the world, it probably is), do yourself a favour: log on to your RIPE account and enable 2FA for it. With RPKI ROV becoming more and more prevalent in the world (which is a good thing!), it's now possible to cause serious damage from a RIPE account (which is a bad thing, well, depending on which terms you left your ex-employer on). If someone were to do so with an old account of yours, you don't want to get fingered for it.
Reminds me a bit about the time a lab I used to work for replaced the image processing software developed by me and a colleague by shiny new stuff from a major vendor. They weren't getting brilliant results, mainly because the eye-wateringly expensive new kit (i) didn't have fluorescence calibration tools at all, and (ii) used a global, automatic threshold for segmentation of bacteria, rather than a locally adaptive automatic thresholding method I had developed. The practical upshot was that bacteria on the edge of the field of view looked smaller and seemed fainter than in the centre. If you moved the bacteria from the edge to the centre, they magically became brighter and larger. Not good.
They asked me whether I could quickly (like in an hour or so) implement my calibration and thresholding methods on the new kit. I answered it would take far more time (which they didn't want to pay for), and gave them my scientific papers on both topics, my C code from the old system, plus its documentation (I had left copies in the lab when I left, but they had "lost" it), and wished them luck. As they had not seen fit to hire any new software developers after I had left, they never got my methods to run on their new kit.
Reminds me of a place I worked at where I proposed a new way of controlling regenerative braking of a motor system, only to be told "We've been doing this our way for years, and we know yours won't work".
I eventually fell out with them over something more serious so, I gave my notice - which included a warning that I would take them to a tribunal for constructive dismissal.
Strangely, they still made me work my month's notice, which I used to implement the braking algorithm I had proposed. I was told they finally adopted it a number of years after I left "so that it could be someone else's idea"...
This post has been deleted by its author
Years ago I setup an alerting system for a lab which I dutifully documented in the usual place. Eventually the bean counters had their way and the site shut, the techies there started shutting stuff down and then the alerts started - quite a few of them. They then asked where the documentation was on how to disable it, I responded that it was on the SharePoint server (where it was supposed to be). It turns out that SharePoint server was the first thing they'd decommissioned...
Sounds familiar.
I worked for a major UK University.
I left on good terms. I backed up all the UNIX boxes OS to a partition on my PC and also to the NAS.
Left a printed doc with all of the passwords etc.
Years later I get a call.
We had an issue with the XYZ machine [a Franken Machine cobbled together out of a number of very expensive machines] the manufacturers told us to reinstall the software. My heart sank on hearing this as it didn’t run anything standard and the ‘manufacturer’ made about 40% of the XYZ.
I then remembered my PC backups and directed them to look there. No dice. Some enterprising post grad had used disk imaging software to wipe the whole disk including the secured partition I’d carefully created.
Then the NAS - we moved to a new one - no we didn’t copy that partition across.
For some unknown reason I did offer to sort the mess out.
You simply can’t help some people! The ability to self sabotage anything is….incredible.
Over 10 years after i installed an HP MSA1000 storage array as part of a Sharepoint/SQL installation for a major university I got a call asking what the password was for the MSA Admin interface.
I suggested that they read the documentation I'd left with the installation as I'd left precise detail in there
The password was still set as default with a big note in the docs saying "please change all default passwords to secure ones once the consultant has finished the project"
Basically in 10 years they'd not upgraded firmware, changed passwords as instructed etc.
I left a major defence company after 20 years where I had been looking after a major product line. The code came to about 6,000,000 lines of which the majority was written by a 3rd party, but multiple restricted extensions could be added for certain builds. Yes, the build was fairly complex to avoid the tainting of the build server with ITAR or other restricted code. But, it was all built from a virtual machine image holding the entire development environment that was available on the normal development network. Scripts named BuildProject_A.bat, BuildProject_B.bat, etc. were stored on the secure server that initiated the special builds, and that was where the references between batch files and customers were also held.
Consequently the build could be performed from the virtual machine for normal projects, but could be initiated for many restricted projects from the secure server. This was simple in operation, but had to be meticulously documented, in two versions - on the normal development server and on the secure server. Before I left, I made sure that I watched 3 people follow both sets of instructions to build the images.
3 years after I left, an obscure bug was found in the OS that supported the product line. All three people I had 'initiated' into the build process were still with the company and rebuilt the standard project image without problems and it installed safely across the world.
The Software Manager (one of the three, and who had worked on the product line for 6 months, before greasing the right pole to get promoted) emailed me in a blind panic as all the 'special' customers were wanting a fix and they could find no indication of how it could be done - as I said, the separation was complete to avoid tainting or customer information getting out. I reminded him of the other set of instructions on the secure server and heard nothing more.
Probably saved them millions in lost reputation, but I didn't even get a thank you email back. I'm sure I would have received at least a meal out had he still been an engineer, but as he had turned to the dark side of manglement...
Anon, because this product line is in applications with multiple decade long term build and support agreements - with the immortal line "Off planet, on-site visits, are not supported".
Not IT, but certainly an alignment with the heading. Back in the early 1980's I was working for a company that was making kit for the N Sea and one package whilst part of the company's core lines, was a one-off due to the very specific requirements of the contract; one such peculiarity was the paint type and colour that meant no component was able to be drawn from stock. Suffice it to say, they also wanted a LOT of documentation - 15 sets of some very large folders. My final responsibilities on the project were to compile the master copy and then make 15 photocopies of it (one of which remained on my shelves. Their 15 were packaged up, dispatched and signed-for by the project management company acting for the end-user.
It was 7 or 8 years later that I was actually working for the end-user that I received a call from one of their documentation controllers to ask if I could contact the supplier (my previous employer, though not a fact they yet knew) to request a copy of the documentation. My immediate response was a clear "No!" they were taken aback as I that wasn't my usual response to such requests. I then explained that I spent over a week of time I can never get back, standing at a photocopier making the 15 sets of documentation that were sent to, and signed-for by, the project managers. "Ask them," I suggested. It turned out that everything had been handed over and was somewhere in the document control system. I later learned that there was so much duplication that most copies had been shredded - I could have cried. The final irony to that project was that a few years later I visited the offshore installation; nothing to do with that equipment but I took the opportunity to see it in situ (nostalgia as it had been the first such project I'd seen through from start to finish) - it was all good and running (although the special paint finish that had cost so much time and money to achieve was history - as soon as it had been installed it was repainted to match another colour scheme).
> as soon as it had been installed it was repainted
Classic! Reminds me of Dave (eevblog) in one of his videos: "You have a project, develop it, a lot of cost a time for the company, and then it gets shelved, it was for nothing. Don't care, that's just how bigger companies work, you learning experience cannot be taken away." Had similar experiences, but after that video I took them differently :D.
8 years for a piece of software I'd written, 10 years for a password to a Linux proxy server (different times, different companies). I provided a fix for the software problem over the phone, but I could not remember the proxy password. I did talk the guy through recovering it though. Both calls were from people I enjoyed working with, so I was OK with helping them out
In the 80s I wrote a serial link concentrator running over RSX11T on a PDP11. It used a 3rd party 16-port serial card for cost reasons and I wrote a driver to implement the serial protocol. Getting on for 15 years later when I had moved on a few times, my old boss contacted me - they wanted to replace the PDP11s with a VAX. Did I still have the software? I dug out a listing hiding under a bunch of other mouldering docs for him. I don't think I had a copy of the s/w as the RSX11M dev system was long gone. I think they eventually gave up on the idea.
That was the last time I wrote anything serious in Pascal - the Oregon Software compiler. From then on it's been C, C++ and Python mostly.
Many moons ago, I was the backup admin of a big DC at an international company.
I had written some nice scripts to perform online backup for locally attached storage, using the HPUX mirroring commands.
Of course, I had left my name of them.
10 years after, a lady from the other side of the world called me and wanted support for those. After a quick chat, she was just wanting me to do her work for a new system, since she didn't have a clue how storage worked on HPUX. Now idea how she got those scripts BTW.
LOL
On the very first project I worked on as a full-time employee I ended up doing almost all of the printing functionality. (And the third too, but that is irrelevant.) Years later, while I was still within the same company, but the original project had gone into long-term support provided by a small core team, I got a call asking if I could go back and look into why all printing was failing in the test environment before they made the same change to production. Hurrah for good change control processes. Since that office was only across the road I went over at lunch time and started poking around.
"How long will it take to fix?"
"Probably about 10 minutes after I find out what the problem really is."
"How long will that take?"
"Good question, but it will be shorter if I can work uninterrupted."
The original solution used a custom printer driver on the unix servers, requiring that the standard LPR daemon was replaced. They had just upgraded the servers to the next major release of the OS, which re-enabled its own lpd, so the custom driver was failing with an address/port already in use error. It took surprisingly little time to find the problem as the error was clear in the the system log, but they had not looked. Printing was seen as a black art, so it was better to get somebody who knew about such things in if at all possible. It was of course pure coincidence that while on that original project my print jobs always jumped to the head of the print queue. (Not to the level of interrupting the current job, but that was possible.)
I feel your pain...
I've been self-employed since 1992, and have a good bit of C code from that era. I've learned a fair bit since then. Most of that code has been revised or become obsolete since then, but when I do have to look at some of my code from that era, I sometimes want a time machine so I can visit my younger self with a clue-by-four.
Been there, done that. It was a standing joke at my last company that the worst developer there was yourself about 6 years previously. I'd often open up some code and think "it's so obvious this will never work, which idiot wrote it?" Then I'd scroll to the top and find out I was said idiot.
Clearing out my long term storage last year inevitably I'd come across stuff that looked interesting and, reminded by the mention of DEC RSX-11M up the thread, I found an RSX-11M-Plus administrators course, some thirty pages of it, not that I remembered going on it such course as I'd done my training at DEC Reading. As I read through nostalgia took hold and I was reminded what an excellent OS it had been. Only as I turned the final page did I find my own name as the course leader and author.
and modifying it for a new job, my PFY looked at the code and said "when you wrote that I was in primary school". He seems to be a significant player in AWS now, but nearly didn't survive that day... And mate, if you're reading this I reckon you're pretty much as old now as I was then. How are your PFYs?
Once, nearly 20 years ago, I company sold my soul to a customer who wanted me to write some derived satellite telemetry parameters (these are data values calculated on the fly from the telemetry data downloaded from the satellite and provide additional supplementary information). Some of these parameters were pretty complicated and required an model of a part of the satellite's internal wiring between components which I developed from the satellite's design schematics. The derived parameters were written in C, and after 3 months everything was written, tested and accepted.
About three years later I was called by my contact in the company in question - can I come in for a month and make some changes to the derived parameter code, they had discovered (shortly after the satellite was launched) that someone had not followed the design schematics, and had wired things up slightly differently (the satellite still worked, just not in the expected way). I had to pass this up the chain to management since, at that time, I was fully allocated to another high-priority project for a different customer who would not be impressed if I disappeared for a month.
Management thought about things and was on the verge of refusing the out-of-the-blue request for my time when my contact phoned back - they had actually looked at the code I had written and had realised that it included extensive inline documentation including full instructions on how to adjust the internal wiring model (basically a set of data tables that drove generic algorithms); they had followed my instructions, applied the changes and now everything was working fine. I was profusely thanked for doing such a good job in the first case and promised a beer when I next saw him.
I got that beer about 3 months later!
I used to build PCs trading as RTB Computer Services. One day I got a phone call asking for a warranty repair. I asked the guy his name, it didn't sound familiar so I asked for the invoice number, nothing like the same format as mine and he was miles away from where I was.
I told him it was nothing to do with me and he replied "But it says RTB Warranty on the invoice". I can only guess he searched "RTB warranty" and came up with my details.
During my stint with Kyndryl* a couple of years ago, the mgt above me saw fit to distribute my personal cell phone number as the new Help Desk number.
I wasn't asked first. It blew my phone up- using a number I mostly ignore because so many recruiters hammer it.
I still get occasional calls from B-level executives "requesting" early upgrades to their leased MacBooks.
I live in another state now so I just ignore calls from that area code.
*from their website:
"Kyn" comes from "kin." It represents the strong bonds we form with customers and with each other. Our people are at the heart of our business. "-dryl" is coined from "tendril," evoking new growth and connections. By working together, we are growing.
I've been contacted several times for advice and knowledge from previous gigs, including from BT engineers.
I try to help where possible but my boss did get a bit shirty with the engineer.
Slightly off topic, but one gig was too tight to pay for on call mobiles. As a consequence my personal number appeared in the DR documents for the consortium.
I may have had a call after I left where the caller was told to Foxtrot Oscar.
I was on the design team (first job out of school) and did some of the hardware and firmware.
I released some schematics and have commented on some forums over the years about the design and workings of that *very* cost reduced data terminal.
One day, long after DG had ceased to be, I got an email from an individual who was desperately looking for repair information, since the terminal was used to control a piece of maintenance equipment vital to the functioning of a military aircraft. Yep. Somewhere inside that piece of gear was a DG computer, and DG computers had their own special way of interacting with DG terminals. I had to tell him that there were a lot of custom parts in that terminal, the schematics used only DG part numbers, and that even if he managed to get it repaired, it would eventually break again. So I suggested he use a PC and a copy of a terminal emulator that supported the DG control characters (Crosstalk IV = XTALK) and sent him a copy which I happened to have on my PC (they're out of business as well...) Never heard back, but hopefully it helped.
I was given a Nova 4, along with a TP-1 printing terminal, three D210 video terminals, and a Televideo 925 video terminal. I was able to interface all the terminals to my PCs via RS-232C.
You wrote, "DG computers had their own special way of communicating with DG terminals".
What was that way (were you talking about 20mA current loop, or what)?
And he didn't work for the place where I'd installed that script. No idea how it got to his employer and he claimed not to know either. If it was the place I'd consulted for a couple years and written the script for I would have helped them out if it turned out to be quick, but no way I'm going to help a company that's essentially using stolen property of a former client. Not for free, at least. I told them I'd help if they agreed to contract me at double my normal rate and a minimum of 10 hours. He said he'd ask his manager, then I never heard back which is what I assumed would happen.
I got a call once. It was a university where I used to work teaching out for support because the student project submission system I'd written in 2 weeks, 15 years earlier, wasn't scaling well with their labs of hundreds of Sun workstations. Maybe that was because when the code was written, the department had 3 computers? Anyway, I considered offering to update the code but wisdom prevailed, and I suggested that surely they could find someone with a spare 2 weeks for a rewrite...
I had a call about supporting UAT for an organisation scaling up to a bigger server. I'd worked in that field briefly about 11 years earlier but didn't recognise the name of the product. Standing in reception I could see some terminals in the distance, too far away to read but approved the style of the general screen layout - it looked like the way I liked to do things. Yup, it turned out to be the same package having been through a series of different vendors and names. One screen even had the place-holder text left by my code-generator, exactly as I'd left it when I quit 11 years earlier.
I've used a general rule that serves me well, when contacted by previous employers in some way.
RULE 1: Left on Good Terms
I'll put documentation in Confluence/whatever.
If called AFTER leaving?
Q: Have your read the documentation I did for 2 weeks solid?
A: Did you? I did't know (despite being emailed to everyone)
I'll try to help, but only for a couple of days worth of questions. Not full time.
Any longer - here's an invoice.
RULE 2: Redundacy
See rule 1 (generally),.unless it's not really Redundancy and an excuse to get cheaper people
RULE 3: Sacked/Fired for no reason (it happens)
I'm sorry, you said I wasn't good enough - FRO.
And:
RULE 4:
I am not employed by you in any way, my employment termination clause only included a retirement to maintain customer confidentiality. Please state the legal liability and insurance status I have on giving you any help or advice, in writing, for my solicitor to review before proceeding. (I don't what to be sued by anyone if what I knew is out of date and my suggestions make things worse.)
OK folks, and this may come as a shock to some of the youngsters, but there are these things called 'pens' and 'paper'. They are used for 'writing things down', in a way that does not disappear when you turn the power off. Competent and good System Administrators use them for writing down and recording important things like network configurations, what specific hardware is used for, system administration passwords, and other such essential, but often not immediately needed information so that in the event of, for example, an emergency someone else can find out what has happened, what needs fixing, and how to fix it.
This does, of course require some of these things called effort, and patience and dedication, but judging by the stories above, sometimes it is actually worthwhile for the employer to pay for these things so that an accident does not become a disaster. It also means that taking over a System Administrator does require the ability to read and assimilate information (you may need to attend night school for this, considering the state of education at the moment, but sacrifices have to be made for success).
Troll icon, 'cause W T F do people think they are doing with servers that must never be turned off and nobody knows what they do or why?
I prefer Brother label printers. Specifically with the label type which glues like hell, and is resistant to acetone and other abusive stuff. Including the cables, of course.
You don't want to see my handwriting with a "pen" (I prefer Faber Castell 1345 grip over a pen) on paper or a paper label... That is only for emergency situations when you ran out of real labels.
There was a rush of these in the lead-up to Y2K. Minions from the Big 8 (as it was then) accounting firms contacting me and asking me to warrant that freeware I had written back in the 1980s was Y2K-compliant. Sometimes they'd accompany that with a request to sign a legal document saying the software was Y2K-compliant, and if that warranty was faulty then I would have unlimited liability and indemnify the losses of the Big 8 firm. In the end I had a form letter I'd send back, basically a quote for consulting services to determine the status of the software, which they never took me up on.
One of API’s rules is that load path components be designed to last “minimum” of 20 years. So I’m accustomed to be looking at drawings and technical documentation sometimes even on good old blueprint copies, and many rigs predating the 1980s.
Going back to my internship at a roofing manufacturer, one responsibility they gave me was to sort out some file cabinets of technical documentation. I learned that while the paperboard rolling mills were well over 100 years old, the mechanical alignment governor (one of those real primitive “whirlygig” type) was nearing 150 years old! Absolutely stunning. And of course the original manufacturers were still in business and still had support parts, etc.
I dunno what the big deal is. I scored a pair of HP Z800s not long ago, granted they only date back to 2009, so that’s just 15 years old. Both work like a humdinger, well, what’s going to kill them now?
First of all a Tandem computer IS NOT a mainframe as stated in the article. As a former Tandem Systems programmer (aka admin) I can tell you the Tandem systems were Fault Tolerant, Transaction Processing Systems. As a Tandem System programmer I was called many time from former employers for help and I made a tidy sum from it charging hundreds of dollars an hour with minimum charge of hundreds of dollars. I always fixed the problem, and before you ask I always filed a schedule C. I had moved to *nix and the extra money was fun while it lasted.
Back in the late 80s I worked for a firm of solicitors writing software to automate their conveyancing and litigation departments using some weird 4GL on Unix boxes.
As was fairly common in those days, I did the whole thing on my own, but wrote pretty comprehensive documentation.
During the early 1990s recession I was made redundant and moved onto other things,
All was quiet until summer of 1999 when I was surprised to get a call from a techie guy at an medium sized IT company whi ==o asked me if the systems that I wrote all those years ago were Y2K compliant.
After I stopped laughing I had to admit that I had no idea and they would have to test them.
After I got over the shock of them still being used, I was quite chuffed that my elderly code was still working after all that time with no support.
At the first company I worked for after leaving school towards then end of my time there I got one of those Amstrad PCW word processor things which I used to prepare the tenders that I was costing up.
Eventually I moved on, left home, got married , got another job....
On Day at the sister in laws my Mum phoned saying my ex-boss from Company1 was asking for help with the PCW, being in a good mood I rang him and he said he was trying to save a file he had worked on for a couple of days without saving but the screen had filled with gibberish and the keyboard was locked up....
Sadly had to tell him it was a bug that would randomly crop up and that his unsaved work was toast....could almost hear his sobs from 40 miles away!
It's the big blue isn't it
My father told me stories of having support calls to the Singapore factory
He once met a manager that turned out to be one of his in laws years later! What incredible coincidence.
Later, he would be managing those rubbish Unix boxes.
Now he's managing Linux boxes and much happier
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