Re: unqualified, stupid or one of those zen starting points?
"For several of us, though, it was a reminder as to where the door was."
Possibly the Peter Principle - said that the only people fired were the very incompetent - and the very competent.
On assignment to an overseas subsidiary - I quickly cleaned up their festering system problems which the local staff were unable to solve. This was not well received in their office as it made the local staff look incompetent - which basically they were by UK standards. The local education system placed great emphasis on knowing the approved answer to fixed questions - and exam results were spectacularly good. It was not good mind training for handling IT system problems.
My ex-pat predecessor had worked the same magic - but had made it look very difficult. So a problem took him a week - one day fixing - the other four days he spent on the beach.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
