* Posts by DanUK

10 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Sep 2023

Wanted. Top infosec pros willing to defend Britain on shabby salaries

DanUK

Re: Pay grades

The concept of promotions is even more comical in the IT world. The average introverted and hyperfocused programmer has absolutely no business running a team or department!

DanUK

Re: Pay grades

Anyone doing STEM jobs for the public sector is probably doing it for the love of it. I've worked with barely literate IT helpdesk staff and they're on more money than most graduate engineers I've worked with. I don't understand it

DanUK

The government is used to hiring people with PhDs and Masters for peanuts and can't quite believe that IT people who may not even have degrees are demanding six digit salaries! They managed to get Turing for probably a very modest salary after all

Cutting kids off from the dark web – the solution can only ever be social

DanUK

Re: Grown ups IT literacy is getting worse, not better

There's an amusing comic strip where a modern day person goes back in time and is trying to explain about modern gadgets and how they work... of course, they don't have a clue, it might as well be witchcraft!

DanUK

In the old days, us kids would have been watching a copy of Hellraiser that someone managed to rent from the corner shop. Thankfully I have little scarring from this experience but I'm grateful we didn't have access to the unfiltered internet at that age!

How governments become addicted to suppliers like Fujitsu

DanUK

IT folk are expensive and fairly mercenary. The only way the experienced ones would work for the public sector is if they're rinsing them for at least £500 a day. Try to train them internally and they'll just leave to earn megabucks. Maybe this AI thing could be good for us taxpayers!

Raspberry Pi 5 revealed, and it should satisfy your need for speed

DanUK

Assuming a user has no other hardware already, buying an RP5 is going to be well over the £100 mark. I guess I'm not the target audience any longer as I don't particularly want an actively-cooled device, pulling more power than my old 3B+

As TikTok surveils staff's office hours, research indicates WFH is good for planet

DanUK

Imagine being a tech company and not knowing whether your staff are productive or not! Maybe they should spend less money on new tech and concentrate on the fundamentals, ie managing people effectively in both office and remote settings. I bet these same companies subject their workers to endless meetings as well

Local governments aren't businesses – so why are they force-fed business software?

DanUK

Re: It needs to be asked

Big business rarely gets to a size where they need an ERP if they are run badly... local governments on the other hand have no such limits. For example, Birmingham has gone bust but it's not like people will lose their jobs and the council will disappear

DanUK

In my experience, the people that are often tasked with writing the requirements and performing the user testing are the people that aren't vital to day-to-day operations. Getting some competent business analysts on board would pay dividends, rather than buying something off the shelf and hoping it automagically does everything, including all the hundreds of requirements your busy users didn't have time to spec upfront!