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Date:      Fri, 25 Feb 2005 20:47:35 +0100
From:      Anthony Atkielski <atkielski.anthony@wanadoo.fr>
To:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Is Yahoo! moving from FreeBSD?
Message-ID:  <1922605381.20050225204735@wanadoo.fr>
In-Reply-To: <LOBBIFDAGNMAMLGJJCKNEEIJFAAA.tedm@toybox.placo.com>
References:  <1907334115.20050225132200@wanadoo.fr> <LOBBIFDAGNMAMLGJJCKNEEIJFAAA.tedm@toybox.placo.com>

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Ted Mittelstaedt writes:

> Your missing the point.  It's far more cost-effective for a business to
> not hire a bunch of whiners in the first place.

They aren't whiners.  It's perfectly logical for them to want to work
with software for which they are already trained, and it's equally
logical for a company to let them work with software for which they are
already trained.  There's no reason at all to retrain them on something
completely different.

> But I don't expect this kind of whining from someone I hire at $30K a
> year to actually do some real clerical work that requires some
> responsibility, and I am not going to stand for it for the $60K and
> above grown up adult that I hire for a managerial or ops position or
> some such.

I guess you can spend another $60K on training them to use something
else and hope they don't leave until you amortize that additional
expense (if you ever do).  But that doesn't seem to make very good
business sense.

> Unfortunately, there's still too many upper managers in business today
> who came of age before the computer became integrated into business,
> and chose to be lazy and not learn how to use them, and as a result
> today cannot themselves operate the things, so it is not possible for
> them to hold their employees to any kind of standard in this area.

They already _know_ how to use computers; they just aren't familiar with
the software that you personally prefer.  They know the most popular
software on the market and how to use it; they can get their work done
with that software alone, without any need for anything else.  There is
no reason for them to look elsewhere for software, nor is there any
reason for them to waste time and money learning other, more obscure
software packages that just do nothing more than Office already does.

Managers don't have an emotional attachment to any type of computer
software.  They run Office because everyone knows how to use Office.
And employees want Office because that's what they know how to use.
It's perfectly rational, and fully cost-effective, and it has nothing to
do with laziness or the age at which someone was first exposed to
computers.

> All throughout our businesses careers, we will be faced with this
> problem of having to unlearn the old way of doing things and learn
> new, better ways.

Not necessarily.  When something works well enough, there's no reason to
learn anything else.

> Everyone that works in a job faces this.

Not necessarily.  Even in jobs that require the use of a computer, it
isn't necessary to relearn things over and over.  Microsoft Word and
Excel haven't changed significantly in ages.

> Unfortunately, many people choose to refuse to unlearn old ways, and a
> larger percentage of them get like this when they have been doing the
> old way for a long time.

They have to have a good reason to learn new ways, and "because someone
in the IT department hates Microsoft" isn't a good reason.

-- 
Anthony




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