Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2005 11:03:38 -0500 (EST) From: Jerry McAllister <jerrymc@clunix.cl.msu.edu> To: tedm@toybox.placo.com (Ted Mittelstaedt) Cc: "Chad Leigh -- Shire.Net LLC" <chad@shire.net> Subject: Re: Is Yahoo! moving from FreeBSD? Message-ID: <200502251603.j1PG3dr16076@clunix.cl.msu.edu> In-Reply-To: <LOBBIFDAGNMAMLGJJCKNMEIGFAAA.tedm@toybox.placo.com> from "Ted Mittelstaedt" at Feb 25, 2005 12:24:16 AM
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> > > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org > > [mailto:owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org]On Behalf Of Chad Leigh -- > > Shire.Net LLC > > Sent: Friday, February 25, 2005 12:11 AM > > To: List Free Bsd > > Subject: Re: Is Yahoo! moving from FreeBSD? > > > > > > > > On Feb 25, 2005, at 1:01 AM, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: > > > > > > > > And they are still buying Microsoft Office because their users are > > > demanding it. > > > > I don't believe this. I believe that a few users demand it, and by > > default everyone else gets it. Some manager or IT VP or someone > > decides that is the new corp standard and that is it. > > > > I think either you wern't paying attention in the big companies that > you worked in or you haven't worked in big companies. > > Big companies have a longstanding personnel problem in that they > tend to attract, for want of a better word, lazy bastards. > > That is not to say all big company employees are lazy, far far from > it. Big companies also attract many very talented people. > > ... Stuff nuked > > What happens when you as a manager tell your lazy bastard employee > to do a job, is they will find every conceivable excuse to avoid > doing it. "My computer is screwed up" is a favorite one. Another > one is "I need training on that and I can't do the work until you > give it to me" "It's not in my job description" is another favorite. > I'm sure any managers reading have heard all of these. > > If you put anything other than Microsoft Office in front of those > people they will spend endless hours complaining about how much > better a job they can do (as if they are capabable of doing anything > better than their normal half-assed job of anything) if they have > Microsoft office, because they know that better (translation, they > are too lazy to learn something different) blah blah blah. I think both things happen. Sometimes it is the manager who is either lazy or scared to make a decision and imposes "solutions" on the company. I see that a lot with our clients. Do you remember the very popular IBM selling point (especially in the mainframe world) - IBM sales people will come in and, if things seem to be getting close to leaning toward a different vendor, would start throwing around the phrase 'no-one ever got fired for choosing IBM' to try and scare people in the decision making position. I have heard them quote that in presentations many times. MS might not use that same quote, but they try and leave that same feeling. They both have gleefully traded on that weight in the marketplace. Unfortunately, it is sort of true. If someone chose something other than IBM and something screwed up, the chooser would get wailed upon for making a dumb choice. If then chose IBM and something screwed up as it most often did, they could say, well that is just the way it is in the computer field. It ain't my fault. Then IBM is just grinning and rubbing their hands at all the additional stuff they will then get to sell to fix up their own screwups. Well, that same odor seems to come on those winds from the northwest as well. If you are a middle manager, you don't have to justify paying scads of money to buy an MS "solution" and any screwups are just the way life is. But your neck is on the line if you buy anything else - even if it is free. You have to justify it first and defend it every day regardless of how much better it might perform. So, managers cave. They want to keep their salaries and get their bosses off their backs. The fact that they have to deal with lazy employees in the manner described in your post just makes that whole symdrome worse. ////jerry > > Ted > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscribe@freebsd.org" >
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