Karen Stone had packed up and gone home for the day when she got a call last week from the Plainfield, Conn., police department. Something about three fox heads sticking up outside of the storm grate….
I successfully completed the physical agility test. Yay! I was winded afterward, but not debilitated.
Waiting for the test was the hardest part. I felt like Will Smith in the beginning of Men In Black — surrounded by young, physically fit men and women, most of whom obviously had military experience. Except I am a doughy, forty-something computer geek instead of Will Smith.
After the physical agility test, I was interviewed briefly by Lt. Sears, the Animal Protection Supervisor. I liked him: he was professional, but friendly. Naturally, I blathered on more than I probably should have. I said two things in particular that I almost regret.
First, when were talking about why I would want to change careers from IT to Animal Protection (which is a genuine branch of law enforcement in Henrico County), I could not help but talk about the personal satisfaction I have felt when working on projects that I felt made the world a better place (the Partnership For Peace, supporting the US Coast Guard, creating web sites for the Mariners’ Museum, and so on). That sounds incredibly corny to me, and I am the one saying it. I am sure it sounds at least that corny to other people, and maybe even like I am blowing smoke. I wasn’t, but if I heard anyone else say what I said, I would assume they were just making it up to sound earnest and “socially aware”, or some such nonsense.
Second, when he mentioned that some people apply for both Animal Protection and the Police Department, I said that I did not apply to be a police officer because I did not feel it suited my temperament. What I meant was that I would not want to interact with criminals (or “suspects”) every day as my primary profession. Despite my veneer of cynicism, I basically think that people are good, and I would like to keep thinking that. I am not sure how well I would cope with seeing people at their worst, day after day. That’s what I meant. What I am afraid of is that it may have sounded like I was dismissing what Animal Protection does as not being “real” law enforcement. That’s not what I meant at all, but my experience is that people sometimes take offense when I do not mean to cause any. He also might have concluded that I am too averse to confrontation to be trusted with what is in fact a law enforcement position. There is some truth to that, I suppose — I do not want to seek out confrontation if it isn’t necessary. But I do not think that this is the same thing as being cowardly, which is what I am afraid he may have concluded from my comments.
Ah, well. It is what it is. I may not have phrased things as diplomatically as I would have liked, but I was honest, and if that excludes me from further consideration, then it does. There is only one open position, so my chances are pretty slim, anyway.
In the meantime, I have a packet of background forms to fill out that is nearly as thick as the stuff I had to submit to get a Secret clearance at Joint Forces Command. Now, what was my address in Fullerton, CA in 1986…?
TechRepublic has an article titled, “Five things I hate about corporate IT“. They did not list a single reason I would place in my own “top five”. So for your enjoyment, here are five things I dislike about corporate IT:
1) Micro-management of software.
A skilled worker is competent to choose her own tools. What matters is the end product, not the tool used to create it. Only in the field of IT does a man in a ill-tailored suit think he is competent to choose what tools other people are allowed to use.
2) Marching boldly into the 20th century.
If I have to use Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Office, or Lotus Notes ever again, it will be too soon. It’s 2010 — why are large companies still using office productivity software from 1990? And do not even get me started on people who intentionally use Windows servers, or web applications that only work with Internet Explorer.
3) Security through stupidity.
Controlling what web sites I visit has almost nothing to do with security. Preventing me from using SSH or sudo is the opposite of security. If I gamble on company time, fire me. If I sit and look at porn instead of doing my job, fire me. Crippling my internet access has only one consequence — it makes it more difficult to do the job you are paying me to do.
4) If they can’t see you working, you aren’t.
It’s 2010. Gasoline is expensive. Pollution is bad. Even the notoriously inefficient Federal government has policies in place to encourage telecommuting. So why do federal organizations like DECA and otherwise reasonably well-run companies like Royall & Company forbid Unix systems administrators from telecommuting? I will tell you why. In both cases, it is because management thinks that if they can’t SEE you working, then you aren’t working. Welcome to 1950.
5) Responsibility without authority.
As Information Technology has become a commodity, the people who support that commodity get less and less respect. We used to be experts. Now, we are just a line item in the budget next to “janitorial services”. We have responsibility without authority. We aren’t permitted to make decisions to ensure that systems are reliable (that exalted status belongs to the well-paid men in the ill-fitting suits), but we are held accountable when things break. We are told what we need to deliver when, after it has already been promised, even though no one ever asked us if that was a reasonable thing to promise. We are burdened with minimizing the consequences of the bad decisions made by others, trying to make silk purses out of sow’s ears.
TechRepublic has a question-and-answer thing they do. One of this week’s questions is from a young person in high school in New York, asking if going into software development would be a good idea.
I was getting ready to write a response explaining why I would not recommend any young person go into IT, particularly software development. I was going to talk about how things were back in the mid-1990s, when I started, and how they have changed.
And here is Jake Leone, who has written it for me.
Well, done, Jake. Well done.
So I was reading today that the Obamas pay $1.8 million in federal taxes. And I got to thinking, “Wow. They pay more than 45 times in taxes what an average American earns in a year.”
I know that a lot of people felt (and probably still feel) that Barack Obama, due to the ethnicity of his ancestors, was more in touch with them than the previous umpteen generations of rich old men who had been elected President of the United States. I questioned that perception at the time, and I still do. I just don’t think that someone whose taxes are 45 times what I earned last year has much in common with me, regardless of where his — or my — ancestors were born.
He did not grow up in downtown Newport News and get bussed a half-hour to a high school in what was then the nice part of town. He didn’t eat government cheese and get vaccine shots at the free clinic. He did not get a job at the shipyard straight out of high school.
I am not complaining. My life has been good, and I have few complaints. I’d rather be me than him, any day.
Nor am I criticizing the Obamas for being wealthy. I am sure they’ve worked their asses off to get where they are. Kudos to them. But I am not under the delusion that this President has anything more in common with me than any other ridiculously rich politician elected to high office.
Serendipity is a strange thing.
I am working on my homework (I am in my twenty-third year of a four-year degree), and listening to music. I have a sizeable music collection, but for variety, I was listening to the “Blues” music channel on Comcast cable. “Never going back to Memphis” came on, and I thought, hey now — this is good. Who is this?
Google told me that it was Shemekia Copeland. Another quick search brought me to a lyrics page — hosted at a site called Spinetingler magazine, which is a site as much about the craft of writing fiction as it is about the fiction itself.
Which, as it happens, is something that had been much on my mind for the past few days.
Serendipity.
I am watching You Kill Me with Ben Kingsley and Luke Wilson. This is pretty funny. I kind of wish we had a family business. It might give us a sense of belonging, of being a part of something. I am glad that it’s not the Polish mob, though.
I received a letter from the Henrico County police department today. I applied for a position as an Animal Control Officer, and the next step is to successfully complete a “physical agility” test. In order to qualify for that, I had to go to a doctor and have them check me over for a “statement of physical fitness”. I passed! Chubby and old I may be, but at least I am not about to drop over dead.
The next step is the “physical agility” test in April:
The first four activities must be completed in three and a half minutes, while the human simulator drag has to be completed in under one minute.
I am pretty excited about this.
As reported in It was no joke at security gate, passenger Rebecca Solomon had a terrifying 20 seconds while passing through airport security:
After pulling her laptop out of her carry-on bag, sliding the items through the scanning machines, and walking through a detector, she went to collect her things.
A TSA worker was staring at her. He motioned her toward him.
Then he pulled a small, clear plastic bag from her carry-on – the sort of baggie that a pair of earrings might come in. Inside the bag was fine, white powder.
Of course, the bag was not hers, and neither was the white powder. She had never seen it before, and the TSA screener knew it:
Put yourself in her place and count out 20 seconds. Her heart pounded. She started to sweat. She panicked at having to explain something she couldn’t.
Now picture her expression as the TSA employee started to smile.
Just kidding, he said. He waved the baggie. It was his.
It really does not get much worse than this for the image of a government agency whose image was already among the worst in the country.
It is time to abolish the TSA. Well past time, in fact.
In case I was wondering if my decision to get out of IT (eventually) was just an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato… the fine folks at TechRepublic and ZDNet have put my mind at ease. The era of independent IT consulting is, indeed, over.
Even as little as five years ago, an IT consultant was an outside expert called in to solve problems, or to create value for a business who wanted to find an edge over the competition. As the holder of knowledge and skills few others possessed, we were respected, and clients listened.
This is no longer true. IT has become a commodity: widely available, aggressively priced, and valued as much as a business values its janitorial staff or the company that handles its payroll. IT is simply another necessary cost which provides no significant business benefit other than to keep the status quo in place.
A good friend of mine, who provides technology policy advice to the state of Virginia, put it this way: when there is a job that your business needs done in a way that no one else is doing, you want to hire the best you can find and make sure you keep them. When that job is something every business needs to have done, in pretty much the same way, it makes sense to outsource it at the lowest cost possible. IT is just overhead, like janitorial service, or building maintenance, and it is put in the same category in the business’ ledger.
There is nothing here to “ride out”. IT has become a commodity, as valuable and respected and as easily replaced as light bulbs and batteries. We had a good run while it lasted, but technology and society have moved on. One might as well try to open a boutique that sells paper towels.
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Blackmoor Vituperative