Random Comment of the Day
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Old misogynistic bugger feeling intellectually and professionally challenged by a younger (I assume) women starts bullying her. She should report him to her manager (and/or HR); if they do not get involve, she should start looking for a better job.
I'd rather be phishing!
Maximilien wrote:
Old misogynistic bugger feeling intellectually and professionally challenged by a younger (I assume) women starts bullying her.
Description says that she was in a training class. Not an architecture meeting tasked with mapping out the future of the company. And given it was a training class for MS Access I can only wonder what the intent of instructor and student was. As a student, I wouldn't suppose that myself I would actually need training on MS Access. It would be nice to be introduced to the layout but I most definitely would not be challenging the structure on the first day. And I have been working with databases for more than 30 years. Conversely as an instructor either the students are expected to have no knowledge or they are experienced professionals. With no knowledge then they should do nothing but learn. As experienced professionals they should already understand the nature of legacy applications and the intent of an introductory session. Neither of those types of students should be challenging the architecture.
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I'm sure the general consensus here will be that Access is evil and should be avoided at all costs. I'll go against the grain here and just say that Access is simply another RDBMS that works perfectly well for small single user applications. It may be old tech, but it works. :) edit: I'm referring mostly to using Access as a database only, not for creating applications...I hate VBA as much as the rest of you! :laugh:
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
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I can't disagree much. You don't show up at a new job and immediately start telling people they should redo everything using something you prefer, no matter what the pros and cons might be.
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since when do employers really listen to their employees, particularly a newbie vs. some old coot that's been there way too long (and worse still may be a friend of the boss / director.) wait a while till the boss knows you're both human doing OK at your job, once that traction achieved suggest they need to review/upgrade before their tech doesn't fit the real word (interface etc.) Suggest they retain consultants to do a full review because they are at risk of loosing a lot of business if they don't upgrade to match their supply/sales chains. sometimes they really do have to pay to accept the truth, whereas if it's just you saying it even 10 years on the old coot's still always going to have the upper hand. (unless sleeping with the boss - but no, don't do that: it never ends well.)
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Lopatir wrote:
Suggest they retain consultants to do a full review because they are at risk of loosing a lot of business if they don't upgrade to match their supply/sales chains.
Excluding those where the the sale involved a product and the customer wanted a specific database, I have never seen any customer care what database the company was using.
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Alright, just trying to find an analogy here. Let's say a new hire is assigned to add a new form to a php web site. While being introduced to the web site code, the new hire explains how stupid PHP is and the web site should be rewritten using Java Spring MVC hosted on a Web Sphere application server and provides examples from an tutorial googled during the session. That is how I see it, am I doing it wrong?
Termi Nater wrote:
That is how I see it, am I doing it wrong?
Yes. Where in your statement are you taking into account the large cost of doing that? Companies do not get paid in technology. They get paid in money. If it costs then it subtracts from income. So where does your solution add to the income of the company?
Termi Nater wrote:
While being introduced to the web site code, the new hire explains how stupid PHP
And I should note also that I have not seen any evidence that currently PHP is choice that will make a company suffer. PHP has been around for a while and is still maintaining its market share. Note that doesn't mean it cannot be implemented badly but that is true for any technology. And just to be clear I don't do PHP.
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CodeWraith wrote:
By what I had to live through, Access itself is not the worst problem. The die hard VBA fans, their culture of tinkering and their typically less than brilliant workarounds are the problem. They have no clue why nobody else came up with such brilliant 'patterns' and feel quite insulted when you must tell them that they have built an unmaintainable mess.
Hmmm...I have worked in C, C++, Java, C#, Perl and SQL for decades. Certainly those that I have talked to suggest that JavaScript is similar. And nothing suggests that any of those are chaos free. So exactly which technology is chaos free?
You don't have to give me reasons to think that JavaScript is junk. :-) Still, the language is only a secondary problem. It's the culture of merrily hacking away without a plan or architecture and the myth that this is the one and only way to tackle everything. And when the day comes that the junk collapses under its own weight, then it's somehow your fault for pointing it out. I honestly don't like to be called an idiot by people who never learned as much as I already have forgotten. Call me a snob, but I don't work in a place with such a culture. I know how it ends and having had the dubious pleasure once is enough.
I am endeavoring, ma'am, to construct a mnemonic memory circuit using stone knives and bearskins.
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Yeah, right, the moron excuse is to always blame the woman. :thumbsdown:
I'd rather be phishing!
He is not blaming the woman, he is blaming the person that in the first day at work says the one in charge of the training "that's a crappy old fashioned thing and I can do better". If a man had done it, my answer would have been exactly the same. If you are not hired to do exactly that, then shut the fuck up at least until you are in for some months
M.D.V. ;) If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about? Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Maximilien wrote:
Old misogynistic bugger feeling intellectually and professionally challenged by a younger (I assume) women starts bullying her.
Description says that she was in a training class. Not an architecture meeting tasked with mapping out the future of the company. And given it was a training class for MS Access I can only wonder what the intent of instructor and student was. As a student, I wouldn't suppose that myself I would actually need training on MS Access. It would be nice to be introduced to the layout but I most definitely would not be challenging the structure on the first day. And I have been working with databases for more than 30 years. Conversely as an instructor either the students are expected to have no knowledge or they are experienced professionals. With no knowledge then they should do nothing but learn. As experienced professionals they should already understand the nature of legacy applications and the intent of an introductory session. Neither of those types of students should be challenging the architecture.
jschell wrote:
With no knowledge then they should do nothing but learn. As experienced professionals they should already understand the nature of legacy applications and the intent of an introductory session. Neither of those types of students should be challenging the architecture.
:thumbsup::thumbsup: At least not until you are in enough time to understand the legacies, frames, history and have already built a name in the company. I have re-built things a couple of times in projects that were going bad and ended faster than trying to fix the previous mess.
M.D.V. ;) If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about? Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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dandy72 wrote:
You don't show up at a new job and immediately start telling people they should redo everything using something you prefer, no matter what the pros and cons might be.
To be fair those that are ignorant and inexperienced might do that.
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My friend just started a new job a few days ago, she said the first day was OK, the usual employee orientation stuff. But then they put some crabby old guy in charge of training her on the database maintenance. Turns out that they are using MS Access 2000, so she tried telling them they could migrate over to Mongo or Apache database, something more secure but the guy bit her head off. So she tried showing him some examples of how much easier it would be to maintain and update the tables but he just won’t listen and just spouts off random nonsense that has nothing to do with the subject at hand.
It was broke, so I fixed it.
Technology aside, I've experienced that kind of response with coworkers. There isn't much that you can do, especially if you're their lead and on probation. The best thing for her is to suck it up and see how things unravel. If she goes to work somewhere else as a full-time employee, she might experience the same thing over again; you never know, unless you try.
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My friend just started a new job a few days ago, she said the first day was OK, the usual employee orientation stuff. But then they put some crabby old guy in charge of training her on the database maintenance. Turns out that they are using MS Access 2000, so she tried telling them they could migrate over to Mongo or Apache database, something more secure but the guy bit her head off. So she tried showing him some examples of how much easier it would be to maintain and update the tables but he just won’t listen and just spouts off random nonsense that has nothing to do with the subject at hand.
It was broke, so I fixed it.
Can't put my finger on it, but it feels related to your sig somehow .
Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello
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Dunno, I've heard of highly paid consultants getting several hundred/hour. As much as I like the stability of a permanent job and not having to do any of that icky sales and marketing for myself if I knew where I could get that kind of money I'd probably be doing it myself. At least for the year or three it'd take me to earn enough to buy a house with cash.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason? Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful? --Zachris Topelius Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies. -- Sarah Hoyt
Well, 10x rate has not been my experience. Now, I have heard of consultants coming in via some consultant house - say for SAP. Or IBM, etc. Then you pay. But for small time consultants like myself? Nah, we make a bit more to cover things employees have covered by employers.
Charlie Gilley <italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape... "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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My friend just started a new job a few days ago, she said the first day was OK, the usual employee orientation stuff. But then they put some crabby old guy in charge of training her on the database maintenance. Turns out that they are using MS Access 2000, so she tried telling them they could migrate over to Mongo or Apache database, something more secure but the guy bit her head off. So she tried showing him some examples of how much easier it would be to maintain and update the tables but he just won’t listen and just spouts off random nonsense that has nothing to do with the subject at hand.
It was broke, so I fixed it.
Her solution is Mongo or Apache?
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S Houghtelin wrote:
So she tried showing him some examples of how much easier it would be to maintain and update the tables
Did she also demonstrate how much the migration would cost, how much the QA would cost, and as applicable how much it would cost to redo all of the other code that accessed the database and QA for that as well? And what about the retraining costs?
Forgetting/ignoring training costs is all too common with engineers. (Many years ago, the VP of training at a prospective customer gave me a cost and logistics breakdown of retraining for even the simplest UI change. It was more than I expected. It also explains one reason the company chose not to switch vendors.)
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My friend just started a new job a few days ago, she said the first day was OK, the usual employee orientation stuff. But then they put some crabby old guy in charge of training her on the database maintenance. Turns out that they are using MS Access 2000, so she tried telling them they could migrate over to Mongo or Apache database, something more secure but the guy bit her head off. So she tried showing him some examples of how much easier it would be to maintain and update the tables but he just won’t listen and just spouts off random nonsense that has nothing to do with the subject at hand.
It was broke, so I fixed it.
Our company has grown a lot the last couple of years, so we have had many new employees, many directly from university. At least two out of three come with great ideas how they shall "save" our company, really great and successful (... but we are, already!). Each of them has his own way of how tools and working methods and plans should be drastically changed, if we are to prosper and grow. We couldn't possibly switch programming languages or project management tools or build systems or version control systems every time some new employee comes with this great revolutionary new tool. Even changing horses every time our technical university jumps onto some new academic fad... Those revolutionary new ways are almost always academic fads, and I am surprised/disappointed how much a university can make quite smart university students into evangelists for a single belief without teaching them anything about alternative ways, and essentially teaching them "This is The Answer" without telling them WHY this is the answer. You wouldn't believe what even university Masters can present as if they were laws of nature - such as individual packet routing in networks, the necessity of parenthesizing conditions in programming languages, or the obviousness of case significance in identifiers. (I could list a few dozen other examples as well.) So when some new employee brings forth a new revolutionary tool or method: Give him/her some time to analyze the needs of the company, make a critical evalation of how the current tool satisifies the needs, how the new proposed tool satisifies the needs, identifying and quantifying the benefits of a switch, and the cost of a switch. Make the new employee write this down as a change proposal for older employees to evaluate. We have done that a couple times, when the new employee withdrew the proposal quite rapidly when met with counterarguments and real figures for the cost of change. (That is where they usually fail, believing that replacing a basic tool is no more difficult in a 300 man company with a few hundred customer relations as it was in a four-students group work with no legacy ties and no obligations after the report is handed in to the professor for evaluation.) True enough: Sometimes, we could be more open to change, but still, changes should be justified. We have also had cases where new employees have continued to insist on changes, we have "given in" and after a while realized that the claimed benefits were not gained. The only positive result of spending a lot of reso