Blowing off steam
I try, very hard, to do two things: 1) to not discuss my work in any detail on my blog, 2) do what’s in the best interest of my clients. Of late (the past year), I have had a client of unwavering stupidity that tries even my epic patience at work. They are to the worst stereotype of government workers what those same government workers are to MIT rocket scientists. To say they are stupid does a great injustice to idiots. To say they are officious unfairly maligns Vogons.
First, just some general observations:
- All questions must be put into a computer system so baroque that Bach would scarcely recognize it. Then those questions must be printed out and signed in blue ink1 and submitted, where-in the responses are typed up, printed out and submitted back to us, in paper copies only. Now, I ask you: why did we bother with the computer?
- All purchases, even of a power cord, must be submitted in seven (7) printed copies. The first of which is scanned and turned into a PDF by the client and then destroyed. The other six are destroyed immediately.
- We have been repeatedly forced to find obsolete hardware and software because “that’s what the specifications require”. No discussion of the inanity of the situation will be tolerated.
That, however, is only the tip of the maddening iceberg. Let me play for you, a snippet of conversation that happened today, in a mixture of conference calls and e-mail. This happened after they rejected one of those submissions because we used the wrong size hard drive.
Me : Notice that those 2 73.4GB 15,000RPM drives, in RAID-1, are only used for the operating system. The data is actually stored on a RAID-5 array of 4 300GB 15,000RPM drives. That satisfies the specification requirement for “300 GB usable disk space”.
Client : But the specification requires 80GB hard drives and RAID-5.
Me : Yes, and you’ll note all data is on a RAID-5 array. RAID-1 is at least as reliable as RAID-5. Also, there is no such thing as an 80GB server-class hard drive.
Designer : Yes, but the specification we wrote says 80GB or better and RAID-5.
Me : But the operating system is only 4 or 5GB of storage, the rest is empty.
Client : But the specification says 80GB.
Me : But it’d all be wasted.
Designer : But you must provide what’s in the specification.
Me : We are exceeding the specification by an order of magnitude in performance and reliability2 and this design is typical to everything we have done for the past decade with all our clients. We are using 16GB of RAM because the application needs memory not disk, and we have 4-cores, not two as the specifications requires.
Client : Yes, but the specification…
Do you see where this is going? Madness. A complete inability to understand that specifications, written by an “architect3”, based on heresy and 15 year old ideas, is not a reliable guide for modern computing design. Machines that need, at most, 5-10GB of disk space are having to be purchased with RAID-5 arrays of 146GB SAS drives. What is the sense in that? Oh, right, “it’s what’s in the specification”.
I have never, in my entire life, dealt with a collection of more useless people, where the simple fact that they can remember to breathe is shocking.
1 No, I’m not joking. Not black, not anything else. They’ve been rejected for having the wrong color blue even.
2 Note, that the specification has nothing useful in it like performance or reliability. It does, however, specify the length of the power cord.
3 I’m not talking about a software architect, or a systems architect (my role). I’m talking about a blueprints and pencils and concrete architect.
This entry was posted at 7:10 am on 27 March 2008 and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the post-specific RSS 2.0 feed.
Let’s just put it this way. These people make the IRS look progressive and forward thinking. I’m surprised they’re not complaining that the servers are not quite the right shade of black.
I thought I saw some ridiculous things while working for a government contractor, but you’ve got me beat.
The line about the Vogons made me burst out laughing.
To paraphrase Mr. Adams on the nature of Vogons:
They wouldn’t even lift a finger to save their own grandmothers from the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal without an order signed, in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public enquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters.
My client would then complain about the color of the ink on the order.
After much deliberation and gnashing of my own teeth, I’ve simply decided to yank out the dedicated boot drives and run the whole thing on the 4 300GB drives. Yes, it’s the inferior solution. Yes, it’s not how it’s done. Yes, it’s stupid.
But it’s what the client insists is “in the specifications”, reality be damned. It saves us money, anyway, and that money could be put to better uses, like psychotherapy or simply a stiff drink.
I will no longer complain about my idiot government counterparts. They pale in comparison. They may also pail in comparison. Otherwise the comparison gets sloshed all over the place when you try to spoon it in.
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Back in my idealistic days, I thought this kind of silliness was limited to government, and it wasn’t tolerated in the private sector.
Then I went to work in the private sector….
:)