"George" wrote in message
...

stuff snipped

Actually from working my way up and having folks report to me a well
rounded person is a much better asset than someone who only knows say
how to code well. The most talented coder is of minimal value if they
don't understand say accounting principles or business practices or
lacks good language skills (both written and spoken English) etc.

When I became a systems analyst, some of the most helpful courses I took
turned out to be sociology and psychology. Doing requirements analysis
requires understanding how people interact. Creating a successful system
means learning how to listen to people, understanding what bothers them, how
they go about doing their jobs, etc. My undergraduate degree in journalism
was also very helpful in figuring out what questions to ask and in writing
up specs.

When I left the newspaper business and went back to college I started out as
a programmer but quickly moved up because systems analysis requires a lot of
soft people skills that too many coders just don't have. Something I heard
constantly from clients was "you make this stuff understandable." Most
coders that did nothing but code just couldn't communicate with the people
they were building systems for and they tended to build systems and add
features that pleased THEM and not the clients and end users. When I got
the chance to visit Borland way back when, Phillipe Kahn said much the same
thing. He looked for programmers that were not characters like you see on
the "Big Bang" but that had a well-rounded intelligence.

--
Bobby G.

On Oct 18, 11:24 pm, "Robert Green"
wrote:

He looked for programmers that were not characters like you see on
the "Big Bang" but that had a well-rounded intelligence.

It takes a well-rounded person to know that not everybody should be
well-rounded.

Most of the people I know that are successful at something are usually
lacking in other areas. I don't have a problem with that as long as
they are not _sorely_ lacking in areas such as family.

Nowadays they just want to pump people full of mood altering drugs to
make them 'normal'. There's a place for OCD and everything else in
this world. The trick is finding out where people fit in, not trying
to lop off limbs to make them fit.

R

"RicodJour" wrote in message
...
On Oct 18, 11:24 pm, "Robert Green"

stuff snipped

Nowadays they just want to pump people full of mood altering drugs to
make them 'normal'. There's a place for OCD and everything else in
this world. The trick is finding out where people fit in, not trying
to lop off limbs to make them fit.

I used to really **** off my psychiatrist friend by postulating how she
would have treated Beethoven, Poe and guys like the composer Robert Schumann
who thought he was being chased by turning tables.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Schumann

which contains no mention of the table problem leading me to wonder if my
own mind is failing, but fortunately Google came to the rescue with:

http://www.musicofyesterday.com/hist...usicians.ph p

which is pretty fascinating reading and says:

Schumann was also affected by melancholy bordering upon insanity:
"At forty-six he was pursued by turning tables which knew everything; he
heard sounds which developed into concords, and even whole compositions. For
several years he was afraid of being sent to an insane asylum; Beethoven and
Mendelssohn dictated musical compositions to him from their tombs."

He did eventually have himself committed to an asylum where he died two
years later.

Just imagine what the entire world of art would look like if we had Prozac
starting in the 1700's.

But I digress. I still say that people designing software for other humans
to use need to have a broader understanding of human behavior than a guy
writing process control software or embedded systems that have very little
human interaction. It's really important when implementing new systems
because people hate change, hate having to learn something new and
especially distrust a programmer or analyst that doesn't really understand
their work or how they perform it.

F'rinstance, coders who can't spell (and that was something I saw more and
more of as spell checkers became the norm) don't inspire confidence in the
systems they build. End users see menu choices with bad spelling (something
they can understand is wrong) and then assume that the whole system is built
shoddily. Especially systems built for people like lawyers, doctors and
other professionals who are usually quite good spellers.

Getting a new system up and running requires a LOT of people skills which
tend to consist of making the glass seem half full, not half empty. When
people lose confidence in a system it can fail. When they believe that the
system is basically functional but needs a little tweaking they are much
more likely to be advocates rather than critics. One way to generate that
feeling is to give them a sense of ownership by incorporating their
suggestions into the design and fixing the bugs that they report promptly
without whining. As the new healthcare law shows, people just HATE having
something rammed down their throats from higher up.. (-:

--

Bobby G.

In article ,
"Robert Green" wrote:


Just imagine what the entire world of art would look like if we had Prozac
starting in the 1700's.


From my experience, probably not a lot different. These are the
people who would have thought that Prozac (or antipsychotics) took away
the best of them and would have been very non-compliant. You might have
a lost a painting or two, but probably not all that much.

--
People thought cybersex was a safe alternative,
until patients started presenting with sexually
acquired carpal tunnel syndrome.-Howard Berkowitz

On Oct 18, 10:24*pm, "Robert Green"
wrote:
"George" wrote in message

...

stuff snipped

Actually from working my way up and having folks report to me a well
rounded person is a much better asset than someone who only knows say
how to code well. The most talented coder is of minimal value if they
don't understand say accounting principles or business practices or
lacks good language skills (both written and spoken English) etc.

When I became a systems analyst, some of the most helpful courses I took
turned out to be sociology and psychology. *Doing requirements analysis
requires understanding how people interact. *Creating a successful system
means learning how to listen to people, understanding what bothers them, how
they go about doing their jobs, etc. *My undergraduate degree in journalism
was also very helpful in figuring out what questions to ask and in writing
up specs.

When I left the newspaper business and went back to college I started out as
a programmer but quickly moved up because systems analysis requires a lot of
soft people skills that too many coders just don't have. *Something I heard
constantly from clients was "you make this stuff understandable." *Most
coders that did nothing but code just couldn't communicate with the people
they were building systems for and they tended to build systems and add
features that pleased THEM and not the clients and end users. *When I got
the chance to visit Borland way back when, Phillipe Kahn said much the same
thing. *He looked for programmers that were not characters like you see on
the "Big Bang" but that had a well-rounded intelligence.

--
Bobby G.

You are obviously talking about software that has a "user interface".
I'm talking about engine control modules that keep helicopters from
falling out of the sky, or modules that keep a punch press operator
from losing an arm. The latter needs to be coded by a guy who did
nothing but write code till 2AM every day of college for 4 years.

"Kurt Ullman" wrote in message
m...
In article ,
"Robert Green" wrote:


Just imagine what the entire world of art would look like if we had
Prozac
starting in the 1700's.


From my experience, probably not a lot different. These are the
people who would have thought that Prozac (or antipsychotics) took away
the best of them and would have been very non-compliant. You might have
a lost a painting or two, but probably not all that much.

Disagree. Look at poor Ludwig. He's thought to have been killed by his
doctors feeding him various mercury tinctures. Taking poison tells me that
he would probably have take Prozac, too, which some MD's like Peter Breggin
and his book "Talking Back to Prozac." Poe and Coleridge self-medicated
with opium and other with cocaine and absinthe. Someday we'll have access
to all the parallel dimensions in the multiverse and be able to investigate
such hypotheticals. Until then, I've got to hide from the turning tables
that are after me . . .

--
Bobby G.

Robert Green wrote:

But I digress. I still say that people designing software for other
humans to use need to have a broader understanding of human behavior
than a guy writing process control software or embedded systems that
have very little human interaction. It's really important when
implementing new systems because people hate change, hate having to
learn something new and especially distrust a programmer or analyst
that doesn't really understand their work or how they perform it.


I agree. In almost every endeavor, you'll have to interact with someone who
a) Is your boss (one way or another) and b) Has no idea what you're talking
about.

You have to explain it to them in terms they can grasp.

That's where a liberal education comes in. If you both have that as a common
ground, it makes the illustration easier.

For example, many's the time I've started an explanation with "Consider the
Battle of Agincourt and Henry's problem caused by bad clams..."

On Wed, 19 Oct 2011 16:00:22 -0500, "HeyBub"
wrote:

For example, many's the time I've started an explanation with "Consider the
Battle of Agincourt and Henry's problem caused by bad clams..."


It boggles the mind why people here do not see your humor. Everything
is so serious; like it really matters.

Sometimes I think we think in the same way.

People get degrees in Criminal Justice; having never seen a convict.

I called them "educated idiots."

"Oren" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 19 Oct 2011 16:00:22 -0500, "HeyBub"
wrote:

For example, many's the time I've started an explanation with "Consider
the
Battle of Agincourt and Henry's problem caused by bad clams..."


It boggles the mind why people here do not see your humor. Everything
is so serious; like it really matters.

Sometimes I think we think in the same way.

People get degrees in Criminal Justice; having never seen a convict.

I called them "educated idiots."

"Educated beyond their capacity." -Enos Guillory-

On Wed, 19 Oct 2011 16:13:35 -0700, "Steve B"
wrote:

Sometimes I think we think in the same way.

People get degrees in Criminal Justice; having never seen a convict.

I called them "educated idiots."

"Educated beyond their capacity." -Enos Guillory-

"Dumb mother ****ers." - Oren-

"HeyBub" wrote in message
m...
Robert Green wrote:

But I digress. I still say that people designing software for other
humans to use need to have a broader understanding of human behavior
than a guy writing process control software or embedded systems that
have very little human interaction. It's really important when
implementing new systems because people hate change, hate having to
learn something new and especially distrust a programmer or analyst
that doesn't really understand their work or how they perform it.


I agree. In almost every endeavor, you'll have to interact with someone
who
a) Is your boss (one way or another) and b) Has no idea what you're
talking
about.

You have to explain it to them in terms they can grasp.

That's where a liberal education comes in. If you both have that as a
common
ground, it makes the illustration easier.

For example, many's the time I've started an explanation with "Consider
the
Battle of Agincourt and Henry's problem caused by bad clams..."

Garbage in, diarrhea out. (-:

That's not an exampke I would have used but it my very brief teaching career
I was able to explain concepts like multi-dimensional arrays to students by
telling them they were already quite familiar with the concept. They
refused to believe me (because the notation was unfamilar to them) until I
pointed out that looking up anything in the TV guide was one such example of
data arrayed in multiple dimensions. In this case by date, time and
channel.

One client, with a master's degree in library science, insisted that instead
of using "too many" separate fields for all the data, it should be designed
with one big field for all the data that represented a book. She was
familiar with one of the commercial personal database software packages of
the time (can't recall its name) that did just that. She just didn't get
that such a system would not work for a library with tens of thousands of
technical reference books and periodicals that had return record sets that
matched multiple conditions. Lots of people were just thrown a computer
back then and left to fend for themselves or were taught a few courses by
people that weren't very far ahead of them, knowledge-wise.

Systems design often included a lot of client education - or re-education in
many cases because everything they thought they knew was wrong. Much of
that mis-education consisted of using spreadsheets to process data that was
far better manipulated with database programs. IMHO, it was easier to
convert paper systems to a database program than it was to convert
spreadsheets with hundreds of embedded macros.

--
Bobby G.

On Wed, 19 Oct 2011 21:41:26 -0400, "Robert Green"
wrote:



Systems design often included a lot of client education - or re-education in
many cases because everything they thought they knew was wrong. Much of
that mis-education consisted of using spreadsheets to process data that was
far better manipulated with database programs. IMHO, it was easier to
convert paper systems to a database program than it was to convert
spreadsheets with hundreds of embedded macros.

I was a systems analyst when I retired. Insurance.
Always preferred support and enhancement.
Didn't like new development hours and deadlines.
But I had to do some of it.
Interesting thread.
I'll only make a few observations from my experience.
Mainly that generalizations often don't hold much water.
Liberal arts and being a gearhead aren't mutually exclusive.
A gearhead with absolutely no arts background can get along and
communicate well with users. (Users are now called "clients.)
There are remedies to shelter all when that's not true.
Speaking of DB's, I was mightily impressed by Deja News, now Google.
Being a veteran of VSAM, then IMS, then DB2, both batch and real time,
when I went to Deja News and got an instant return, over miles of
wire, from what must be hundreds of millions ok keys, I was jealous.
Never did find out the platform of their DB, but man, it's slick.
Wish I could say I was visionary in seeing the potential of the
internet, but I was all bound up in different processing.
I pooh-poohed Windows and MS too, as a fad.
So don't pay any attention to what I say.

--Vic

"Vic Smith" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 19 Oct 2011 21:41:26 -0400, "Robert Green"
wrote:



Systems design often included a lot of client education - or re-education
in
many cases because everything they thought they knew was wrong. Much of
that mis-education consisted of using spreadsheets to process data that
was
far better manipulated with database programs. IMHO, it was easier to
convert paper systems to a database program than it was to convert
spreadsheets with hundreds of embedded macros.

I was a systems analyst when I retired. Insurance.
Always preferred support and enhancement.
Didn't like new development hours and deadlines.

I'm just the reverse. I got the biggest kick out of creating something from
scratch.

But I had to do some of it.
Interesting thread.
I'll only make a few observations from my experience.
Mainly that generalizations often don't hold much water.

I hope I made it clear that in my case, having a psych minor background with
lots of sociology helped me greatly in getting the requirements analysis
done but it's not a mandatory requirement. There was often great
disagreement about what the final system should look like which required
mediation skills to solve. Lots of good analysts have these qualities even
without formal training. Coming from a large family teaches people a lot
about group dynamics. (-:

I was kind of miffed when my bosses decided all the analysts had to take an
interviewing course when I had four years of journalism classes under my
belt and had interviewed perhaps thousands of people. They wanted me to
take the course during a critical implementation phase of a huge new system.
I earned the wrath of more than one exec when I said: "If what they're
teaching is has merit for me, they should be able to test my skills,
determine that I wasn't going to learn anything new and excused me." The
idea, it seemed, was to push everyone through the same damn courses
regardless of whether they added value or not.

Taking me away from a system that was just being rolled out to rehash old
news was just stupid. They finally said "if we let you skip out, then
everyone's going to be asking to do the same." My reply that "if they can
pass a demonstrating that they already knew the stuff, the SHOULD be
excused. It's inefficient to waste people's time like that." The could not
have cared less.

Liberal arts and being a gearhead aren't mutually exclusive.
A gearhead with absolutely no arts background can get along and
communicate well with users. (Users are now called "clients.)

Back then there was a push to call them "customers" which I always thought
made us sound like McDonald's instead of professional consulting
organization.

There are remedies to shelter all when that's not true.
Speaking of DB's, I was mightily impressed by Deja News, now Google.
Being a veteran of VSAM, then IMS, then DB2, both batch and real time,
when I went to Deja News and got an instant return, over miles of
wire, from what must be hundreds of millions ok keys, I was jealous.
Never did find out the platform of their DB, but man, it's slick.

I recall designing a system for a consortium of law firms involved in a chip
dumping case brought by TI in 1985 against all the major PacRim RAM makers.
I used four AT clones and four XT's to search a forty thousand document
database. Searches in dBaseII often had to run overnight. (-: When I see
Google say 2,034,049 records found after a three second search, I am still
mightily impressed.

Wish I could say I was visionary in seeing the potential of the
internet, but I was all bound up in different processing.

I helped sysop a 5,000 member BBS system running on an ATT 6300 and a bunch
of Alloy slave cards. The guy who ran it was the head of computing for NIH.
I learned an enormous amount just watching him work - he was very meticulous
but was one of those super shy guys who couldn't look at people when talking
to them. We even set up relays so that other user groups could access our
message base without incurring long distance phone calls. Our user group at
one time had three $100K CD's we were so wealthy. That much money turned
out to be a curse. We moved the BBS out of NIH where they had been
providing free phone lines, electricity and space and rented a big space
that eventually sucked out every dime of that $300K and then some. Reminds
me of the what just happened with the real estate boom!

I pooh-poohed Windows and MS too, as a fad.
So don't pay any attention to what I say.

After you hoodwinked me with your "a day in the life of a paranoid gun nut"
I *always* read your posts with a little more suspicion. (-:

I was always partial to DOS because no-nothing programmers couldn't fake
their way around the way the could with a GUI. We called them pluggers
because they would copy blocks of code from somewhere and "plug" them into
their own programs as their own work - sometimes forgetting to delete the
comments that identified where they stole the code from!

In those days, I had my pick of jobs because so many companies where
desperate to automate paper systems. There's nothing to compare to learning
a new area of expertise by building a system. The most interesting thing I
did back then was to automate a system for a company that provided plants to
office buildings. Far more complex than you might imagine and it was
designed so that people with very little training could use it. I was able
to offer them features and enhancements they never even dreamed of once I
understood the finer points of the business.

Did a few specialized restaurant systems that used hygrometers and various
other checks to make sure the bartenders weren't watering down the liquor or
giving away free drinks. Ironically, when the owners fired a bartender that
was giving away the odd freebie here and there, their bar profits dropped
substantially. Those freebies apparently made customers feel special
(psychology here again - the power of intermittent reinforcement) and as a
result they came in more often and spent more money.

I really liked building systems because unlike a lot of other jobs where I
was rated at the whim of some boss who didn't really know what he was doing,
a program that worked well spoke for itself. Journalism was interesting but
building systems gave me a much greater sense of achievement. It also drew
on almost every skill I had.

I could spent sixteen hours at a clip when I was on a roll sitting in front
of a monitor fine-tuning the system and refining the look and feel or
running down a bug. That's where the human factors engineering course I
took played a significant role. I am amazed at programs (and websites) that
create complete sensory overload by having so damn many choices on the
screen that no one could possibly keep track of them. Those were the days.
In one system I added what turned out to be a very popular "Happy Birthday"
login message when employees logged in on their birthdays. Little things
like that had a big payoff in limiting gripes about system bugs. (-:

--
Bobby G.

"Oren" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 19 Oct 2011 16:13:35 -0700, "Steve B"
wrote:

Sometimes I think we think in the same way.

People get degrees in Criminal Justice; having never seen a convict.

I called them "educated idiots."

"Educated beyond their capacity." -Enos Guillory-

"Dumb mother ****ers." - Oren-

"Congressmen"

--
Bobby G.

On Thu, 20 Oct 2011 00:58:12 -0400, "Robert Green"
wrote:

"Vic Smith" wrote in message

I was a systems analyst when I retired. Insurance.
Always preferred support and enhancement.
Didn't like new development hours and deadlines.

I'm just the reverse. I got the biggest kick out of creating something from
scratch.


Right. And I got a kick out redesigning systems after they were in
the real world for a while, or when new needs arose.
Somewhat the same work, but I could always manage it and set the
delivery dates.

Mainly that generalizations often don't hold much water.

I hope I made it clear that in my case, having a psych minor background with
lots of sociology helped me greatly in getting the requirements analysis
done but it's not a mandatory requirement. There was often great
disagreement about what the final system should look like which required
mediation skills to solve. Lots of good analysts have these qualities even
without formal training. Coming from a large family teaches people a lot
about group dynamics. (-:


Never took psych that I recall. Double Lit and Info Systems major.
Needed a 4 hour PL/I course to graduate, and never went back for it
after I started working my first IT job. Never regretted that either.
Numerous times I told body shops to take "degree" off the resume they
worked up for me, because it wasn't true.
They did, and I never lacked for work.
Different world today.
I dealt with recalcitrant customers/clients by accusing them
of going Raskolnikov on me.
If they were indecisive I'd invoke Hamlet.
Then I'd explain the tech facts.
I look pretty rough, and they probably thought I was crazy.
Worked with managers too.
Of course I can be charming when that's called for.

I was kind of miffed when my bosses decided all the analysts had to take an
interviewing course when I had four years of journalism classes under my
belt and had interviewed perhaps thousands of people. They wanted me to
take the course during a critical implementation phase of a huge new system.
I earned the wrath of more than one exec when I said: "If what they're
teaching is has merit for me, they should be able to test my skills,
determine that I wasn't going to learn anything new and excused me." The
idea, it seemed, was to push everyone through the same damn courses
regardless of whether they added value or not.

Taking me away from a system that was just being rolled out to rehash old
news was just stupid. They finally said "if we let you skip out, then
everyone's going to be asking to do the same." My reply that "if they can
pass a demonstrating that they already knew the stuff, the SHOULD be
excused. It's inefficient to waste people's time like that." The could not
have cared less.


One company I worked for required IT staff to take a full-day course
called "Put It in Writing."
I had the same feeling as you, that it was a waste of time.
But despite my prejudice, what with me being an "A+" essay writer all
through school, and being offered sponsorship to the writer's workshop
at Iowa in Ames, it turned out very useful.
Kept my customers and managers from going nuts reading War and Peace
memos form me, and simplified my writing in general.

snip


I was always partial to DOS because no-nothing programmers couldn't fake
their way around the way the could with a GUI. We called them pluggers
because they would copy blocks of code from somewhere and "plug" them into
their own programs as their own work - sometimes forgetting to delete the
comments that identified where they stole the code from!


That's somewhat related to what somebody said here about interviewing
people and getting to the "real" gearheads.
And why I mentioned that generalizations are dangerous.
I worked my first IT job in a Roscoe shop. All command line.
My first interview after that job was by a team of 2 gearheads.
I know that because I knew them later as a contractor and employee of
the company.
Because of comments one of them made about Roscoe being simpler than
ISPF - I could tell he had never used it - I strongly suspect the
reason I didn't get that job was because I hadn't been exposed to
ISPF, a much easier to use menu-driven interface.
Anyway, a case of gearheads interviewing a gearhead and getting it all
wrong due to plain ignorance.
I interviewed many people later, and the tech part is the easiest
piece. Detecting the odd mass murderer is the difficult part.

snip

I really liked building systems because unlike a lot of other jobs where I
was rated at the whim of some boss who didn't really know what he was doing,
a program that worked well spoke for itself. Journalism was interesting but
building systems gave me a much greater sense of achievement. It also drew
on almost every skill I had.


I have a different take on that.
Got plenty of work satisfaction keeping everybody happy by eliminating
bugs and system abends.
The operators loved me because when I came aboard, their efforts on
the phone and at restarting jobs decreased to almost nothing except
hardware errors.
Customers' love for me was transitory on that score, but passionate
enough for the enhancements I regularly delivered.
But I never felt very satisfied after the initial 10 years or so.
Most IT systems are short-lived. I saw the demise of almost every
system I ever worked on.
I was a grunt at the steel mills 43 years ago. Much of that steel
still exists.
About 40 years ago I heat treated, torch cut, formed and sheared
thousands of tons of steel making bulldozers at IH.
Enough of them are still in use. Wish I had worked at Cat (-:
Same when I was wrenching or running packaging machines.
Pallets of stock out the door, for sale.
Every day then when I finished work I was physically tired but still
strong. Mentally, I wasn't tired at all. And always happy.
I knew I had produced tangible goods each and every day.
I talked about this with an senior IT guy many years ago.
He agreed with me, and talked about what he saw when ever he visited
his home town in Ohio.
Many buildings his dad had laid brick to build.
He had nothing like that resulting from of his career.
Now I'm not saying I should have been a bricklayer.
Don't want to get too metaphysical about work "legacy."
But it exists for sure. Or it doesn't exist.

Those were the days.
In one system I added what turned out to be a very popular "Happy Birthday"
login message when employees logged in on their birthdays. Little things
like that had a big payoff in limiting gripes about system bugs. (-:

Gawd!

--Vic

"Vic Smith" wrote in message
news
On Thu, 20 Oct 2011 00:58:12 -0400, "Robert Green"
wrote:

"Vic Smith" wrote in message

I was a systems analyst when I retired. Insurance.
Always preferred support and enhancement.
Didn't like new development hours and deadlines.

I'm just the reverse. I got the biggest kick out of creating something
from
scratch.


Right. And I got a kick out redesigning systems after they were in
the real world for a while, or when new needs arose.
Somewhat the same work, but I could always manage it and set the
delivery dates.

I reveled in jobs that others ran screaming from. Probably came from
overconfidence after learning how to write pseudo-code and to break down
seeminging impossibly complex systems into smaller modules. Fortunately, I
was doing that at a time when processing power and storage kept increasing
dramatically so I had a lot of hardware help taming projects with enormous
data/processing requirements. That experience led to one of the longest
employment periods of my life at a DoD think tank because they were
converting mainframe systems to PC based ones and were pushing the limits of
what PC's could do at the time. My experience with large data sets on
itty-bitty PC's intrigued them.

FWIW, I was interviewed by five different people for the job, ranging from
the ultimate gearhead to the forceably retired sub commander (the go-go
dancers on the fantail guy) who was drinking lots of red wine during the
interview (he had just had another heart attack and the MD's said it was
good for him). (-: Fortunately, I could talk bits and bytes to the
gearhead and philosophy to the humanists. I only found out ten years latter
one of the humanists really pushed hard NOT to hire me, for reasons only she
knows. I think it was because she thought I was gaming them because I had
interviewed elsewhere and the other company kept matching and raising the
offers I was getting from the think tank. Those were the days when you
could not only get the first job you interviewed for, but every other job as
well. It's certainly not like that today, so I know how much I have to be
thankful for, being at the right place at the right time.

Mainly that generalizations often don't hold much water.

I hope I made it clear that in my case, having a psych minor background
with
lots of sociology helped me greatly in getting the requirements analysis
done but it's not a mandatory requirement. There was often great
disagreement about what the final system should look like which required
mediation skills to solve. Lots of good analysts have these qualities
even
without formal training. Coming from a large family teaches people a lot
about group dynamics. (-:


Never took psych that I recall. Double Lit and Info Systems major.
Needed a 4 hour PL/I course to graduate, and never went back for it
after I started working my first IT job. Never regretted that either.
Numerous times I told body shops to take "degree" off the resume they
worked up for me, because it wasn't true.

Our think tank had a strict rule about not hiring anyone without a degree as
a research fellow. Even my boss couldn't get them to override it to bring
someone in who he knew quite well from his old organization. That kid might
have done very well but his head-hunter sabotaged him by sending in a resume
riddled with errors. It wasn't until a few years later that I saw the kid's
actual resume and it was error-free. Never figured out how that happened or
why . . .

They did, and I never lacked for work.
Different world today.

Back then, having a verifiable resume that proved you could actually do the
work was worth WAY more than having a degree that said "trained up but not
proven" in essence. Especially to a company that hired a kid right out of
school who just couldn't hack life in the real world.

I dealt with recalcitrant customers/clients by accusing them
of going Raskolnikov on me.

Feydor would be proud.

If they were indecisive I'd invoke Hamlet.
Then I'd explain the tech facts.

Will, too. Or was it Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford? We'll never know.
Having a broad knowledgebase means that you can interact with a wide range
of people and those interactions sometimes make the difference in getting a
job.

I look pretty rough, and they probably thought I was crazy.
Worked with managers too.
Of course I can be charming when that's called for.

People skills. Lots of folks develop them without any need for education in
the humanities.

I was kind of miffed when my bosses decided all the analysts had to take
an
interviewing course when I had four years of journalism classes under my
belt and had interviewed perhaps thousands of people. They wanted me to
take the course during a critical implementation phase of a huge new
system.
I earned the wrath of more than one exec when I said: "If what they're
teaching is has merit for me, they should be able to test my skills,
determine that I wasn't going to learn anything new and excused me." The
idea, it seemed, was to push everyone through the same damn courses
regardless of whether they added value or not.

Taking me away from a system that was just being rolled out to rehash old
news was just stupid. They finally said "if we let you skip out, then
everyone's going to be asking to do the same." My reply that "if they
can
pass a demonstrating that they already knew the stuff, the SHOULD be
excused. It's inefficient to waste people's time like that." The could
not
have cared less.


One company I worked for required IT staff to take a full-day course
called "Put It in Writing."
I had the same feeling as you, that it was a waste of time.
But despite my prejudice, what with me being an "A+" essay writer all
through school, and being offered sponsorship to the writer's workshop
at Iowa in Ames, it turned out very useful.
Kept my customers and managers from going nuts reading War and Peace
memos form me, and simplified my writing in general.

I can't recall taking anything away from the interviewing course. I, too,
was rammed through a writing course. This time my inclusion was explained
by telling me that we have some foreign-born analysts who would feel bad
about being singled out for writing courses. That one was OK because I
wasn't under time pressure for a deliverable. I got to know a co-worker PhD
from the U. of Bologna in math who cracked me up because she confused the
words "asshole" and "hassle" with pretty seriously comedic results.

stuff snipped

But I never felt very satisfied after the initial 10 years or so.
Most IT systems are short-lived. I saw the demise of almost every
system I ever worked on.
I was a grunt at the steel mills 43 years ago. Much of that steel
still exists.
About 40 years ago I heat treated, torch cut, formed and sheared
thousands of tons of steel making bulldozers at IH.
Enough of them are still in use. Wish I had worked at Cat (-:
Same when I was wrenching or running packaging machines.
Pallets of stock out the door, for sale.
Every day then when I finished work I was physically tired but still
strong. Mentally, I wasn't tired at all. And always happy.
I knew I had produced tangible goods each and every day.
I talked about this with an senior IT guy many years ago.
He agreed with me, and talked about what he saw when ever he visited
his home town in Ohio.
Many buildings his dad had laid brick to build.
He had nothing like that resulting from of his career.
Now I'm not saying I should have been a bricklayer.
Don't want to get too metaphysical about work "legacy."
But it exists for sure. Or it doesn't exist.

Lots of my work was classified and is either sitting in a safe somewhere or
has long ago been shredded and erased. I know what you're saying. I think
if I had been born 30 years later, I might have been an architect but my
initial experience with Rapidograph pens and vellum at Brooklyn Tech was not
good. CAD/CAM would have suited me better.

Those were the days.
In one system I added what turned out to be a very popular "Happy
Birthday"
login message when employees logged in on their birthdays. Little things
like that had a big payoff in limiting gripes about system bugs. (-:

Gawd!

Rolling out one system required the inclusion of a daily "Your Momma" joke
generator to overcome the persistent niggling of one of the end users. She
was the Goldilocks type, except no chair was the right size for her. Making
the system seem even a little bit human turned out to reduce the griping
substantially. Apparently Apple believes so, too, because they've done
quite a bit to make their new Siri voice-recognition software humorous.

With Siri, you can ask a question like "Who's your daddy?" and it will
respond with "You are." Or quote the greatest AI movie ever, 2001, and ask
your phone to "Open the pod bay doors," and you'll be replied with "I'm
afraid I can't do that," HAL 9000 style.

http://www.tgdaily.com/mobility-brie...ig-a-operation

--
Bobby G.