---------------------------------------------<snip>------------------------------
After all what is a consultant anyway. Just someone who has read the
manual
because nobody else wants too and more often than not its the client's
manual anyway or through the client's internet.
Well, I'm sure there are some out there like that. But I take
offense at your implication. Many times a consultant is someone
who's walked the path before and learned how to do it right. All
too often it's the managers making the purchase decision who
don't do their homework about the consultant(s) they hire, so
they choose based on price, or on how good a salesperson the
consultant is, instead of on proven skills and value provided.
-----------------------------------------<unsnip>------------------------------------------
I too resent the implications of that statement, having spent 30 years
as a RACF administrator (amont all the other hats I had to wear). While
there are a great number of people who will pass themselves off as
"experts" and try to become "consultants", there's just no substitute
for experience. I can't say that I understand all the nuances of RACF
with respect to CICS and DB2, and I don't pretend to have those aspects
of experience, I've worked with RACF in doing things like enforcing
DSNAME standards, DR considerations, password and USERID authentication,
etc. Granted these are only the first steps in defining an effective
security environment, they're already more than many shops consider in
their overall standards set. (If they have any :-) ) I don't even
PRETEND to be perfect; just helpful. I'm expensive, but I think my
overall experience is worth it, considering that I also have a
reasonable background in DR and helping to define standards that make a
shop more idiot-proof AND more secure.
------------------------------------------------<snip>--------------------------------------------------
Anybody can talk it, fake it, in the classroom,
---------------------------------------------<unsnip>-----------------------------------------------
I deny that utterly and completely. When you work as a consultant,
you're expected to "walk the walk and talk the talk" and prove anything
you say. Failure gets you a contract revision: out to the sidewalk. If
I'm taking a class and the instructor tells me that actions "A B and C"
will have this effect and I go home and try it, my results better be
what he tells me to expect, or he's going to have some tall "splainin"
to do. I expect ANY instructor to know exactly what he/she is talking
about, or I'm going to make that instructor VERY UNCOMFORTABLE, to say
the least. When I went to OS/360 school, 40 years ago, the instructors
were the guys that actually wrote the code. If I asked a detailed
question, they sat down with me, after class, and showed me that what
they told us was true. They don't do that now, more's the pity, but they
will get good accurate answers to student questions. That ain't "faking it".
Bottom line: "Consultants" and "Instructors" are not always the buffoons
you make them out to be; a few of us actually know what we're talking
about. Management might not believe that, but those of us in the
trenches know it all too well. And most of us know how to seperate the
"BSers" from the genuine article.
Rick
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