On Thu, 12 Jan 2017 16:41:58 -0500, Farley, Peter wrote: ><rant> My unfortunate experience has been that ordinary users >are not considered smart enough to see or understand what >storage admins do. </rant>
This is one of my pet peeves, so I'll extend your rant a bit. Ever since I started in this business, people have warned me that certain people aren't smart enough to understand, and that giving them too much information will cause problems. As an application programmer, I was told that if I gave operators too much information,they wouldn't understand and would f*** things up worse than if I just keep them ignorant. As an Amdahl SE, I was told that the hardware guys couldn't handle software knowledge, and neither could the customer's sysprogs. As a system programmer, it was the applications programmers, the system analysts, auditors, managers and vendors. Now as an ISV software developer, it is the customers and the support people. There is one person at a customer site who I was told is totally unreasonable, and incapable of learning or following directions. I had occasion to talk on the phone with this person to help resolve an issue. We worked together looking at various things until we discovered the cause of the problem. As it happened, a relatively minor mistake had been made. In the process of working with the him, I learned that everything I had been told about him was untrue. He was bright, thoughtful, and a damn good sysprog. He knew better than us how to do things, and had his own procedures that make more sense than the canned procedures that we provided. In over 45 years in this business, everyone I have ever met does a better job with more information. Even more importantly, when people are treated with respect and with the assumption that they are competent, they do better work. Sure, sometimes all of us make mistakes, sometimes with catastrophic results. I remember well the day that I was getting ready to IPL a test LPAR and reset a production LPAR instead. Was I stoned or stupid? Neither. The user-dummy is a myth. -- Tom Marchant ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
