> On Aug 2, 2017, at 3:40 AM, Elardus Engelbrecht > <elardus.engelbre...@sita.co.za> wrote: > > Radoslaw Skorupka wrote: > >> BTW: I would take care to inform my manager less officially (and keep the >> notification in my archive). From personal experience I'm aware how >> pointless is this ;-) > > Or wait for next audit or weird abend / hacking attempt, then tell manglers, > supervisors and auditors. > > Wait first for fireworks/drama, then wait for your retirement or dismissal > letter... ;-)
I did something similar but with of all thing the COBOL compiler. I used to go out drinking on Friday afternoons with application programmers, during our long lunch's we would talk a lot about issues that concerned us. I looked at it as tell the application people WHY they could not access this or do that. We were way out of date on just about everything. I would routinely tell my boss during meetings the issue that we were running into. One of the concerns I told him that at the time the programmers were restricted as to size of array’s in COBOL (sorry I am blanking out as to the proper name). COBOL programmers were essentially using VSAM files to contain the data, and the number of accesses to these files was causing us to be late, just close to late) so the opening of the market could have been delayed, and that was a major no-no. I regularly ran reports to show this. He said he followed it up and informed his management. Of course, nothing happened. The following Christmas party I got brave and went over to the CEO and got into a conversation about the issue. He said he was interested and to call his secretary to set up a working session. I knew the secretary (long story deleted), and I called up the following week to ask about setting up a working session. She told me that he blocked off the entire afternoon on Weds. That was 1.5 days away. So I had to whip up a few reports to show him the problems and a possibility on how to eliminate the bottlenecks and this was to simply upgrade our version of COBOL to the level that it would allow larger tables, he felt he understood the issue. Now, understand that the CEO was 3 or 4 levels above my VP. Next thing I know the VP sticks his head in my cubicle and asks me to show him the reports I had shown the CEO. I was in the middle of a small crisis and said yes, in a few minutes. After the mini crisis was dealt with I gathered the reports and went into his office. Next thing I knew my boss was there and his boss was there. I explained what was happening and why it was causing this delay in production. There weren’t any questions asked other than how much was the improved compiler. I said I guess around $250 a month, but IBM would have to confirm the number. The VP said that is all we don’t have to upgrade our machine? I said well you would have to sometime in the next year but this should stave off an upgrade by six months as we were getting close to needing one anyway due to other issues, much too complex to tell here. The VP looked at me well let's confirm the numbers and if it's around your estimate lets go ahead and buy it. I said one caveat, and I saw everyone look at me, and I said this issue would need to be implemented by program redesign. I said the programming area would have to be involved. I thought I heard someone get out a gun but it was something like a sigh. I got the COBOL upgrade, and we pushed the end of the day back about an hour. A few months later we were told we were going to get a major hardware upgrade and software as well. Ed ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
