FIX IT, INSTALL IT & FORGET IT

greenspun.com : LUSENET : TimeBomb 2000 (Y2000) : One Thread

If some IT professionals or programmers are too proud of themselves because of their own learning and then use that talent to exalt themselves over others through braging about beating y2k even before we've even barely made the first step into it as some on here have, then unfortunately they are not even fit to be IT professionals. Not even fit for the work they do, proudful people are more suspectible to making errors. You become a real expert when you learn first to humble yourselves.

-- Brent Nichols (b-nichol@ihug.co.nz), January 07, 2000

Answers

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black! Humble yourselves? All this self-rightous bible thumping hardly rings of humbling ones self.

-- Wow (Justanobservation@nutcase.com), January 07, 2000.

No, Brent, you become an expert by 'doing' in the face of naysaying morons like you, and in a world of pseudo-intellectual types (i.e., know-it-alls) who only THINK they have an answer.

-- Bad Company (johnny@shootingstar.com), January 07, 2000.

I stopped the bible discussions in the other thread. I am talking smply about having the right perspective and attitude in approaching the huge job undertaken to fix all the computers. Do you it professionals keep forgetting that nearly half the systems in the world are still not compliant? Or have you suddenly got everything compliant before the rollover? So that on top of your remediation repairs will cause some stir in the economy.

I am saying simply that if you don't have the right perspective you're not fit for the job even if you had all the qualifications in the world humility is a very important one and its not just a attribute just to do with the bible, it also applies in the industry and everyday life as well.

-- Brent Nichols (b-nichol@ihug.co.nz), January 07, 2000.


Not even fit for the work they do, proudful people are more suspectible to making errors ....

Agreed. Arrogance is a problem, as is worshipping at the altar of shortermism.

Unfortunately, all these bits of paper seem to go to so many peoples heads ...

-- Rob Somerville (merville@globalnet.co.uk), January 08, 2000.


When the foundations are laid, the house is put up, the builders were taking proud shortcuts to skip a few little things like a couple of "00' it'll work fine, But the house was built with a couple of nails short, oops.

-- Brent Nichols (b-nichol@ihug.co.nz), January 08, 2000.


As an IT professional for many years and as part of a Y2K remediation team for the last two, I'd like to speak to the attitudes of my team members and others I interacted with the past two years.

In any profession, as in life, there are some people who are full of pride (and other things) and others who are not. The team I was on didn't contain pridefull know-it-alls. It contained professionals who approached the task of making our systems Y2K ready as we would approach any other project.

The task before us was not overwhelming. My group is a systems/back- room group. To us, the systems we support are made up of manageable components that we broke down, tested, and fixed. It was the same approach we've used in other projects like systems upgrade.

So, if you read of people stating that the Y2K task was not that huge, its because as it became broken down it was just one of many tasks we've done before. If we think of a system in its entirety, it is complex and can seem unmanageable. However, when you break it down it is manageable to experienced people.

I'll tell you what I saw/see as prideful and what angered me, as a Christian.. it was the people who claimed to be Christians proclaiming the Y2K problem was beyond fixing. In order to make that statement, they made an awful lot of assumptions and never seemed to question them. I was in the middle of remediating the Y2K situation at my shop when I read that it couldn't be remediated!!

I've seen postings on a web site by a person who is one of these Christians and I not only saw these absurd/prideful proclamations, I saw this person mocking anyone who dared to disagree. This person posted examples of others who had differing opinions and held their opinions up to ridicule. That is pride.

It is due to hard work on the part of an army of people that Y2K was remediated. I don't think stating this is prideful. It's a fact. Y2K was a problem (not a hoax or myth) and it was fixed by the skills of many back-room type people, not just IT people but skilled people in other professions as well.

-- Chris Josephson (chrisj62954@aol.com), January 08, 2000.


It's called HUBRIS, folks, which is the slippery slope to destruction, death and decay.

-- Deb M. (vmcclell@columbus.rr.com), January 08, 2000.

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