I work in networking, a job that traditionally has been managed by a terminal and vendor-specific syntax. I used to hate the thought of automation when I was younger, why would something as important as networking be automated? I’ve made my career on being the clutch guy, troubleshooting complex problems, I love the art of understanding every cog in the machine and being able to visualize it. Then I started learning Python, and learning it was extremely difficult for me. It felt like an eternity between the time I poured myself into learning Python until the time I could actually make things people would want to use.
I was a supervisor working in a NOC. A NOC that had many beaurocratic requirements which got in the way of break/fix operational support, such as having to manually write an email to every customer that had an alarm, and calling every point of contact for that customer, as well as notifying the field techs of outages in their areas, and managing real operational issues. So many times I had to let real work slip through my hands because there were so many calls, so many cases, so many things to do.
Like most NOCs, we viewed alarms from SNMP. When something failed to ping, it would generate a loss of comms alarm. I had this idea to automatically notify the field tech for the specified area when a customer site was downed for more than 30 minutes, and that was a very complex thing to do, it required that I clean a lot of data… I spent days converting things like date strings into proper formatting. Once I presented it, I was told that we couldn’t do this, because some political agreement made it to where the NOC was required to provide “positive contact” to other groups. I wrote it, tested it as proof of concept, specd out costs(MRC for the API I was using to send text messages was extremely cheap, it would cost the company about 6 dollars per month). Just like that, it was dead.
My director then wanted me to do something similar for our phone systems. Since our queue depended on user agent availability(your presence status), my boss wanted me to write a program to notify him if someone was unavailable for too long and the reason why. Yes, he wanted to know if someone took more than a few minutes to take a shit or get coffee.
That’s when I learned, boomers only care about micro management, not efficiency.
Is this a school owned device? Goofy 4 line script that uses tons of resources, so that script that unnecessarily and intentionally taxes the laptops hardware, purely innocent right? Any chance why they might not want you to do that?
That’s pretty standard across any respectable industry. You’re given suitable alternatives, if everyone could use whatever applications they wanted then it would be a nightmare.
Made my first fork, push and pull request today. Been learning Python and a bit of rust for 3 years now(self taught, job is network engineer) and I can’t wait until it gets merged 😄 just corrected some errors in a yaml file
Something tells me your intentions aren’t innocent(you want to be able to act maliciously at school or on the school network), or you have an overinflated sense of ego, the head of IT likely didn’t give two shits about explaining anything to some brat. You’re going to have to face some harsh realities pretty soon. Expecting digital privacy on a school issued device on the school network is asinine thinking.
I owned one, had horrible freezing issues and screens going unavailable randomly, making folded use a horrible game of flipping the phone to get the other screen, but now it switched to the other screen. Sent it for repairs under warranty for one screen having flickering issues, they sent me a new one. The new one was still bad, but at least both screens worked.
Battery life was pretty bad. Had like a 2500mah battery which with two screens drains very quickly. I used it for a few months as a primary phone and put it in a drawer. It was several versions of android behind. Took it out one year later, it worked fine, used it for a while… But these phones are made of glass, and there wasn’t a proper case for it because of the hinge, so Microsoft sends you these rubber bumpers you glue onto the phone which come off easily over time, official replacement “case” which was just rubber cost like $40 bucks, which made me buy double sided adhesive to keep using the original.
Anyways some people like to have multiple phones and it’s good as a second phone if you spend all day near a charger. For anything else it’s impractical.
Reading on it was great, though. Haven’t tried a folding or hinge phone since
I’m guessing he’s saying companies are still using the same human written code, but since AI is sexy right now and is being used to describe even simple programming logic, everything is “powered by AI”
I’ll say this, as an engineer who’s worked closely with the brass tacks, a lot of the time when new directors or c level people are brought in, they want to own a space. There was a solution existing prior to them, because the company already existed before they joined. But no one wants to be the guy who supports the previous ideas (maintenance on an engine isn’t as sexy as designing it) because the idea doesn’t have their branding. They want to be seen as bold/innovative, etc. So they make some calls and they find a solution that promises everything they have and more. If the new solution is a success, their position is cemented, they are now a stakeholder in the company. Sales guy is going to sell his ass off, maybe the workforce has to be repurposed (need more expertise in new fields), etc. All this creates unnecessary work for people with real jobs just because a boss wants it. In the end, the new director/c level can say, “wow, this was great, look at how our metrics have improved, all thanks to me!” Despite the fact that they weren’t given all the features they were promised, or they didn’t hire/train specialized engineers to truly own the new solution. Or maybe the solution isn’t very effective. A lot of the time it’s mostly politics. People are trying to get headlines just like politicians so they can keep climbing the ladder.
The way you’re describing “bullshit” jobs doesn’t exist, there are no jobs that are inherently, always bullshit. There’s just bullshit work, and a lot of people who’s job it is to do bullshit work
I know you’re mostly joking, but Google does sell your data/browsing habits for advertising, being able to show car dealership ads to someone who’s browsing history indicates they’re in the market is extremely valuable. It’s not just about things “about you” like demographics/location, but an active, rolling profile about where you’re most likely to spend your money.
I don’t think zoom has ever pretended to be a proponent of remote work, they just cashed in on the opportunity. I might be wrong though. But this is definitely just to reduce headcount.
This really depends. You would think that a company would know who it’s top performers are, but if you are engineer who is more than two managers away from C suite, chances are the person who decides to end your job doesn’t know or give a shit who you are, they just know that your salary is among the higher end. If a company wants to attract top talent they can always do so later