Re: Wired Q: Embedded NT

[Phil Howard <phil () charon ipal net>]

Edward S. Marshall wrote:

> On Mon, 25 May 1998, Alex P. Rudnev wrote:
>
> > You are wrong a little. The difference is:
> >
> > - if you use MS and it don't work, your boss blame to BILL GATES.
> >
> > - if you use FreeBSD (or Linux, through FreeBSD is better for the 
> > networking) and it don't work, your boss blame _guess, who? - YOU_ .
>
> No, your boss will blame you in -both- cases, because you chose the final
> problem solution. It doesn't matter if the core cause was faulty software,
> poor installation, or a compatibility issue: in any case, it was -your-
> responsibility to be aware of the problems before putting a live system in
> place.

If _YOUR_ project is a total failure, sure, _YOU_ get blamed and _YOU_
get fired.  Even if you used a MS OS, it doesn't matter because there
are so many other things that use some MS OS and they "work" (this is
what your boss "knows").  Same thing applied a couple decades ago with
mainframes and IBM (been there, done that).

But I think the point applies to the marginal cases.  If there are just
a few little glitches, such as the machine(s) crash a little too often,
or some incompatibility exists with some other system or application,
then in those cases I believe management will be more willing to shift
the blame from _YOU_ to the vendor.  Or more accurately, they will be
more open minded to your argument about who to blame, since the issue
isn't a total project failure.  But it will be proportional to their
viewpoint of how the systems work.  To many managers, these non-vendor
systems are just "playthings" that are "incomplete" and "unsupported".
I've actually gotten a response from one manager, when I told him I run
Linux at home, that he once used CP/M.

If your project uses a vendor supported OS, management's frequent view
is that if the problem can in fact be pinpointed to the OS, then all
they need to do is just get the vendor on the phone, and voila, fixed!

Of course life isn't always like that.  The more technically inclined
a person is, the less likely they are going to get working solutions
from the vendor tech support, principly because they will be able to
solve more truly solvable cases on their own.  The person who is nearly
always able to get a quick solution from a vendor probably isn't doing
as well as they should.  But managers generally don't see this.

And even if you can absolutely prove that a project failed due to the
choice of OS that the manager made, you will still be fired.  He needs
someone to blame so he doesn't get fired by his boss.  Office politics!

-- 
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