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That was the preferred french tactic shock attack in column is much easier/cheaper to train as opposed to the well trained british musketry. It's why Al Queada

That was the preferred french tactic shock attack in column is much easier/cheaper to train as opposed to the well trained british musketry. It's why Al Queada use suicide bombers its cheap to train and does not need high quality recruits

arethuza 11y ago
Interesting to see the requirements for the elite Old Guard unit of the Imperial Guards: - under 35 years of age at entry - at least 10 years' service - at least three campaigns (some had as many as 12 campaigns) - had to literally face enemy fire at the front and survive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Guard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Guard I wonder what the tech equivalent is?
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  I'd guess some obscure teams of consultants that are known internally by big corporations, but otherwise unknown in the IT-showbusiness world. They show up where there is real work to be done, and hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake.
- pjc50 11y ago
  Most big organizations have a few of them. Sysadmins in particular tend to have operations "war stories", involving sorting out some incredibly stressful disaster. Servers on fire, company losing money by the second, that kind of thing. A lot of people found out on 2001-09-11 what "disaster recovery" meant. There are even literal combat sysadmins; I remember seeing a job advert for senior telecomms engineer in Iraq during the war, offering something like $100k/month. Programming involves less drama, but every now and again you need the services of someone who knows the system inside out and has a collection of weird tricks that will get you working again.
TeMPOraL 11y ago
> It's why Al Queada use suicide bombers its cheap to train and does not need high quality recruits I think Al Qaeda uses suicide bombers mostly because they're hard to detect and let you strike a target with zero warning; it's an ultimate guerilla tactic. That young engineers tend to be particularly happy to wear the explosive vests seem to be incidental and not the reason for this tactic. I agree with your French/British example though.

arethuza 11y ago

Interesting to see the requirements for the elite Old Guard unit of the Imperial Guards: - under 35 years of age at entry - at least 10 years' service - at least three campaigns (some had as many as 12 campaigns) - had to literally face enemy fire at the front and survive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Guard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Guard I wonder what the tech equivalent is?

TeMPOraL 11y ago
I'd guess some obscure teams of consultants that are known internally by big corporations, but otherwise unknown in the IT-showbusiness world. They show up where there is real work to be done, and hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake.
pjc50 11y ago
Most big organizations have a few of them. Sysadmins in particular tend to have operations "war stories", involving sorting out some incredibly stressful disaster. Servers on fire, company losing money by the second, that kind of thing. A lot of people found out on 2001-09-11 what "disaster recovery" meant. There are even literal combat sysadmins; I remember seeing a job advert for senior telecomms engineer in Iraq during the war, offering something like $100k/month. Programming involves less drama, but every now and again you need the services of someone who knows the system inside out and has a collection of weird tricks that will get you working again.

TeMPOraL 11y ago

> It's why Al Queada use suicide bombers its cheap to train and does not need high quality recruits I think Al Qaeda uses suicide bombers mostly because they're hard to detect and let you strike a target with zero warning; it's an ultimate guerilla tactic. That young engineers tend to be particularly happy to wear the explosive vests seem to be incidental and not the reason for this tactic. I agree with your French/British example though.