4 ms·

Without giving too much away, I've been involved in just such an initiative, and it was _awesome_. However, in the context of an established organisation it's

by s_kilk 9y ago

Without giving too much away, I've been involved in just such an initiative, and it was _awesome_. However, in the context of an established organisation it's really hard to pull off, and so we eventually ran into serious pushback from other factions within the org, particularly the established IT Ops folk. Still, it can be done, and it can be a raging success. Especially gratifying when you spend two days writing up a system in Python which replaces some 90's garbage that's costing the organisation 200k per year in licenses. Killing Leeches is fun.

treerock 9y ago
Can I ask, how did the employees fit in with the payment structure? My feeling has been that the NHS simply can't hire talented staff on the wages they expect because the pay grades don't go up that high. Hence hiring contractors.
sofaofthedamned 9y ago
Had exactly the same. 100 user system, Windows CALs and RDS licenses per user = a lot of money. Found only 40 users needed the CALs, rest were fine on Linux. Took the devil of a job to persuade them this, as the Microsoft rep told them they couldn't.
- UK-AL 9y ago
  In organisation like the NHS something like active directory becomes almost mandatory. Open sources equivalents are nowhere near as good.
  - sofaofthedamned 9y ago
    Not the same thing I'm on about. Can't say too much, but was on a system where for majority of users they didn't even touch a Windows server or AD.
pjc50 9y ago
Was that related to one of the NHS hack days? > eventually ran into serious pushback from other factions within the org, particularly the established IT Ops folk "Mordac, preventer of information services" Thankyou very much for fixing this kind of thing, seriously.
mbaha 9y ago
This. A million times this. I think at this point the tech community should be vocal about this issue. Tech has improved ten-fold this last decade, and IT consulting services simply don't care because they profit hugely from it. What makes this issue even harder to solve is the fact that IT is so simple to hide because society does not understand it enough. Similar to the Tech Pledge, we should stand and be very vocal about the fact that you CAN build strong, secure and relatively cheap systems. If we don't do this, who else will ? We're stuck between a part of the industry which benefit from this (and especially the big bosses, they don't care about the developers either) and a society which doesn't see the value of homegrown (as in company/government-grown) tech talent and the tenfolds decreases in IT spending it could entail. Please, Sam Altman ? Someone ? Please ?

by s_kilk 9y ago

treerock 9y ago

Can I ask, how did the employees fit in with the payment structure? My feeling has been that the NHS simply can't hire talented staff on the wages they expect because the pay grades don't go up that high. Hence hiring contractors.

sofaofthedamned 9y ago

Had exactly the same. 100 user system, Windows CALs and RDS licenses per user = a lot of money. Found only 40 users needed the CALs, rest were fine on Linux. Took the devil of a job to persuade them this, as the Microsoft rep told them they couldn't.

UK-AL 9y ago
In organisation like the NHS something like active directory becomes almost mandatory. Open sources equivalents are nowhere near as good.
- sofaofthedamned 9y ago
  Not the same thing I'm on about. Can't say too much, but was on a system where for majority of users they didn't even touch a Windows server or AD.

pjc50 9y ago

Was that related to one of the NHS hack days? > eventually ran into serious pushback from other factions within the org, particularly the established IT Ops folk "Mordac, preventer of information services" Thankyou very much for fixing this kind of thing, seriously.

mbaha 9y ago

This. A million times this. I think at this point the tech community should be vocal about this issue. Tech has improved ten-fold this last decade, and IT consulting services simply don't care because they profit hugely from it. What makes this issue even harder to solve is the fact that IT is so simple to hide because society does not understand it enough. Similar to the Tech Pledge, we should stand and be very vocal about the fact that you CAN build strong, secure and relatively cheap systems. If we don't do this, who else will ? We're stuck between a part of the industry which benefit from this (and especially the big bosses, they don't care about the developers either) and a society which doesn't see the value of homegrown (as in company/government-grown) tech talent and the tenfolds decreases in IT spending it could entail. Please, Sam Altman ? Someone ? Please ?