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This "us vs them" concept is where I think we've lost the plot. Remember that we're the experts in complex systems that we've been selling to the business to ad

This "us vs them" concept is where I think we've lost the plot. Remember that we're the experts in complex systems that we've been selling to the business to add value and we've been happily taking their money for decades. When they ask "can the technology support this?" we, like an eager child showing off our new toy, assure them that it can and beg them to let us prove it. We can't just chunk these complex systems over the wall and say "have fun with that" and demand more money when the solution breaks. This means we failed to properly estimate total cost of ownership when we sold them the system and now they're held hostage. This is borderline legal breach of contract. If we told them the true sustainable cost of ownership for a follow the sun support model they likely would have never purchased the solution in the first place and we'd be out of a job. We could have lots of annoying jobs or no jobs at all. I'll happily accept the former.

yawaramin 5y ago
I don't know about you but I'm not 'selling' my work to the business like a black box, I am working under the direct supervision of the business and any and all work that I do is the result of a team effort and direction from management, non-engineering, and engineering staff. Let me emphasize: all the work that gets put into production is a team effort and a team responsibility. I'm not begging anyone to let me prove my technology, I'm working with management to come up with a solution that will work for the customer. Oftentimes management will forbid or otherwise prevent me from using a better, more robust technology that would have prevented more production issues because of short-sightedness. If I pointed this out and was still told to go ahead with the short-sighted solution, and it breaks in production, whose fault is that? I'm not suggesting the 'it's your problem now, have fun' approach, I'm suggesting the 'pay overtime for overtime work' approach. This is nowhere even near to 'breach of contract', please don't throw around lawyer-like terms when you clearly don't understand what's being discussed.

yawaramin 5y ago

I don't know about you but I'm not 'selling' my work to the business like a black box, I am working under the direct supervision of the business and any and all work that I do is the result of a team effort and direction from management, non-engineering, and engineering staff. Let me emphasize: all the work that gets put into production is a team effort and a team responsibility. I'm not begging anyone to let me prove my technology, I'm working with management to come up with a solution that will work for the customer. Oftentimes management will forbid or otherwise prevent me from using a better, more robust technology that would have prevented more production issues because of short-sightedness. If I pointed this out and was still told to go ahead with the short-sighted solution, and it breaks in production, whose fault is that? I'm not suggesting the 'it's your problem now, have fun' approach, I'm suggesting the 'pay overtime for overtime work' approach. This is nowhere even near to 'breach of contract', please don't throw around lawyer-like terms when you clearly don't understand what's being discussed.