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Not sure if this counts but I worked at a small casino and the servers managing the floor could barely function. The payment system was a mess too not just due

Not sure if this counts but I worked at a small casino and the servers managing the floor could barely function. The payment system was a mess too not just due to technical issues but also from "territorial" issues. The servers were IBM eServers servers old and out of date when they were purchased the warranty was extended multiple times. A Debain cluster for slot machine control, and a database server was also the domain controller using Win 2000 cluster. The clusters always failed and auto-failover failed. So me not officially IT would have to manually failover the cluster or the casino couldn't operate. There was also another Java app called process initialization which also failed and I had to restart that too manually. I was also the only person the building/province/400km region who knew the admin passwords for the systems I still recall them. Add to that the debit machines would lose connection and the debit machines at lunchtime for a 200 person buffet were offline. Often a reboot of the DSL mocdem or most often it was a trip to the third floor ventilation room/cross connect. The five port switch had six cables and people would pull one and put in their cable for their system. That's territorial part my department is more important than yours so cabled yanked out no warning. As a system it was terrible and a multi million dollar business relied on it and relied on me as a non-IT person to maintain it. It wasn't anywhere near my job description and I got nothing extra for it but management demanded I fix it. They ended up laying me off suddenly one day tow hours into my shift after 13 years no explanation.

spookthesunset 5y ago
You did that job for 13 years? Looking back, what would you have done different?
- BizarroLand 5y ago
  Anything that doesn't involve the red stapler guy is not enough
- dghughes 5y ago
  In a way I did the job for 32 years but 13 of it with that company. I started out at age 14 fixing grey area poker machines, pinball, and arcade games. My first day I drove a manual transmission truck at age 14 to a bootlegger's to empty an illegal slot machine and I was handed a beer. I was self-taught in computers but mostly Windows and Linux but never took the leap in the mid 1990s in my 20s. It was a no-win situation if I refused to not do what was really not my job I'm sure they would have found a way to fire me. I was being paid an OK wage it was double minimum wage. I did enjoy the technical work I saw it as experience in IT not just playing with simulators, or reading books but actual running systems. It's hard to say what should have done differently but certainly I should have taken night classes or part time classes in IT. After being laid off I ended up doing that at a technical college which was only 500 yards away. I got $13K severance, and government paid for one year of my classes and unemployment. I pretty much had a two-year vacation to study computers. After I was gone I heard the place emptied of many long-term staff I'd like to think I was the spark that did that.
adolph 5y ago
You might enjoy this Andy Weir short story: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49661162-randomize https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49661162-randomize
poulsbohemian 5y ago
>They ended up laying me off suddenly one day tow hours into my shift after 13 years no explanation. This is really the key here we all need to remember... its good times right now, but it may not always be good times, so important to remember that regardless of how important our jobs might be in the moment, when the corporate winds change they won't even blink to can us. First time I got laid off I was in the middle of a production fix that was affecting the homepage of one of the busiest sites on the internet. Didn't matter for shit because my number along with that of thousands others got called.

spookthesunset 5y ago

You did that job for 13 years? Looking back, what would you have done different?

BizarroLand 5y ago
Anything that doesn't involve the red stapler guy is not enough
dghughes 5y ago
In a way I did the job for 32 years but 13 of it with that company. I started out at age 14 fixing grey area poker machines, pinball, and arcade games. My first day I drove a manual transmission truck at age 14 to a bootlegger's to empty an illegal slot machine and I was handed a beer. I was self-taught in computers but mostly Windows and Linux but never took the leap in the mid 1990s in my 20s. It was a no-win situation if I refused to not do what was really not my job I'm sure they would have found a way to fire me. I was being paid an OK wage it was double minimum wage. I did enjoy the technical work I saw it as experience in IT not just playing with simulators, or reading books but actual running systems. It's hard to say what should have done differently but certainly I should have taken night classes or part time classes in IT. After being laid off I ended up doing that at a technical college which was only 500 yards away. I got $13K severance, and government paid for one year of my classes and unemployment. I pretty much had a two-year vacation to study computers. After I was gone I heard the place emptied of many long-term staff I'd like to think I was the spark that did that.

adolph 5y ago

You might enjoy this Andy Weir short story: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49661162-randomize https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49661162-randomize

poulsbohemian 5y ago

>They ended up laying me off suddenly one day tow hours into my shift after 13 years no explanation. This is really the key here we all need to remember... its good times right now, but it may not always be good times, so important to remember that regardless of how important our jobs might be in the moment, when the corporate winds change they won't even blink to can us. First time I got laid off I was in the middle of a production fix that was affecting the homepage of one of the busiest sites on the internet. Didn't matter for shit because my number along with that of thousands others got called.