State of the Market

[SchumiStars]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c989le2p3lno

It was TCS that brought BA to its knees in 2018 when they rebooted both their live and backup systems at the same time.

They won the contract and BA then made all the existing IT staff redundant. The ones who could actually fix the issue. IIRC it took many weeks to get the planes flying again.

It was a harrowing IT failure that it seems people have not yet learned from.

[willendure]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c989le2p3lno

It was TCS that brought BA to its knees in 2018 when they rebooted both their live and backup systems at the same time.

They won the contract and BA then made all the existing IT staff redundant. The ones who could actually fix the issue. IIRC it took many weeks to get the planes flying again.

It was a harrowing IT failure that it seems people have not yet learned from.

Working with Indian IT agency staff at the moment, and nothing about any of this surprises me. We can just about manage to get simple tasks done, like add a new field to an API, and have that field saved in the database. Anything harder than that is practically impossible to do around the communication barrier - I can't understand them, they cannot understand me. So how in the world a company like BA or M&S is supposed to coordinate things like high availability, actual security, fail over and all the rest is incomprehensible to me. Its a challenge doing all that kind of stuff even when you are in a high functioning team of competent engineers working closely together without difficult communication barriers.

One hopes that lessons will be learned by M&S, yet somehow I cannot see it. The level of competence of the average manager in the UK is apalling, "I'm not technical" seems to be their mantra. You have the engineer/CS graudate who worked hard at STEM subjects at school struggling to find decent work, and the thickos that did not running the show.

This kind of thing will happen again and again and again without doubt.

[oliverson]

Working with Indian IT agency staff at the moment, and nothing about any of this surprises me. We can just about manage to get simple tasks done, like add a new field to an API, and have that field saved in the database. Anything harder than that is practically impossible to do around the communication barrier - I can't understand them, they cannot understand me. So how in the world a company like BA or M&S is supposed to coordinate things like high availability, actual security, fail over and all the rest is incomprehensible to me. Its a challenge doing all that kind of stuff even when you are in a high functioning team of competent engineers working closely together without difficult communication barriers.

One hopes that lessons will be learned by M&S, yet somehow I cannot see it. The level of competence of the average manager in the UK is apalling, "I'm not technical" seems to be their mantra. You have the engineer/CS graudate who worked hard at STEM subjects at school struggling to find decent work, and the thickos that did not running the show.

This kind of thing will happen again and again and again without doubt.

Exactly, which is why all this WFH nonsense is a joke. Get back in the ******* office!

[sadkingbilly]

Exactly, which is why all this WFH nonsense is a joke. Get back in the ******* office!

~@$%^! - **** off!

[oliverson]

~@$%^! - **** off!

Not directed at you, to people who aren't too old to work.

[sadkingbilly]

Not directed at you, to people who aren't too old to work.

oh, i'm too old now, am I??
shame no-one told me.

[oliverson]

oh, i'm too old now, am I??
shame no-one told me.

I meant aside from pushing supermarket trolleys around Tesco's carpark!

[SussexSeagull]

Exactly, which is why all this WFH nonsense is a joke. Get back in the ******* office!

I don't think that is the reason at all.

Can only really speak for this country but we have historically had a problem with capital investment to improve things across all types of business and industry, of which IT falls into. Years ago one of the DEC clusters I was working on was being used for user acceptance work so kept on filling up and I was literally sitting at my desk clearing space down. I wasn't on that much money at the time but buying more disk space would have solved the problem and let me do other work and would have paid for itself in a weeks.

It wasn't so much that management wouldn't consider it, management couldn't even compute that going through a bit of work to get it signed off and save the company money was a better option then paying me to not do my actual job and manage the situation.

IT development should be a constant process with occasional spikes. Too many companies think they can coast for years on end without doing anything more than basic maintenance then are surprised when it all comes crashing down around them in a public way.

[SchumiStars]

I'd love to know what companies are doing with all the cash they are saving in IT. I would expect them to be posting news about how well they are doing and why we should be buying shares in them.

However, I don't know much about the stock market TBH, nor have I seen any companies making loads. Unless you are utilities, supplying gas, water, electric of course.

Perhaps it is time for slowing down and getting an easier job. Approaching 50 and still feel very fit and capable however and would love to be working with some young-grads to see what's new though.

[sadkingbilly]

oh, i'm too old now, am I??
shame no-one told me.

I meant aside from pushing supermarket trolleys around Tesco's carpark!

would you care to make these comments again, in General please?
I can reply properly there without infringing on forum etiquette.