March 14, 2008 at 6:34 am
Well, when I wore the cloth of my country, having recited the oath, I spent a lot of time in uncomfortable positions. And discovered that sleep was a weapon.
I regard myself as a professional, and I will be there for my company, whenever they need it, but I've chosen a company that treats people fair and square, and doesn't take liberties. Damn good firm to work for imho.
And right now, I've got no call to whinge. Happy days.
March 14, 2008 at 6:45 am
I once spent a full day of vacation with my wife and 5 year old daughter at Sea World while on the phone with work walking them through how to rebuild replication. I had no backup and had no access to do it myself so I had to walk them thought purely out of memory over the phone.
March 14, 2008 at 7:04 am
My experiences range from things like eating in a phone booth and sleeping in the airport, to building pc's in a warehouse located in a desert with no fan where the outside temperature was 135 degrees and the inside temperature was probably the same or more.
In addition, going in on a Friday and being told to be on the plane Sunday or Monday was not good for having a family or a life.
Being on call for 2 years straight because they wouldn't hire another person was a bad experience as well. Getting calls at 5am on Thanksgiving and having to work out of a hotel bathroom so my wife could sleep was not a great thing either.
Needless to say I got away from that, but still find myself in a situation where the employer thinks they have the right to pay you a flat salary, strap you with a cell phone, and be able to call anytime and expect an answer.
For those reasons, although it pays the bills, I dislike my job and IT in general. I would rather have a job selling tractors, or something of the kind.
March 14, 2008 at 7:17 am
As a contractor for the $$$ I have been paid I would clean up the person's yard. Large canids in extent not withstanding.
Given that this is a question of ethics...
What would you NOT do?
Aside from the obvious.
I once walked out on a man due to the fact that he would not allow me to do what was correct. I could have sat there for months writing code to patch togethor a brain dead data system. This system was so botched up it took hours to produce the simplest of information summaries. And, yes, this was at one of the nations largest banking establishments.
March 14, 2008 at 7:56 am
Botched systems? Large banks? Reporting?
Have to agree...
March 14, 2008 at 7:59 am
I agree with most who have said they will do what it takes to get the job done, legally. The worst thing I had to deal with was around Christmas one year when we had 2-3 feet of snow fall. We had lost power, we had internal power that would fail over to public power and both had gone down, then of course UPS (good for about 30 minutes). My boss was on-call and one of the porduction people lived next door and, on his way out after being called in, told my boss that the mill was powerless and had been for over an hour! We had servers in 2 locations, our adminstrative offices and the mill itself. My boss could not get his car out so he sledded to the administrative office where everything was down. Then he called me to see if I could get out to check on the other site. I could. When power came on he spent several hours getting our VAX cluster up. All but one of our SQL Servers came up no problem. Of course the one that didn't was mine. The dreaded registry hive corrupted error. We fortunately had a good backup of the server, restored the OS, restored the DB and got it back up with minimal data loss, about 20 minutes, after spending about 8-10 hours working on all the issues.
I also got a call from the CFO at 7am on a Sunday because he was having trouble getting his email. I told him he shouldn't be working on Sunday morning, it wasn't that important. I then fixed the problem.
These are the types of things I ask about in interviews. If I am called in overnight and spend the whole night am I expected tobe at work at [insert expected start time here] the next day? If they say, "Yes" the interview is as good as over. It's not that I wouldn't work the next day, it's that I don't like being treated like a piece of equipment.
Jack Corbett
Consultant - Straight Path Solutions
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March 14, 2008 at 8:18 am
I do what needs to be done, however the guy that left me a miniature bottle of Dewar’s under some candy Easter eggs, as a 'thank you' for the 2am phone call, can call me anytime!:D
March 14, 2008 at 9:04 am
Wallace Wood (3/14/2008)
As a contractor for the $$$ I have been paid I would clean up the person's yard. Large canids in extent not withstanding.Given that this is a question of ethics...
What would you NOT do?
Aside from the obvious.
I once walked out on a man due to the fact that he would not allow me to do what was correct. I could have sat there for months writing code to patch togethor a brain dead data system. This system was so botched up it took hours to produce the simplest of information summaries. And, yes, this was at one of the nations largest banking establishments.
I was working once on a system manaing purchase & sale for chemicals for some company whose name honestly escapes me. I'm not protecting the innocent. I don't remember the name of the guilty. Anyway, I'm reading through the data and I'm seeing all this stuff for making munitions. It's all getting shipped off to a number of companies in South Africa and some to a few other African companies... I finished up my day & walked out, never to return. I just couldn't support letting countries like that make amunition.
There's one I couldn't do.
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
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March 14, 2008 at 9:17 am
For me, my worst experience was at 2am... keeping in mind that I had started my day at 7am (17 straight hours) trying to fix some software on our firewall.
At 2am I stood up from my cube to stretch, and set off the motion detectors. The alarm was probably 120 decibels, and went off when my nervous system was already shot, and it had been completely quiet for many hours.
Needless to say I didn't have my alarm code with me because I didn't plan to be there that late, so I had to wait for the hired security to show up so I could have them turn it off.
I gave up and went home after that.
March 14, 2008 at 9:24 am
I was called to troubleshoot an issue right after the birth of my second child while I was still in recovery. As I recall, I wasn't too happy about that and I'm not sure how well I helped them. There have to be boundaries, right? The older I get, the stronger my boundaries become.
March 14, 2008 at 9:47 am
Use to work development before I got into the data business In one development cycle back in the 70's we put up four major accounting systems in a five month period. During the cycle there were three or four of us who were working as many hours a week as it took. Often were were in the office 80 hours or more in a week. We would sleep on the couch in the break room or on the computer room floor. (It was warmer over near the disk drives and the humming let you sleep longer then if you were near the printer.)
Then in the late 80's I worked in a PL/1 shop where we were developing systems supporting library sciences. We were told that we could work up to but not more then 65 hours a week. And most weeks it was between 60 and 65, that lasted for months at a time.
And there were times that we were not called back on holidays, we were there working like normal days. I have refused to work on Christmas and Easter, but have worked most other holidays before I got married.
During those periods of time where we worked so many hours it was just part of the job, and it paid well. However, after over 35 years in the business I will not be doing those long hours again. I've done my time!
Not all gray hairs are Dinosaurs!
March 14, 2008 at 10:33 am
Once I received a phone call from the former CEO of my company (he retired and moved to another state but remained as a consultant of my company) on Friday 4:00pm to produce a report. I worked the whole weekend to get that done and delivered to his hotel before he arrived at 9:00pm on Sunday.
On my last job, I had pneumonia (very bad because my doctor thought I just had broncitis the previous week) and my oxygen level was dropped to very low level. I had to use nebulizer to breath. My boss called me and wanted me to finish loading files into a system because the customers were not happy. I did it. No one appreciated what I did and the HR actually yelled at me that I did it. What should I do when your boss call?
My doctor originally wanted to send me to the hospital but he thought maybe I could just stay home and rest. Now I wished I was in the hospital.
March 14, 2008 at 11:10 am
Answering a question with a question - why is it that so many people are surprised by what IT people will do to get the job done?. Are we so great or are they just so slack?
Am currently sitting in a mine site in Tanzania, solving problems that others should have fixed. After twenty years in the mining industry, there are very few "god forsaken" places on the planet that i haven't been to and no form of transport i haven't used (short of various four legged varieties).
I hate my job and I love my job with equal passion. From 36 and 48 hours straight setting up Unix systems and Windows servers, to travelling for three days straight just to spend one day getting people sorted out.
I am a fool at times to let the job dictate my life, but it really is a bizarre form of thrill seeking. And when I see people who have "regular" jobs who know where they will be and what they will be doing this time next week - all I can think of is yoikes - "not for me".
All the people I know and respect in IT are partly insane - in a good way.
But don't pat yourselves on the back too hard - drop into the local hospital casualty or emergency wards - it puts your IT life right back into perspective.
March 14, 2008 at 11:52 am
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood...
Obviously, you don't work in management! 😀
Seriously, while I've had my share of 3am phone calls - having your name and home phone number on the Manufacturing floor control room wall will do that - my fav is my wife's: she worked as a clerk for a tech startup in the late 80's. She ended up in the hospital with pneumonia and a life-threatening stress related illness. They called her in the hospital because they couldn't figure out what to do. Ultimately, she quit and they hired 3 people to replace her, and even then couldn't keep staff in that position because it was so difficult!!
Steve G.
March 14, 2008 at 11:52 am
I can't count the number of 3-day shifts and 4-day shifts I've done (as in no sleep for 3-4 days), and I've done quite a few 5-day shifts. But all of that was decades ago, and might not be totally applicable to this question, since it had nothing to do with databases/software/et al.
The furthest I've gone as a DBA is a couple of all-night shifts. Maybe three. But not all in a row.
I've come to work on lots of holidays, but I don't particularly observe most of them anyway. (I'm not a christian, so Christmas doesn't hold any particular "can't work then" importance to me, for example.) The weekends and late nights I've worked on my current job haven't been a big deal, because I get to take a comparable amount of time off later.
When it comes to working when ill, I've done that a few times, but I also have to admit I've called in sick once or twice when all I really wanted was a day off. So that one goes both ways.
I don't have anything comparable to the people who've posted here about working with pneumonia or right after childbirth.
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