Re: Lower End AS/400s -- MIDRANGE-L

I'm with you all the way, Joe...

IMO, what I think is one of the root causes of the movement away from
mainframes and AS/400's is the new blood in IT management - recent college
graduates (from the 90's on..) that grew up during the client/server and
internet age.  These guys are getting the CIO and IT management jobs (and
all of us know that the managers are the ones that never could write good
code anyway).

In order to "make their mark" on the organization and justify the six-figure
salaries that they are being paid, they have to make change for the sake of
change.  In the process, they are also padding their resume with these
so-called accomplishments so that in the middle of the SAP implementation
(converting from AS/400 whatever...) they go out an get that plum job doing
the same thing somewhere else, with the corresponding large pay raise.

These guys have done the biggest snow-job ever on corporations...I have seen
it happen over and over..They don't care about TCO...in fact, they probably
produce statistics that show that what they are doing is going to be cheaper
in the long run that the current AS/400 or whatever.

To quote (or paraphrase) Mark Twain:
There are three kinds of lies - lies, damned lies, and statistics.

Steve Landess
Austin, Texas
(512) 423-0935

"I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take
it any more.". Howard Beale (Peter Finch) "Network" - 1976.


----- Original Message -----
From: "Joe Pluta" <joepluta@PlutaBrothers.com>
To: <midrange-l@midrange.com>
Sent: Friday, December 13, 2002 11:16 AM
Subject: RE: Lower End AS/400s


> > From: Justin Haase
> >
> > Easy killer, I was just saying that nothing is perfect.  I like
> > OS/400 too.
>
> No, actually, I'd rather not take it easy.  It's just that sort of
attitude
> that has gotten us into the straits we're in.
>
> By not standing up for our jobs, for our platform, for our users, by not
> putting our collective feet down and DEMANDING that IT management take
into
> account TCO, reliability and all the other things that make the AS/400 so
> powerful, we have instead implicitly encouraged the proliferation of
> error-prone networks of cheap, inferior machines.
>
> Guilt by omission can be every bit as damaging as guilt by commission, and
> we're living proof of that as we reap the results of the "let it be"
> attitude of the last decade or so.
>
> People with no IT experience are making IT decisions.  People who don't
> understand the cost benefits of data processing are assessing the value of
> what we do.  Nobody is standing up for the end user, or for reliability,
or
> for stability, or for legacy reuse.  And those of us who know these
things,
> we're sitting around with our thumbs strategically positioned while we
whine
> that there's nothing we can do.
>
> "Easy killer"?
>
> Heck no, it ain't me killing the box.  I'm out there, every day, shouting
to
> whomever I can get to listen that the AS/400 is BETTER than Windows,
BETTER
> than Unix, BETTER than any other platform.  I can prove it, and I will to
> anyone who is willing to make the effort to listen.  Unfortunately, most
> people have spent the last decade taking it easy, and this is where THAT
> particular attitude has led us.
>
> You want to take it easy?  Go ahead.  But don't later complain about how
IT
> management isn't making the right decisions.  They aren't because you're
not
> telling them what the right decisions are.  You're taking it easy.  Which
> one of is is killing the box?
>
> Joe
>
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