Re: fw: I am leaving my company - should I inform top mgmt of major IT issues?

[rob@xxxxxxxxx]

Mgmt won't give a rat's ... about any of those mundane details in g.
I assume it is a for-profit company?  Here we have a basic problem solving 
course.  And part of it is that you have to assign a dollar value to 
everything.  Now, always jumping to huge figures like "having two item 
masters can cause errors leading to lost business of a million dollars" 
will get you ignored unless you can back that up.
We had a gentleman that used to go ape over obsolete item numbers.  He 
justified that by saying that cleaning it up would save disk and make jobs 
run faster.  Admirable goals.  However he could never put a dollar figure 
on it.  How much disk would it save?  And at what cost per MB?  How much 
faster would it make jobs run?  And what's the dollar figure of that 
shorter time?  Always spent more time on it than the disk saved.
When your company is dropping sales and profits and mgmt is fighting like 
the dickens to save what they can, they are very busy and you need to 
translate the situation into dollars and cents.

We have our problem solving form stored in a Notes workflow database.  It 
doesn't even allow you to send it on until you compute that dollar amount.

Rob Berendt
-- 
Group Dekko Services, LLC
Dept 01.073
PO Box 2000
Dock 108
6928N 400E
Kendallville, IN 46755
http://www.dekko.com





"j s" <jrstone@xxxxxxxxxxx> 
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fw: I am leaving my company - should I inform top mgmt of major IT issues?






I should have provided a bit more info regarding this posting.

  a.. Yes of course I have spoken up when employed; I often informed IT 
mgmt and other programmer types of the IT issues hurting the company.  And 
yes of course they have been ignored.  Most (all) were offended and think 
they are doing a great job.  Maybe they are (probably not)!

  b.. I have even told some in mgmt above IT, but IT personnel always deny 
that specifics are accurate.

  c.. I hope that I am not doing this for spite, in fact the only reason I 
see NOT to inform top mgmt is that I dont want to bring trouble to IT 
people I have worked with for several years.

  d.. My (former) company has been downsizing for 5 years now; and things 
keep getting worse.  Regardless if I inform or not, the company has not 
yet seen the bottom and has a ways down to go before leveling out. 

  e.. Top mgmt is all new within the past 2 years - they have no way of 
knowing the details of what is going on in IT, good or bad.  IT is not 
like a restaurant or production floor where a lay person can walk around 
and see things out of order.  Everything is hidden from view in IT.   Only 
the symptoms are visible to mgmt.

  f.. I would feel good if they make changes that help the company out. 
Isn't that worth something, even if I get no direct benefit?  Has the 
world come to that a person only does something helpful if that person 
gains from it?

  g.. I would imagine that readers are wondering what kind of issues I am 
thinking about revealing.  There is nothing illegal or unethical to 
reveal.  I will give an example:  How many part master files should a 
company have spinning on Iseries disk?  One?  One production plus one 
test?  That makes two.  Add a QA-that makes 3. How many logicals?   One by 
part#, one by brand, one by vendor #?  That makes 3 PF's and 3 LF's.  Each 
extra part master copy makes changes exponentially more difficult and 
complex. If a field needs changing, now a programmer needs to worry about 
touching 6 objects.  This company has -are you sitting down - 500 part 
file PFs and 1500 associated LF's.  Of course some are year end copies, 
others are John's test part file and Mary's test part file, others are 
part spin-off files. But to make a change to the file would take 
considerable effort.  And of course no pgmr would ever attempt a change 
with that magnitude of risk!

Thanks to all  for all the helpful words of advice! 



On Thu, 10 Feb 2005 15:28:17 -0500, Larry Bolhuis <lbolhuis@xxxxxxxxxx> 
wrote:
> I think Ron's approach is right on here.  You certainly risk trouble by
> telling them because they will likely take one of two views of the
> situation a) you are bitter or b) you are incompetent because you didn't
> bring it up even though you've know about it for a long time.  On the
> other hand if you don't tell them it's on your conscience.

I disagree, and think it is bad advice.  If you didn't speak up when
you were employed there, so you shouldn't speak up now.   Clearly,
your interest is not about doing good, it is spite for the people who
let you go.  Acting based on those kinds of motivations rarely turns
out well.
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