It's clients like this that really, really make me question myself why I still bother working in IT. Every day that goes by it gets harder to justify it. My sole reason for continuing being a developer is that I have a mortgage to pay. If I didn't have that, I'd be working behind a bar. Quite possibly the best job I've ever had, regardless of the hours.
The developer died 14 years ago, here's a print out of his source code
Welcome again to On-Call, our Friday wallow in jobs that are nastier than yours. This week, reader “Earl” tells us that just this year he responded to “a Craigslist ad for a Novell NetWare Admin to figure out why .nlm files would not be loaded and fix the issue.” Earl says he “wrote back and told the person that I was very …
COMMENTS
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Friday 5th August 2016 16:36 GMT h4rm0ny
Re: er....
Whether saving up to get a mortgage or trying to pay one off, mortgages are the chains that keep modern Western society working. If ever a sizable proportion of the population begins to consider a paid off mortgage beyond their reach (and we're getting close to that), or even worse - a general attitude of fuck it, owning my own house isn't that important catches on, then British and American society will collapse faster than a soufflé in an ice-bucket.
Medieval peasants used to believe if they worked hard and were well-behaved, they'd go to Heaven where they could finally rest. We're more modern these days. We believe that if we work hard and are well-behaved, then by the time we're sixty we can own our own home and finally rest.
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Friday 5th August 2016 19:04 GMT Matt Bryant
Re: h4rm0ny Re: er....
"....a general attitude of fuck it, owning my own house isn't that important catches on, then British and American society will collapse faster than a soufflé in an ice-bucket...." Or we'll just become majority renters rather than homeowners, as happened in France, and is already happening in most major cities. Sorry, you'll have to postpone the Revolution for a a better excuse, Comrade.
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Friday 23rd September 2016 08:23 GMT fajensen
Re: er....
If ever a sizable proportion of the population begins to consider a paid off mortgage beyond their reach (and we're getting close to that), or even worse - a general attitude of fuck it, owning my own house isn't that important catches on, then British and American society will collapse faster than a soufflé in an ice-bucket.
You got that the wrong way up!
1) Your debt is a another persons asset.
2) When one has an asset, one can borrow against it, creating Money.
3) 1 & 2 means that, in modern finance, Debt and Money are Equivalent - Money is Created by the Creation of new Debt, Money is destroyed when Debt is paid off (or written off). Money Destroyed increases the value of the money that is left, when the value of money increases in relation to the goods and services it can buy, we have Deflation.
Deflation is The End of The Universe, according to economists, which of course nobody with any sense gives a rats arse about since they are always wrong about everything if not flat out lying. (Politicians, sadly, do not have any sense).
I.O.W. The most destructive thing you can do to torpedo the modern e-con-me is: Not acquire debt in the first place. When you in spite of principles still have to, you pay it off aggressively, you do not keep it around till when your 60 and its all over for you. The young people are getting it, mostly because they have no opportunities, but that works too.
Heaven is Right NOW, peasant.
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Saturday 6th August 2016 05:28 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: er....
>get a big enough mortgage to get a show box flat!
You all throw poop at us Yanks (often deservedly) but being one has its advantages. 3500 sq ft house decent yard middle of metropolis of 4 to 5 million people or so for $250k mortgage ain't bad. Key is like everywhere else avoid the coasts.
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Friday 16th September 2016 09:50 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: er....
"3500 sq ft house decent yard middle of metropolis of 4 to 5 million people or so for $250k mortgage ain't bad."
Damn, I have a similar sized house in the UK, in a small village in Cambridgeshire with a very small population and it cost nearly 4 times that!
maybe I should move the the US, it sounds extremely cheap!
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Friday 5th August 2016 15:31 GMT Sgt_Oddball
Re: Huh?
Having done it (Cross country too, Vancouver to Seattle) I can safely say 90 mins is just for the inevitable delay whilst waiting for a freight train to get out of the way.
(That said, still one of most comfortable train seats I've even been on, with more leg room than an emergency exit seat on a transcontinental flight) .
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Friday 5th August 2016 18:58 GMT John Brown (no body)
Re: Huh?
Somehow I don't think the new version of Grimsby in the mountains of land-locked Colorado will have that same aromatic fried fish smell of ours!
For USAians, the original Grimsby is a UK fishing port, one of it not actually the largest in the UK. On arriving anywhere within about 10 miles of the place, you are greeted by the cold smell of fried food as it's also surrounded by frozen food processing factories and cold stores.
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Saturday 6th August 2016 01:21 GMT Elf
Re: Huh?
I've taken the train across the US few times now. Sure, if I have to be there in a few hours I'll fly but if I hVe a few days to kill, train it is. Silicon Valley driving is out as there is light rail, BART, CalTrain and Amtrak. Up here in the Seattle area where I live these days a great deal is to be desired reguarding rail transit. Theres a tourist monorail thing (that's worthless as an actual mode of transportation, the SLUT (South Lake Union Transit ... and yes you can get "I rode the SLUT" T-Shirts).
What I would consider Commuter Quality™ rail here sucks. It's On The Board and ground is broken. Naturally the rails will start serving the likes of Amazon and Microsoft campuses first, but hey, whatever gets the blighters off their asses to actually make useful things.
As an American, I'd like to say:
1. You may want to sit down for this...I haven't owned a car in more than a decade. (And two of that in Los Angeles yet somehow I'm the only person able to make meetings on time). Don't feel the need to get one anytime soon, either. I get around just fine, thanks.
2. If there were more/better mass transit here I'd happily use it. Boston, San Francisco, Chicago are great for rail... other than that though, mostly shite.
[Coat : Because it just dawned that it's Beer:30]
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Friday 5th August 2016 11:40 GMT Sandtitz
Re: Wonderous story @Steve 3
"Just wondering... Does the company that Earl tried to do this work for still exist?"
According to the article it happened earlier this year. If the company can live without accounting software for months they sure can still do it... :-)
A couple years ago I was asked to replace a network card at a local pharmacy. I strolled in equipped with a couple different PCI cards (just in case) but I honestly told them to seek help elsewhere when I saw the PS/2 machine with MCA slots and OS/2 1.3.
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Friday 5th August 2016 08:08 GMT Chris King
Alarm bells were ringing from the start of the article...
"Just wondering... Does the company that Earl tried to do this work for still exist?"
I'm guessing not - if they were in such a bad state for so long and needed help with their accounting system, I'd be wondering if their accounts bore any resemblance to reality.
Maybe they were trying to get the system fixed because the tax man wanted a cosy chat ?
Maybe that ad was on Craigslist for so long because Earl wasn't the first person they stiffed that way ?
As for sharing monitors - if the client is THAT cheap, that's all you need to know about your chances of getting paid.
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Sunday 7th August 2016 06:39 GMT rcx141
Re: Alarm bells were ringing from the start of the article...
I never feel guilty about asking for a payment up front. Business has to be about trust after all. I have found legitimate companies have no problem making a partial payment before I begin work, and it really weeds out the dross.
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Friday 5th August 2016 15:33 GMT Timo
Re: Alarm bells were ringing from the start of the article...
I'd add that another red flag would be in the Craigslist posting.
Aren't the people that use it some of the tightest around? Willing to slog through endless postings to find the few that are useful?
Or it could just be me - we attempted to sell a few furniture pieces via Craigslist, and everyone wanted to turn it into an opportunity to haggle and nitpick and chisel down on the price. Finding stuff was an exercise in frustration for me.
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Friday 5th August 2016 19:15 GMT John Brown (no body)
Re: Alarm bells were ringing from the start of the article...
"I'd add that another red flag would be in the Craigslist posting."
I was a bit concerned over that Craigslist thing too. They'd had the advert up for months and our intrepid correspondent was the first to reply and he told them up front he was expensive? If they were that desperate and money was less important than the fix, WTF were they doing advertising on Craigslist for IT skills likely to be hard to find instead of looking for a more relevant place to advertise for help.
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Sunday 7th August 2016 06:39 GMT tommy_qwerty
Re: Alarm bells were ringing from the start of the article...
> I'd add that another red flag would be in the Craigslist posting.
My experience with Craigslist job postings has been pretty good (selling my junk, not so much). If they're posting on Craigslist, it's a good indication they are actually looking to fill the position with a new local and not posting it either for some legal reason while looking to hire internally or bring in some H-1B gomeril. I'm convinced half the companies posting on Dice, Monster, Indeed and the like have no intention of actually hiring anyone through their job ads.
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Friday 5th August 2016 08:09 GMT Phil W
Limits
I am by nature helpful, and enjoy problem solving, so if presented with a challenging problem that requires certain quirky things to be fixed before you can get down to the main issue that's fine.
But there are limits, and frankly this guy spent far more time on the work than I would of done.
At the point where it turned out that both the old and new servers were all fried, and that even the "new" server was ancient I would have been declaring the situation 99% likely unrecoverable and telling the company to find a plan B.
Sure it may have been possible (as indeed it was) to get a new server and configure Netware on it.
It may even have been possible to type in all 2000 pages of source code by hand, to recompile the software. But even then there is no guarantee the data is still intact.
Sometimes, regardless of the money on offer, it simply isn't worth the time or psychological trauma to put that kind of work in for people who have no concept of how to run a business properly.
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Friday 5th August 2016 12:42 GMT Skoorb
Re: Limits
Yeah. If it's something ridiculous like this it can be best to point them at the "official" support channel, even if it is hideously expensive.
Attachmate do offer on-site consulting, including custom software development and support if you are desperate. It's then up to the client to decide if it's reasonable just to buy a new cloud accounting service rather than pay the vendor's consulting fees.
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Sunday 7th August 2016 02:25 GMT Cpt Blue Bear
Re: Limits
Been there, done that, got the T-shirt, etc. I used to do this sort of BS consulting work between, or even alongside, real jobs.
A decade or so ago I got a call from a friend of a friend who's brother in law (yeah, referrals can be weird like this) ran a manufacturing business employing a dozen or so who's accounting / ordering / process control (HA!) system had shat and could I go have a look. I found an aging HP running SCO and an ancient version of Pronto. Or rather, not running it 'cause a power surge had killed it along with the lunchroom fridge and a small industrial CNC cutter. It hadn't killed the backup tape because that had been dead for years due to ingested saw dust.
I thought about how to resurrect the beast for about thirty seconds before deciding that a better course of action was a meeting with the owners to tell them it was fucked beyond recovery and they should be looking for another solution. I got a bad cup of coffee, a "thanks for being honest with us" and $100 cash for my trouble. I have no idea if they survived that set back, but one of the owners used to call me every now and again when he thought someone was trying to screw him over (about a third of the time they were).
The important lesson was: even if you can fix something, fixing may not be the best solution for the customer.
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Friday 5th August 2016 08:56 GMT Hollerithevo
Cash up front: so YES
Having been stiffed twice in my early freelance career, my policy of getting half up-front was written in stone. And I never regretted it because, yes, stiffed again, until I realised a freelancer was always seen as somehow trying to put one over on the client. So I went the contractor route and that was comparatively better. Then the HMRC drive to get all with limited companies to pay as employees while getting no employee benefits, and I went full-time. I consider it simply a three-month rolling contract.
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Friday 5th August 2016 08:19 GMT Haku
Portrayal of computer tech guys in films/tv.
I do wonder how much damage the image of the tech help guy has had through films & tv shows, because all too often some 'super hacker' is shown to be doing stuff with a keyboard (why do they never ever use the mouse/trackpad?) that gets impossible things done in super quick time.
Also, those little file transfer bars zip by so quickly when the USB stick gets plugged into the computer, yet in the real world even USB 3.0 sticks can't transfer tens of gigabytes of data in a few seconds, and the film would be over long before they tried to transfer terrabytes.