GeekNights 070917 - The Business Technology Disconnect

Rym

Tonight on GeekNights, we consider corporate failures to utilize technology in leveraging their synergies. Or something. In the news, iPod scandal! and Tor arrests.
Scott's Thing - I Hate Young People

Rym's Thing - Hatten är din

Katsu

We use EnCase in the Computer Forensics course at RIT. Really, computer forensics is just like any other forensic tool. For most criminals, it's sufficient. Just like fingerprints and DNA testing, for the vast majority of criminals, it's sufficient to gather the evidence that they've left behind in the perpetration of a crime. For someone who is knowledgeable of the forensic technology, it is only a minor inconvenience.

jcc

I'd think that many businesses haven't automated simply because they've been burned by The Lazy Tech Guy in the past. The person doing the hiring doesn't always have the sort of knowledge needed to judge competence or quality of tech work, or to tell real problems from imaginary ones. A tech guy may be certified as knowing how to do something, but that doesn't mean that they'll take the time to do it well when doing it half-assed requires less time and effort and the person paying their paycheck can't tell the difference. Half-assed works well enough unless an emergency occurs, and if one does happen to occur, the ignorance of the employer will allow the tech guy to make direct blame due to gross negligence difficult to pin on them.

Apreche

I'd think that many businesses haven't automated simply because they've been burned by The Lazy Tech Guy in the past. The person doing the hiring doesn't always have the sort of knowledge needed to judge competence or quality of tech work, or to tell real problems from imaginary ones. A tech guy may be certified as knowing how to do something, but that doesn't mean that they'll take the time to do it well when doing it half-assed requires less time and effort and the person paying their paycheck can't tell the difference. Half-assed works well enough unless an emergency occurs, and if one does happen to occur, the ignorance of the employer will allow the tech guy to make direct blame due to gross negligence difficult to pin on them.

This is a separate issue of technology dependence. You don't set up your business in such a way that you become completely dependent on the technology. Your day to day business should not even be slowed down by expected and common technology outages. If there are some technologies that are business-critical, e.g: a web server that never goes down, then you have to pay people lots of money. Those people will guarantee you a certain level of service in exchange for that money, and they will take the blame if something goes wrong.

jcc

Well, there's expected and common technology outages, and then there's technology outages caused by sloppy setups. If the employer can't tell the difference, this puts them in a bit of an awkward situation.

Let's say an employer has 100 jobs they'd like to automate. Due to inefficiencies in the hiring process, not all of those 100 people are both competent and trustworthy. You have a mixture, some employees who are both, some of whom are one but not the other, some of whom are neither. Due to the way things are set up, however, any one corrupt individual will have a limited effect on the system as a whole.

Automation is only as good as the person who sets it up and maintains it, or at least, so I've come to understand. So if your automation is created by someone who does a half-assed setup job, and maintained by someone whose goal is to get as much money from you for as little work as possible, you've suddenly replaced 100 people of which only a small percentage were both incompetent and deceptive with 100 who all are. So it becomes very very important that the tech guy be Not The Lazy Tech Guy. But without the sort of knowledge needed to determine if he is or isn't The Lazy Tech Guy, the employer is forced to hire someone else to oversee the reliability of the first guy. But what if that guy is a Lazy Tech Guy too? That's where the advantage of hiring 100 people to do 100 jobs instead of 1 or 2 people to do 100 jobs kicks in. The more a person is responsible for a thing, the more opportunity there is to do a superior job, but the more they can screw it up as well. Since the employer doesn't have the knowledge to determine competence of tech guys the way they do of the rest of their employees, some just ignore them and the potential benefits they could offer as being too risky until they have learned how to gauge tech guys.

Rym

The so-called "lazy tech" problem is only a problem for companies who make the second fatal mistake: trusting one person to do everything.  Aside from the directors and creative talent, everyone in your company should be replaceable in short order.  Good process ensures this, and technological positions are no exception.

HMTKSteve

Kids have it too easy these days. I think this rebutts Scott quite nicely.

Apreche

Kids have it too easy these days. I think this rebutts Scott quite nicely.

I'm not arguing with the fact that things are better and easier now than they were back in the day. I'm just saying that because you had it bad, somehow you feel that you need to try to make it worse for us. Drop your jealousy you cranky old coots and get with the times.