Bruce Toback wrote:
...
> So when Joe writes:
>
> >We (and other employers) want you to bring your brain, your
> >ideas, your willingness to learn...
>
> he should keep in mind that there may well be a bunch of people walking
> around who are perfectly capable of doing just that, but who have been
> trained all their lives to do the opposite. At age 21, our office manager
> was young enough not to have been made cynical by her former workplace.
> If she'd worked there for 20 years, though, it's very likely that she'd
> have become one of the crew that
>
> >...go to work, do what they're told, put in their 8-hours (or
> >pound of flesh, whichever comes first), and work for the mere
> >reason of obtaining that (pick your timing/frequency) paycheck,
> >and for no other reason.


Ok, so what do you do after the 20 years with the cynical staff, when
managers have allowed the fossilization of the good people and the best have
left, and problem solving becomes a purely technical activity practiced
(almost) only in Computing Services?  Some new administrators, with a
sprinkling of new managers, want to change this, but it is very hard to get
the "other" managers and most of the staff to "see the light", especially
when threatened by new technology, demands for improvements in customer
service, and without the ability to lean on the computer staff for creative
solutions?

>
> ... thereby wasting a perfectly good mind.

Or thereby running a good business (or University:-)) into the ground?

>
> -- Bruce

Funny how, in another thread, we were discussing the high performance of the
"legacy" in-house applications vs the challenges and troubles of the "new"
(Unix/Oracle/vendor application) systems...

--
Richard Gambrell
Database Administrator and Consultant to Computing Services
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, Dept. 4454
113 Hunter Hall, 615 McCallie Ave. Chattanooga, TN 37403-2598
UTC e-mail: [log in to unmask]   phone: 423-755-4551
Home e-mail: [log in to unmask]