The beauty of nearing retirement is...

vulcanrtb

There is no cloud, it's just someone else's computer. *

* I worked in Infosec 😉

sjp999

vulcanrtb said:

There is no cloud, it's just someone else's computer. *

* I worked in Infosec 😉

It's a brave IT worker that owns up to working for the fun police 😁

LV_426

A while ago I did a stint working for Siemens on a contract basis. Boy was that a slow place. Took me 4 weeks to actually get a computer to work on. I really don't know what they thought I was doing for that month!
Anyway I started to notice a lot of people looking at graphs on their computer screens. On closer inspection, I realised that they were checking the performance of the pension portfolios and working out if they could retire and get the hell out of there!
I came to think of it as the software engineer's graveyard.

QrizB

ajfielden said:

MallyGirl said:

someone had to show me how to use a mouse on my first day back in 1988. Windows 1 in glorious 4 colours and no icons. Those were the days

The ironic thing is, despite all the technological advances, everything is arguably no quicker.
That's because we've piled layers upon layers of frameworks, management overhead, containers and god knows what. So you need 10x more memory and other computing resources to run the stuff. You've got to laugh  

My personal opinion is that desktop word processors have been the biggest productivity reducers of the past 40 years. Bear with me here.

I work in what could loosely be called manufacturing. Once upon a time you had engineers, who came up with clever ideas and wrote them out on scraps of paper longhand, and a typing pool full of 120-word-per-minute typists who could turn engineers' ramblings into coherent reports.

So the engineer would collate the scraps of paper into some semblance of order, staple them together and post them to the typing pool. A day or two later the engineer would receive a largely-accurate and beautifully typed version of their jottings. And for most purposes that was sufficient; only if the jottings had been particularly arcane or the report was the final version of something important would it be necessary to return it for a second draft. In the meantime the engineer would have been free to work on something else.

Now fast-forward to today. Engineers are no more literate than they were in the 80s (trust me on this one, I've met lots of them) but they're now expected to do their own typing, at maybe 12 words per minute not 120. That report that the typing pool could turn around in a day or two now takes the engineer a fortnight, during which time they're not doing anything else.

But it gets worse, because now "anyone" can amend a document the engineer gets suggestions for improvements "that won't take you a minute" and before you know it they've spent another fortnight adding, moving and deleting paragraphs (sometimes the same ones).

So a job that would have taken a week now takes a month and the only thing you've got to show for it is a pile of obsolete draft reports and a finished one which isn't measurably superior to the one the typing pool would have furnished you with on day 3 or 4 under the old system.

Terron

Notepad_Phil said:

ajfielden said:

MallyGirl said:

someone had to show me how to use a mouse on my first day back in 1988. Windows 1 in glorious 4 colours and no icons. Those were the days

The ironic thing is, despite all the technological advances, everything is arguably no quicker.
That's because we've piled layers upon layers of frameworks, management overhead, containers and god knows what. So you need 10x more memory and other computing resources to run the stuff. You've got to laugh  

My first job after leaving University involved support on a computer that ran on 256Kb (yes a quarter of 1Mb), supported 20+ users linked in via dedicated cables, and had a gigantuan 20Mb disk to meet all of the needs of the computer itself and the data used by those 20 users. Very rich clients could have a computer with 4Mb of memory and 256Mb disk capacity, but they needed to be rich to afford the dedicated rooms that such computers required.

My first permanent job in 1981 was on a mainframe with the maximum of 16 Mbytes. 4 Mbytes were used to run 1500 terminals with sub-second response times. There was a room full of disks - 47 Gbytes in total and another room with over 20 tape drives. It was the largest commercial site in Europe and was used for about 2/3rds of the UK's mail order business.

LV_426

Terron said:

My first job after leaving University involved support on a computer that ran on 256Kb (yes a quarter of 1Mb), supported 20+ users linked in via dedicated cables, and had a gigantuan 20Mb disk to meet all of the needs of the computer itself and the data used by those 20 users. Very rich clients could have a computer with 4Mb of memory and 256Mb disk capacity, but they needed to be rich to afford the dedicated rooms that such computers required.

My first permanent job in 1981 was on a mainframe with the maximum of 16 Mbytes. 4 Mbytes were used to run 1500 terminals with sub-second response times. There was a room full of disks - 47 Gbytes in total and another room with over 20 tape drives. It was the largest commercial site in Europe and was used for about 2/3rds of the UK's mail order business.

Sounds familiar. I bet those (dumb) terminals were handled by a FEP (front end processor).

trevjl

My personal opinion is that desktop word processors have been the biggest productivity reducers of the past 40 years. Bear with me here.

Could I put the printer in there along with that.

When everyone could suddenly print their own stuff, the so called "paperless society" we were promised turned into who could produce the most pointless, charts, forms, reports and whatever else they think looks pretty.

My companys' paper pack that I have to take on every job consists of 21 pages, 19 of which never see the light of day until 5 years later when they are shredded

vulcanrtb

sjp999 said:

vulcanrtb said:

There is no cloud, it's just someone else's computer. *

* I worked in Infosec 😉

It's a brave IT worker that owns up to working for the fun police 😁

Hehe, I was in THE fun place, penetration testing, the most fun thing you can do in IT.
Don't confuse that with 'business prevention' which is how my boss in about 2001 used to answer the phone in the infosec department ("good morning, business prevention"). hahaha, everyone knew he had a sense of humour, though.

AlanP_2

bostonerimus said:

MallyGirl said:

bostonerimus said:

My point was that your work should not dominate your life so that the transition between working life and retirement is not major. I would say that it's a pity that you didn't do the things you seem to be enjoying in retirement while you were still working.

My thoughts resonate with so many others who work in IT on here. I don't hate my job but I look forward to not doing it anymore - thankfully my OH is finally coming round to the idea of retiring early. We will probably see daughter through uni which is another 5 years - I would rather it were 4 but its progress.
I did try to change my working life a while back and had a small garden design business for a while but I actually found that making it 'work' meant it spoiled my hobby. I stopped and the only garden I do now is my own - I look forward to doing more of it and not being dependant on the weather being good at weekends. I take a long lunch one day a week to go to a stretch class but would happily be there much more often to take part in other things.
I work from home so there is little personal interaction to miss. There is plenty of corporate BS.

I had academic and research jobs for about 30 years which was enjoyable, but I also have lots of other interests and hobbies that I really enjoy. I've also been divorced for almost 20 years and while I have good friends I'm also very content doing things on my own. So I retired early just because I wanted to spend more time doing things other than work. I didn't stop entirely and now work part time, but fit it in around more important things like cycling, gardening and now going to the theater and cinema again.

You have been in the States too long 

AlanP_2

Terron said:

Notepad_Phil said:

ajfielden said:

MallyGirl said:

someone had to show me how to use a mouse on my first day back in 1988. Windows 1 in glorious 4 colours and no icons. Those were the days

The ironic thing is, despite all the technological advances, everything is arguably no quicker.
That's because we've piled layers upon layers of frameworks, management overhead, containers and god knows what. So you need 10x more memory and other computing resources to run the stuff. You've got to laugh  

My first job after leaving University involved support on a computer that ran on 256Kb (yes a quarter of 1Mb), supported 20+ users linked in via dedicated cables, and had a gigantuan 20Mb disk to meet all of the needs of the computer itself and the data used by those 20 users. Very rich clients could have a computer with 4Mb of memory and 256Mb disk capacity, but they needed to be rich to afford the dedicated rooms that such computers required.

My first permanent job in 1981 was on a mainframe with the maximum of 16 Mbytes. 4 Mbytes were used to run 1500 terminals with sub-second response times. There was a room full of disks - 47 Gbytes in total and another room with over 20 tape drives. It was the largest commercial site in Europe and was used for about 2/3rds of the UK's mail order business.

Littlewoods on a Honeywell mainframe?


I started in IT in 1980 using a remote Time Sharing mainframe along with a number of other companies (sounds like a Cloud based service to me).

Moved on after a couple of years to a large US hardware supplier working in their internal data centre (used for developing and testing new applications / features).

Massive room about the size of half a football pitch with 2 mainframes (with 2 * 128Mb memory arrays) and associated disk and tape machines.

On late shift we used to play cricket in there when things were quiet with a rolled up paper ball sealed with sellotape. One night a well struck shot hit the emergency stop button on the wall and everything went off, that took some explaining at the Ops meeting the following day. 

Moved in to Pre-Sales for them after that. Work Hard / Play Hard was the ethos across IT then. Lots of shenanigans, boozy lunches (Friday lunch started at Noon and ended about 6pm). All drink and food expensed as "customer entertainment" by the sales guys and signed off by the managers who were also in attendance. As a counter point you would then work 24-48 hours straight to complete a proposal, demo setup, installation when necessary. Great times and great fun when you are young enough to keep up that sort of pace.

Worth bearing in mind from an investment point of view that the 2 major suppliers I worked for in the 80s and 90s were among the most "investable" companies in the world and one had over 100k employees worldwide - both disappeared now as something new came along and made their products and services dispensable.