Being retired; painful

Mister E said:
AI well having met a few of the computer programmer lot and seen some of their creations it will never work properly.
Apple couldn't even get one of the phones it made to make actual phone calls.
Computer needs should be kept in a box until they get competent.
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It is the nature of programming to never produce systems on time, in budget, or capable of fulfilling promised goals. Complexity is the cause.

The nits are government ministers who are foolish enough to believe the salesman.
 
dgadee said:
It is the nature of programming to never produce systems on time, in budget, or capable of fulfilling promised goals. Complexity is the cause.

The nits are government ministers who are foolish enough to believe the salesman.
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We all get promised the earth by the incompetant computer nerds not just government.
 
dgadee said:
It is the nature of programming to never produce systems on time, in budget, or capable of fulfilling promised goals. Complexity is the cause.

The nits are government ministers who are foolish enough to believe the salesman.
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This is why I ended up renting my software to my clients which included full maintenance lease.

Any bugs fixed and upgrades included in the full maintenance lease
 
There's an awful lot of truth in Dgadee's cartoon. As an IT geek on a much smaller scale, I've seen a number of projects crash and burn, and the bigger they come, the harder they fall, but I reckon one of the biggest causes of delay and cost overrun is scope creep. Some senior manager has an idea and sells it to the board. He then sits down with the developers and thrashes out a spec. So far, so good.

The developers go off and do their stuff, based on the spec. As things are starting to look good, someone too high on the food chain to ignore says, Wouldn't it be a good idea to have ... Yes, it would be a good idea, and it would have been easy to include at the beginning, but now it's a royal pain - months of delay and loadsa money.

Rinse and repeat.

Then there's the legacy system it absolutely has to work with, that no one thought to mention

then...
 
Stemar said:
There's an awful lot of truth in Dgadee's cartoon. As an IT geek on a much smaller scale, I've seen a number of projects crash and burn, and the bigger they come, the harder they fall, but I reckon one of the biggest causes of delay and cost overrun is scope creep. Some senior manager has an idea and sells it to the board. He then sits down with the developers and thrashes out a spec. So far, so good.

The developers go off and do their stuff, based on the spec. As things are starting to look good, someone too high on the food chain to ignore says, Wouldn't it be a good idea to have ... Yes, it would be a good idea, and it would have been easy to include at the beginning, but now it's a royal pain - months of delay and loadsa money.

Rinse and repeat.

Then there's the legacy system it absolutely has to work with, that no one thought to mention

then...
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Yes, everything new eventually becomes a legacy system and becomes too expensive to replace or change.

I believe there are still Cobol programmers working away.
 
Stemar said:
There's an awful lot of truth in Dgadee's cartoon. As an IT geek on a much smaller scale, I've seen a number of projects crash and burn, and the bigger they come, the harder they fall, but I reckon one of the biggest causes of delay and cost overrun is scope creep. Some senior manager has an idea and sells it to the board. He then sits down with the developers and thrashes out a spec. So far, so good.

The developers go off and do their stuff, based on the spec. As things are starting to look good, someone too high on the food chain to ignore says, Wouldn't it be a good idea to have ... Yes, it would be a good idea, and it would have been easy to include at the beginning, but now it's a royal pain - months of delay and loadsa money.

Rinse and repeat.

Then there's the legacy system it absolutely has to work with, that no one thought to mention

then...
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Been there done that abd got the tee shirt hence my approach as above
 
Stemar said:
Then there's the legacy system it absolutely has to work with, that no one thought to mention
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This is usually the big mistake. The smart people swallow the cost and replace the old system entirely. It's never hard, the data is always there one way or another and can be exported and transformed easily enough. But every time people think they're saving money by keeping the scope "smaller" by excluding older systems.
 
lustyd said:
This is usually the big mistake. The smart people swallow the cost and replace the old system entirely. It's never hard, the data is always there one way or another and can be exported and transformed easily enough. But every time people think they're saving money by keeping the scope "smaller" by excluding older systems.
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Easier these days when hardware costs have fallen. Many years ago I was shown around Anheuser-Busch computer centre at their HQ. Loads of old machines running old programs. I presume that kind of hardware limited approach is now gone.
 
To a large extent that was always an illusion anyway, since hardware had maintenance costs which went up with age.

Not that any of this common sense matters. "leaders" almost always engage with a big consultancy firm and hand over a wad of cash, then miraculously end up with a well paid job at said firm when the project falls apart and they move on. Almost like it's the plan all along to extract money for things other than project value.
 
lustyd said:
To a large extent that was always an illusion anyway, since hardware had maintenance costs which went up with age.

Not that any of this common sense matters. "leaders" almost always engage with a big consultancy firm and hand over a wad of cash, then miraculously end up with a well paid job at said firm when the project falls apart and they move on. Almost like it's the plan all along to extract money for things other than project value.
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"Leaders" must include ministers. Only explanation for government computing.
 
johnalison said:
I get the feeling that I have lost track of this thread.
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You are not alone. I thought it was about retirement.

I have 6 days of paid work remaining, 2 days per week spread over the next 3 weeks. The transition to retirement is almost complete.
I have made it to my state pension age which quite a few other people I know have not. Some of them sadly have permanently not made it.
One colleague who is 4 years off his state pension age burned out last summer and will not be returning to work. Due to confidentiality we don't know what has become of him. Hopefully he has been compensated and maybe he has found another job.

So I feel lucky to be where I am. For sure it's going to be a change but I am not stressing about retirement.
 
I think if you have an active job, retiring is hard I stopped working and my body has fell to pieces. So got a new hip and starting work out ,I refuse to fall apart.
 
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