I'm guessing he's never been to one of the aforementioned performer's party since he's talking out of his ass.

As a middle aged IT person that's contractually in high demand with a large number of companies, I interact regularly with older IT personnel (my age or slightly older) and many companies that have turfed many of their IT staff in general.

With the former I often encounter a lack of knowledge on new topics, older people that have grown too comfortable with their idea of 'current' technology without expanding their knowledge while a young guy will come in and say, "oh you guys need this and this and this to solve this problem!" The young guy might be overzealous and his idea might crash and burn, yet he was willing to provide solutions where plenty of older IT people come off as either too unwilling to explore alternative solutions or simply lacking the knowledge to solve difficult problems.

It's also important to keep in mind that as many companies move their services "to the cloud", I've seen a decreased demand for local IT and as this happens I've seen plenty of IT people blame "executive bonuses" or "replaced with young people" when the truth of the matter is that there's less demand for their skillset.

... and quite frankly, there's far too many IT people in the industry that skirt by with limited ability because they're surrounded by other people with limited abilities, so when some new people come along that actually know a thing or two, they can bring to management's attention that their IT departments are lacking in skill.

I'd mod you up if I could, since I grew up without technology, introduced to it later in life and I'm successfully working in IT. I have childhood memories of adventure in exploring the environment around me rather than memories of trying to beat some video game. I remember when Canadian roads were filled with kids playing street hockey, yet these days there's no kids to be seen. Where are the children?

As a Canadian who's driven through the US border hundreds of times, flown into and out of US international airports more times than I can count on my hands and passed through many other first and third world foreign checkpoints and international airports, all of these complaints read as gross exaggerations.

Once in Brussels I was asked to turn on my Nintendo DS (and they ignored my laptop) and at Frankfurt International they had me boot up my laptop and say "okay, danka" without actually evaluating it. I guess they just wanted to see that it was a laptop and not something... that wasn't a laptop.

You think you got it rough, try working hard and living in Canada...

All the tax subsidized dole our non-working people receive, whether it's 10 months of government unemployment insurance, welfare, 'disability' pay, etc., they spend a great deal on it on our high priced government monopolized liquor sales, highly taxed cigarettes, and of course the regular 13% tax (here in Ontario) on all goods except natural foods.

Oh, you articulated my primary issue with Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 so well with a single line - "Metro -- Badly inconvenience the customer for the sake of some dubious strategic marketing theories"

In my role as a primary policy maker to many large global companies, I've outright dictated a complete ban of anything with Windows 8 and a refusal to allow it's connectivity to any network primarily because the user interface is so foul in every possible way and hinders efficiencies. Fortunately my emotional response was met with enthusiastic agreement by all directors, administrators, managers and practically everyone else so I don't seem like a dictator with an axe to grind and more like someone with common sense. Both are true.

Some admins even took this a step further and banned Windows 8 for BYOD connectivity as well... but I expect that will eventually be reversed when some executives try and connect their fancy convertible ultra-tablets. Hasn't happened yet.

Haha! My wife gave me heck last week because my foot prints travelled across the dark hardwood living room floor, "You never wear socks inside!!"

A large component of my job is working from home and my experiences are entirely the same as Ryan's. I often start 'work' as soon as I wake up while sipping my morning coffee and before I know it the day is over at 6 PM and I've worked through what regular people think of as breaks, hopefully having snacked at some point in between. There are entire weeks of week days where I don't leave the house for no explainable reason other than I have no reason to and I'm tired. Similarly to Ryan, I have to remind myself to shower for the benefit of people I may encounter throughout the day and wear clean clothes.

There is the benefit of saving gas, avoiding car maintenance, less time involved in a commute and the convenience of having access to things like juicers or blenders for a healthy bite to eat when I think about it. I can also change throughout the day as the weather changes and that's always convenient. However since I'm in a seasonal climate there are additional energy costs that would be absorbed by an employer.

I suppose additional benefits include the ability to loudly listen to whatever music I like if I'm not actively voice communicating and I suppose I'm less likely to die in a car accident.

The question is, is this a big deal that seriously affects the quality of my life? No, not really, there are also pros and cons about working in an environment with more structure and the time I save in avoiding a commute, I could make it up at an office with less personal distractions. I wouldn't say one way is better or worse than the other for me, they're just different.

If you hadn't written about this issue, I would have. There's nothing more frustrating than writing procedures for Android phones and users complain that the same exact version of the OS as another person has a different menu system, customized by the manufacturer. Even Samsung phones of the same exact OS version have a different menu structure.

Fragmentation is entirely why we encourage our users to purchase iPhones as the documentation is easier to write and the phones are easier to support. The Blackberry 10 series has also proven easy to document and support.

Yep... I read this Slashdot entry and wondered, "why is the typical behaviour of a fired employee newsworthy?" Even if you had a large enough sample set, my care meter would probably stall slightly above zeor.

I'd also like to add that it would be a good idea to play devil's advocate with the information you find so you can present to your new IT director with some choices to show that you play ball and also, to determine if there's some legitimacy to what he's saying. Or perhaps you may truly find that there are some areas where money can be saved.

The first mistake you're making is trying to compare yourself with other engineering firms, which could easily be the same mistake your new IT director is determining your budget. You're asking 'how much do other engineering firms spend' when he could be thinking, "this is more than what my previous engineering firms have spent."

That and 'engineering' is far too broad a term to outright compare as some companies require hundreds of licenses for fluid dynamics modelling software at $10's of thousands of dollars per license.

The appropriate way to determine if you're spending too much, too little or just enough is to determine, specifically, what you need to function. Establish a per-PC baseline in terms of hardware (which may vary for certain departments), your refresh time for each area then then the required software that everyone needs then the additional software that certain departments need. You can also use the additional software suggested requirements as an additional baseline for hardware requirements. It may also be beneficial to stagger departmental refresh times to meet yearly budgetary requirements.

You should be providing information to your director to show "this is what we need to function and these are the costs" rather than trying to justify purchases based on comparisons. He can't dispute requirements... or perhaps there's a necessity for him to dispute requirements that people feel are requirements yet they're more of a want than a need, which is a typical experience at engineering firms.

Yea, maybe things are different in Silicon Valley when applying to tech giant companies, but 'round these parts up here in Canada, no one cares what you do online. It's assumed that everyone uses Facebook and no one uses Twitter and anything else? No one cares.

... 'Your IT Support'? I think you may have read the wrong post. I was referring to Microsoft's activation team - they forward you to technical support when the Office activation system breaks on a PC. This happens often as can be noted on Microsoft's official forums.

We've had plenty of issues with their Office 2013 activation system at our office and when you call in, "oh, I'm sorry, you need to talk to technical support because this is an issue with your PC" What?!?

These PC's are fine, I just bought this program, activate it!!! So they pass you to another department that has you on hold for a minimum of one hour (not an exaggeration) which also gives you the ability to leave a message if you get tired of waiting. If you leave a message, they'll call you back in a week (also not an exaggeration). When you finally speak to these people they admit they're busy because of issues with Microsoft's activation system (not a fabrication, during two calls this was admitted).