This same thing happened to a relative though Steam has refused to return the account. I used it as a learning opportunity about dependence on online brokers (Google, Steam, Amazon, you pick one) and digital licensing. Funny how others view us experienced IT folks as "fuddy duddy's" that the young ignore until its too late...

Really? Voters know better? That must be some part of the alternate reality I can't see. What I see is a landscape of blind faith in words rather than peer-reviewed facts. By people swayed by a single source of information, rather than from a collection of information sources inside and outside the country.

When my significant-other's company laid her off and then wanted to call her and ask questions I was adamant she tell them that as soon as they would pay our $500/hour, minimum one hour, invoices she'd answer their questions. This consulting thing is something I think everyone needs to more seriously consider no matter how good a friend might be calling you from your former company.

I heartily disagree and have witnessed it first-hand. There are plenty of companies out there that do that. You should already know if you work for one of those unless this is your first job/company. There is no one-size answer for the thread OP because it strongly depends on the category of employer.

Perhaps people died, which happens even in modern times on modern construction projects, but there is evidence they were not slaves. Maybe you weren't trying to infer that, but that's how your post came across to me given the Confederate reference.

https://harvardmagazine.com/20...

Let's accept some PMs are rigid and use excessive formality, often in subject areas which have zero relevance. Over 15 years of doing this I can tell you sgrover's take is the one all PMs should be trained. Seeing roadblocks before they become roadblocks (RISK!) and clearing them, only holding a discussion (NOT status) when needed solely with those required, ensuring your business partner knows what's going on but isn't bored by technical chit-chat, and supporting your s/w team needs. Dates MUST be set or, in many cases, s/w guys slack or get easily distracted. I know this, I was a prog/analyst for a very long time, and observed the same human behavior in many other technical staff (infra, security, app dev, arch, etc).

The proscribed solution? Agile. Most of industry's take on Agile is just a way of avoiding accountability for hard work, IMO. Very few seem to get it and do it right, maybe that will change.

And having lived 10 years in IN, my experience is that the quality of schools shows it. A top-level private education turned out to be roughly equivalent to public schools in IA. The roads outside Indy were atrocious, too, and it was the first state in which I observed paved roads being rolled back to gravel.

You do get what you pay for, IMHO.

I'm told I'm too wordy and unnecessarily use complex words.

Brief: Make a Bigger Impact by Saying Less
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/...

The auto industry is long-known for having taken the "Beat the supplier over the head with price" approach. It was a monumental failure and the Japanese auto makers, who collaborated with their suppliers on various price improvement mechanisms, were monumentally successful in quality and price. This will fail and Walmart will crash. The question is who else will go down with them riding the coat tails.

After decades of work at a fair number of places I've discovered there are companies who offer jobs (employee=commodity), and some who offer careers (employee=person). Interestingly I landed at one of those Top 50 To Work For companies and never really want to leave as long as the culture remains high on value of the employee. Previously I'd never considered looking at lists like that for where to go but if I ever left here that's where I'd start.

I guess I'll say DevOps is hard when done right. I live in a space which has app devs, dev ops, and ops. Since none of that OP's Signs apply maybe we're doing it right. But I would argue it does work well. In reality, Ops is a shared service. Dev isn't. DevOps is a hybrid model and facilitates the challenges of the other two disparities.

As for this off-topic bent on Agile or whatever, be cautious about its evaluation. "Agile" is often just cowboy programmers using that as an excuse for no planning or design at all. And no commitment that has the needed parties in agreement. This is especially painful for shared groups like security and infrastructure.

Agile, waterfall, critical chain, side-by-side, blah, blah are all tools. The best places use those for specific reasons to improve likelihood of successful results. But some kind of planning is required if a business wants to actually create an annual budget and develop projections. Marketing actually needs to know when new products and services will be available MONTHS in advance in order to properly prepare the marketplace. These are facts, not PHB silliness. I suppose if you're a small consulting software shop some of that might not matter, but I suspect most here don't sit in those seats.

The problem isn't: ERP customization or bolt-ons. The problem is that your organization has failed to understand how an ERP is implemented. It is NOT a IT project, it is a business project that should have the expectation that in nearly every case your organization will align its business practices to what the ERP offers. The ONLY exceptions are those where your company has a genuine competitive edge and they should be few and far apart.

I have been a part of both SAP and Oracle ERP deployments as an insider (never a consultant). Companies fail at these when they are not actually willing to change how they do things. That change must be driven by the CEO/President him/herself.

Clearly this information wasn't intended to be exported from Iraq and fall into Imperialist hands. Someone's going to lose their head over this one.

I wrote an application once to constantly update my Supermoderator forum signature with the Internet Safety Foundation's definition of theft. It did this every 3 seconds.

The reason? I discovered the Admin was mining passwords of users and taking over their accounts on other sites because the logins/passwords were the same. This was more than 10 years ago, when common logins/passwords were less taboo than today, for you young'uns.

Ultimately he was forced to ban me and others he perceived to have morals and who knew what was going on. However he had, in the past, sent the forum membership email with all the addresses in To: so I simply advised the entire community directly about what was going on. Within a month everyone had left.

I don't think "the next BIG search thing" needs to do better at interface design and marketing control. Instead, they need to match Google there and provide something novel of which we not thought.