Compensating Incompetence

This morning I get a forward from a compadre from a friend of his who's in IT. The message was this:

"I can't take it....The new guy asked me how to end task a process in task manager today???? WTF??? And they are paying this guy 10 grand more than me a year???? OMFG! Tim, instead of transferring data from one server to another with a query he wanted to export the data to excel and then run a macro of mouse clicks to transfer the data one freakin piece of data at a time.........WTF? I am officially in the Twilight Zone!"

While it's driving him up the wall, it will be funny when he leaves the company in a sad sort of way. This fool is making a lot of money with skills a decade old and probably has no formal Information Systems Training. He Probably "got in the industry" because he had a Commodore 64 and knew how to load programs from cassette.

If you can't figure out Task Manager then you need to go back to the cave and STFU. Either that or suck on the business end of a 12 Gauge. Either way, remove yourself from my presence.

If you export from a database and want to import via Excel and Macros then I know an Excel guy who is great with Pivot tables and you should send your resume to him. He's in IT as well and is a FoxPro wizard.

The problem is pervasive. My predecessor where I currently work actually told the executive committee that "The Internet and web based applications are going away. Client-Server is making a comeback." He's still unemployed.

At a previous company we've had some of the following statements:

• "It's Voice over IP. There is no Dialtone."
• "The SAN was incorrectly configured by Kuhn and that's why it's performing slowly." No, you added an array of slower hardware and THAT'S why it's performing slowly.
• "Kuhn doesn't understand how to install .Net applications or how the IIS Servers work." No, Your .Net applications don't install. The other developers all work fine within the production environment.

I am sure it's par for the course in every company and every department. In IT though it seems to be much much worse. Then you get the hassles from the Employees who read the Saturday "Technology" article in the Newspaper and want to engage you as an equal.

Hey, Ass-clowns... If you are reading a technology article in a Newspaper, probably written by "Technobuddy" then you are a pathetic waste of my time. "I hear the new iPhone will integrate much better in business environments than the old one." No, you read it from a guy who cannot make it in IT so he writes a Saturday article espousing his knowledge of the Mundane. I can integrate any iPhone you have by shoving it up your ass. There. It's Integrated. You'll know you have mail when your colon vibrates.

These incompetent people ought to know they are incompetent and someone needs to tell them. Example: If the moron above had come over and said "Hey, we need to move this data from Server A to Server B. What do you think is the best way?" He would have looked a lot less like an idiot than he did. That's really irrelevant because he followed up with the "How does this TaskManager thing work?" and there's no way to cover that move.

So, in the spirit of the Rant, I proclaim January "Let the fuckers know" month. Someone does something stupid, let that fucker know. Doing something that irritates you, let them know. Hell, send an email to me and I'll let them know for you.

kuhn.