InsideTech

After having worked for them for over 25 years, I've got so many stories I could write a book:

The H1B Visa - This inspiration was to allow third World professionals to come here and get jobs.  What it did was flood the jobforce with low quality workers that could (by living 8-10 in a house) work for 1/3 the normal pay...I lost my job to Indian COBOL programers with this one.

RFP (Request For Proposal) is the basis for the Gov to hire the lowest bidder for a project...this one has caused nothing but trouble from the start.  I had to hire a company to install emergency power off buttons in our computer room.  I was out the day they tested it and, after the smoke cleared it was determined that they had fried the UPS by sending 110v AC to the UPS that used 12v DC.  It took us 6 days to get the systems back up because we had to back order the IC boards.

Ignorance is averywhere, any very prevelant in the Gov.  One time, while I was sitting in a break area outside (smoking a cig), I was asked, "...do you ever work?".  I was the Sys Admin and was always on call, and had often answered that call in the wee hours.  I told this Commander (Yes, he was a Naval Officer), "Commander, think of me as a Fire Fighter...We're not always working when you look in on us, but when there's a fire you'll be really glad we're there".  He thought about it for only a few seconds, then said, "OK" and went on his way.

Once while working for the Comptroller of a base I was given the project to fix a report that was not reconciling across departments.  After discovering that the report was generated seperately for each entity, I found that each entity wanted a varying number of copies.  The answer for the Gov was to print the entire report 4 times (the max amount of copies wanted by one entity) and throw away the unwanted parts.  The report was over 30,000 pages long and was generated weekly.  When I asked I was told that over 60,000 pages per week were being thrown out (actually recycled...good for them).  After fixing this by incorporating a distribution table (now they print the report one time and it contains the number of copies within the report), I was told I should submit for a special award for saving the Gov big money...I was told by my supervisor (who was an accountant) that what I had done was part of my job and so I was not qualified to request this non-monetory award.

Like I said, I've got lots of these stories...I'll quit with these and thanks for starting this forum.  :)