July 13, 2009

True IT confessions

Supergeeks fess up to some of the dumbest things they've ever done -- and the lessons they learned as a result

Then, of course, he lost the disc: $20,000 worth of work gone in a flash. What did he do? What any smart consultant would do: He billed the client for the entire project, in full. And promptly received a check.

"Six months went by and I didn't hear back from the client," says Paul. "I thought that was incredible, because I expected to receive comments and changes on the draft. A year went by, and nothing."

Finally, two years after delivering the draft, the dreaded call finally came.

"'Are you going to ever finish this project?' I heard on the other end of the phone," says Paul. "I said, 'There's no way that I can stand by that original data and recommendations, since two years have gone by. None of the information is valid anymore.' Of course, I knew full well I could never provide any updated data or updated recommendations based on the original data. Fortunately, the client accepted that explanation and then proceeded to discuss what fees I'd need for some new work."

In his defense, Paul says the preliminary draft was 95 percent complete, and the client told him they'd already implemented many of the recommendations he'd made.

These days, Paul is a self-proclaimed "data backup nut."

"On any given day I have about 10 copies of all current project data, and can completely restore every project data file that I have worked on during the last three years within about five minutes," he says. "I learned a hard lesson that I certainly won't forget anytime soon."

Lessons learned? 1. You can never have enough backups. 2. It's a good idea to also keep hard copies on hand, just in case. 3. If you do lose all your data before you've delivered the final product, try to make sure you're working for the government at the time. They might never notice.

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Read more about adventures in IT in InfoWorld's Adventures in IT Channel.

Dan Tynan is contributing editor at InfoWorld, author of the Tynan on Technology blog, and co-founder of eSarcasm, an award-winning geek humor site. (Note: Awards still pending.)
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tomaddox 13-Jul-09 10:16am
I'm waiting for the flood of angry comments from people who have clearly never made any mistakes in their own lives or jobs demanding to know why these people were not fired and how they have the gall to continue working in IT. Come on, guys: put down the bags of Doritos, fire up those keyboards, and don't disappoint me.
Regaug 14-Jul-09 10:54am
The IT business is infamous for very long hours; a practice sometimes mandated, and always encouraged, by IT managers who are ignorant enough to think that long hours automatically equals productivity. In my 25+ years in this biz, I've known several colleagues who fell asleep at the wheel driving home after a marathon installation or troubleshooting session: two ended up in the hospital, and one of them died. In that same time, I've seen hundreds of dedicated, competent, highly-trained engineers completely screw things up, often damaging their company's bottom line, only because they were too tired and should have gone home to their lonely families hours ago. I have heard of more enlightened IT shops who setup their engineers on shifts, and actually required a person to get some rest after a certain number of hours. This also has the added benefit of forcing the spread of knowledge and expertise as one shift hands off a tough problem to the next one. You don't end up with just one guy who knows how to fix a given issue.

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