Out, Out, You Demons of Stupidity

I'm not exactly sure why I decided to post this today but I guess my mind just started wandering...

This isn't an original post by any means and I don't really have much new to offer, just some miscellaneous ranting about the I.T. Industry in general.

Why is it that there is so much B.S. in the I.T. field?  I'm not exactly sure but I am sure that it's there.  What type of B.S. am I referring to?

The Name Dropper/Cert Master

We all know one of these.  They have no visible skills of any utility.  They can't do anything alone without being supervised and even then you usually have to redo their work.  For all intents and purposes, they seem like technological idiots that clearly don't belong in the field.  Yet they have an opinion about everything.  Everything.  And any attempt to try to analyze the stupidity of what they've done ends up with one of the following:

1-  I have X, Y, Z & D certifications, therefore what I did wasn't stupid

2- I worked at ________  , therefore what I did wasn't stupid.

Assuming the Name Dropper is telling the truth, the fact you worked somewhere doesn't mean much necessarily.  Sure, if you worked in R & D at Microsoft Research or headed up the Robotics Program at MIT, I think it's safe to assume you're pretty sharp.  But even then, it wouldn't make you automatically right about everything.  But I've never run into a name dropper that had cred like that.  No, they always did some killer intranet that no one can see for some company years ago when they were in some position way higher than they are now. Which begs the question, if you used to be such a bad a55, what happened?  Why did you move backwards?  And if you're so right about your point of view, why can't you stick to the facts instead of deferring to your former life or credentials?

The That can't be done artist

"Ummm Bill, I was talking to _____ about getting a data entry form that maps back to our Customers table and he said that you can't do that in ASP.NET"  No, I"ve never heard something quite this egregious but I've heard a lot of stuff that is really close.  But the fact they can't do much isn't what's so annoying about these types. The annoying part is that they act so arrogant and talk to everyone who's not a techie like they are totally stupid.  Then you have to deal with the aftermath of what they've done.  A friend of mine who looks a lot like me has a girlfriend that's in the same line of work as Kim.  It honestly took him about 2 years to convince her that all programmers aren't total a-holes.  But that wasn't what was so bothersome. It was listening to the seemingly unending stories of trivial tasks that the geniuses she used to work with told her were impossible.

NOTE TO NON-TECHNICAL READERS:  If you work with a developer who's told you something is impossible more than 3-5 times (and I'm being generous) just go ahead and bank on the fact that the stuff is possible, they just don't know how to do it.  The fact someone has "Software Developer" on their business card doesn't make them any less full of sh1t and just because they say something sternly doesn't make them any less wrong.

If you can't dazzle them with brilliance...

I've met more of these types than I care to mention. They are totally underqualified for their jobs. Typically, their boss doesn't really understand how underqualified they are.  So they cover it up by doing the few things they do know in the most intrusive and difficult manner possible.  Anyone here ever worked with a network administrator that claims to be all sorts of things but makes up really 'interesting' reasons why even simple requests can't be granted?  They always drop buzzwords. They always have really impressive reasons for doing really annoying things. They have an opinion about everything.  They lock you out of everything. They never let you see what they are doing. They can never answer a question.  And if you ask them directly 'How do I do this?" they always reply with "What are you trying to do... Well, that's not how I do it. I don't think you need to have that feature" or some other dodge. Sure , sometimes this is all true, but when EVERYTHING gets one of these answers, you're being baffled with BS.

If we were using...

Another really great one to be around.  Typically can't do much of anything useful.  Can't ever do what's asked of them.  And even after a year, they can't seem to get the grasp of really simple things that they could pick up if they spent 20 minutes looking it up.  But it's not b/c they are lazy. It's not because they won't keep up or do any research. It's b/c of the technology.  You see, if only we were using Cobol on DOS 2.0 we could digitally sign the message and send it with MTOM.  Cobol had this feature that makes such things unnecessary b/c everything done in COBOL is secure.  Or some corrollary nonsense.  I mean, the only correct response to "If we were using X" is "But we're not so it doesn't really matter."

The Control Freak

"Uhh, Bob, I'm new and I just got hired as the Senior DBA.  The CIO told me to talk to you about getting my accounts set up and access to the SQL Server."  What do you need that for?  "Uhh, to do DBA stuff. I don't have an account so I can't get in."  Just use Guest or Public.  "Uhh, yah, but I need to do backups and restores and stuff like that, you know, the stuff they hired me for."  We do tape backups every night and I handle those, you don't need to worry about backups.  "But what if they need a point in time restore, the CIO told me that downtime must be absolutely minimized and that point in time restores are critical."  LIKE I SAID (I love people that start every f~cking sentence with "LIKE I SAID"), I do backups on Tape and we do them every 1/2 hour so that's as close as it needs to be. "Okkeee dokee then, I'll be the DBA of this huge company and make sure nothing goes wrong with the Guest account. Sorry for bugging you."  These same types  have all sorts of other issues.  Hiding servers.  Not giving people access to privileges they need to do their jobs.  Taking down the network in the busiest part of the day and forgetting to tell you they're doing it.   Machines so slow that it takes forever to do a simple task, while saving the powerful machines for their play toys

The What-Iffer

The What-Iffer is another really great one to work with.  "Everyone, I just put a Sql Server named JennaJameson on the network and the Products Database is running on it. You'll need to change your connection strings and start connecting to it."  Well what if Russian underground hackers take over our network. You only have a 35 character password on that machine and they'd easily be able to dictionary attack it and take over everything.  No matter what anyone proposes, they shoot it down, say it can't be done or shouldn't be done and always have some really absurd What-IF scenario about stuff that 'could' happen.

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This sort of stuff isn't unique to I.T., these people exist in many different fields.  But the more I work in this industry, the more I really believe that we are overrepresented with them. So maybe it's just balance, after all I.T. is certainly overrepresented with rocket scientists too so maybe it's just nature balancing itself out.  I don't know, but I know there's a lot of it.  I'm guessing I missed a few.. please feel free to add to the list..