Any penalties for promised uptime outside of normal business hours (0700-1900) will be deducted from future commissions of sales rep who made the promise to the customer. If the sales rep is no longer employed by the company, the IT department has standing permission to pee on the aforementioned sales reps home doormat as often as desired without repercussions, help themselves to food, belongings, personal items, and beverages without cost or repercussions. No promises will be made as to preservation of the virtue of daughters, wives, or pets or sales rep found on the property by IT staff at the time.
But I lurves my AS/400 platform! Don’t take my F keys! I can navigate my screens on muscle memory alone. (I’m not a programmer, I just use the software every day.)
Since I work in accounting, I know that salespeople are our natural enemy, but I didn’t realize they were the natural enemy of database people as well. It stands to reason, I guess, since all salespeople are lying weasels who are coasting through life on “good looks” and “charm” rather than intelligence.
I’m on an Oracle system at my current job - it’s an interesting system. It seems to be powerful as all hell, but incredibly clumsy to actually work with (tips for programmers - people entering data are about a billion times faster when they don’t have to use a mouse at different steps along the way).
Accounting is usually the only allies business systems IT people have. We don’t interact with the Engineers that often, especially if we are talking about AS400s. Sales and even worse Marketing people are the bane of IT staffs everywhere. Operations falls somewhere in between with large variations.
Quite simply the accounting group is trained to think logically. The usually are heavy users of spreadsheet programs and so have a good feel for report layouts and structure and know what data they actually want and have some idea where to dig it out of. The only problem with accounting is occasionally you find the older accountant that is demanding IT supports their quest for the 23 cent variance at the month end. I find this breed has mostly retired/been put out to pasture.
Engineers are usually good very intelligent logical people but they rarely need a complicated report and depending on the company can do it themselves or just need a little help.
Marketing is like a deliberately evil version of a sales person with the added bonus of luving their Macs in a Windows and AS400 world.
But…it’s out by 23 cents! Don’t you understand? IT DOESN’T BALANCE!1!!!
Seriously, I’ve spent a lot of time in my life looking for 23 cents, and after a certain point, you write it off and move on. Now, if we could get computers to stop rounding decimals randomly so every other balance is off by one cent…
Our company prides it self, read that again, on having sales people who have no idea what they’re talking about because one of the suits decided long ago that it means that they believe anything that they’re told and won’t fight back on anything which creates better “synergy” in meetings and presentations. This means that anyone who’s ever been in operations of any kind is not eligible to apply for a sales position with our company. They don’t understand our products, our system, or exactly what it is we do all day, but they’re expected to go out and persuade potential customers to leave competitors and use us instead. Boggles the mind it does.
System 36s certainly could. I spent 1998 and 1999 consulting and managing a consulting practice that had a ton of AS/400. I wasn’t on that side as a consultant, but as a manager, I saw my share of Y2K AS/400 work.
Actually, I’ve read several places that being an SAP consultant is a guarantee of job security up until Armageddon, and quite possibly beyond a return to the Formless Void.
(And it’s been more than ten years since I worked on an AS/400, but I still find myself missing it at times. I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but Microsoft’s documentation makes IBM’s seem the soul of coherency.)
It’s possible. I remember posting a question, something to do with user profiles, but I don’t recall exactly what it was.
We use BPCS, which I understand is a particular flavor of AS400, and what I do is mostly watch for system messages, do nightly or weekly backups, and reset passwords. Oh, and take care of printer writers. I am learning to install printers to the system as well, but that’s down the road. Ah well. Someday I’ll figure out what I want to do when I grow up. hehehe
That being said, I LOVE helping clueless users. Just Monday night, i had a woman call in to get her password reset. I issue the command, it fails, and after 5 minutes working with her trying different variations on her ID (I have since learned a command to bypass all that mess) she reveals that she hasn’t logged in “in about a year”. sigh
fill out this form, send it to helpdesk, and die in a fire.
BPCS is an ERPsystem that runs on the AS400. It probably handles manufacturing, warehousing, customer orders, AP & AR and maybe GL and possible even has a QC module.
Installing printers should be simple most of the time. These days it is mostly lasers installed as IP printers on the AS/400 (iSeries/ System i) that also act as network printers at the same time. Green Bar printers might be a bit harder, but only as the printer itself needs to be configured. Special printing can get more confusing but printer setup is usually as simple or simpler than Microsoft Network printing.
Remember if you have questions, post them or PM me. I might be able to help sometimes. I have 17 years experience now on AS400s. There are a few more of us here on the dope though we are rare.
Oh, they weren’t looking to hire me as a consultant. SAP was looking to hire me as a technical writer for one of their products. They didn’t say why they passed me over, though. Probably just as well–they use Microsoft Word to create their documentation, and Word just sucks mossy pissed on rocks with grubs and worms under 'em. But that’s a rant for another time (10 years and at least 3 major releases, and numbering STILL doesn’t work without arcane incantations. Feh.)
I actually learned to program on an AS/400, back when I thought I’d go for programming instead of writing. COBOL, RPG (in various forms), and CL … it was a nice little machine.
I love this thread. I am the bastard stepchild of sales and marketing (I move our software product through reseller channels). I long ago found that the best way to abuse the tech guys was to bring them into the conversation, not to ambush them. My favorite:
Algher: “We have great technology to handle your needs. Here with me is Tech, to answer any deeper questions.”
Customer: “Algher tells me how great your code is. Is it really that good?”
Tech: “Of course! I am a genius! Dumbfuck sales people cower before my mighty intellect!”
Customer: “So you can handle X, Y and Z?”
Tech: “Of course we can! What idiot would write code without being able to handle X, Y and Z?”
Algher: Hears the lovely sounds of a commission check being deposited.
Any sales guy that hangs his tech team out to dry is an idiot, and probably quota hopping. The smarter sales guy corrupts a few tech resources and lets THEM make promises that THEY have to keep. Much better that way.
By any chance did you attend a school in NJ for that training? It sounds like the program I went through when I gave up on EE for programming.
Selling software and therefore making software for sale is vastly different from IT supporting business systems for businesses like retail, manufacturing, warehousing or nearly any non-software place. Your story makes perfect sense and sadly I don’t even know the mindset of that type of software developer. I have always been a Programmer Analyst for business support.
I did! Cittone Institute, in Edison. Got my certificate in … January 1991, I think. Won the “Software Engineering” award, too, but that was because I did slightly better on the tests than the two guys who finished right after me.
Yeah - lots of overlaps. From my perspective moving enterprise sw, there are three distinct flavors of tech folks:
SEs (Sales Engineers): Tech folks who talk to the tech folks at opportunities. They work for sales, and get a little bit of commission when I write the plans.
SW Engineers: Tech folks who work for engineering writing code. Sometimes brought in when the conversation is over the SE’s head. Those are the ones I focus on corrupting at every company I work for. Having one or two “real” SW engineers in my pocket is very valueable to me.
Pro Services: Technical folks who will implement our solution, train on using our solution, and/or support our solution. They know what it really takes to get running.
