O/T : Looking for an entry level LAMP developer for contract work.

Fri Jul 31 18:22:22 MST 2015

why lock records on a read?

On 2015-07-31 16:24, David Schwartz wrote:
> Here’s something:
> 
> A while back I had a contract in a support Dept at a Big Corp in town.
> When I started, I was told, “Don’t do anything except hold their
> hands.”
> 
> One Friday morning about two weeks into the contract, I arrived at
> work and everybody in my Dept was gone except me. I wasn’t alerted
> ahead of time.
> 
> Around 11:45 AM, three people appeared at my cube door: the FInance
> Mgr (head of Dept), Payroll Mgr, and someone else.
> 
> The FM said, “I guess you’re the only Support person here today.” I
> said, “Looks that way.”
> 
> He said, “Look, we’ve got a problem here and I need you to get it
> fixed. TODAY. If you don’t your contract is caput. We need someone who
> can fix this crap NOW.”
> 
> As far as SteveT’s question goes … THIS IS PURE PROBLEM-SOLVING
> ABILITY. I had no exposure or knowledge to their system at all. I’d
> been there for 2 weeks and didn’t have a clue about their software,
> hardware, network, or anything.
> 
> 
> I’m like, “Well, ok. What’s the problem?”
> 
> They proceeded to explain it to me … which I’ll summarize here only
> because some of you will get a chuckle out of it.
> 
> Payroll starts running their check run at 11:30 AM.  After about 10
> minutes, it hangs-up. They have to abort the run, void the checks, and
> start over. It usually keeps happening. They run it specifically over
> lunch because most of the Financial Dept is at lunch, so nobody’s
> online.
> 
> I poked around and noticed there were a couple of people running
> reports, including the gal in the cube next to me. (They ran these
> reports that went to Epsons dot-matrix printers and they’d run for
> about 45 minutes.)
> 
> BTW, this is some kind of accounting system running on a bunch of old
> DOS machines (circa 1995) hooked into a Banyan Vines LAN, sharing
> access to files on a file server.
> 
> I looked at how the gal in the next cube ran her reports. It was a
> batch file that looked like this:
> 
> runrptapp.exe xyz abc >lpt
> 
> (I forget what devices were on DOS, but … notice the right-arrow.)
> 
> Digging around, I discovered that this app, which I’m calling
> runrptapp.exe, opens the database file on the server, which happens to
> be the same database file the Payroll app used. It was a very popular
> database back then (i forget the name, but it’s not dBase). I happened
> to know that that particular database used FILE-LEVEL locking.
> 
> Notice the right-arrow …
> 
> Question: who starts off their reports first: the gal in the next
> cube, or Payroll?
> 
> Answer: gal in the next cube! At 11 AM, because she needs it for a 2PM
> meeting, and it usually crashes over lunch and needs to be restarted.
> 
> Did you notice the right-arrow ...
> 
> What happens is she runs her report and the printer is fed data in
> real-time as the report extracts records from the DB. After a while,
> it has extracted as much as it can before the print buffer gets filled
> up, and it starts to crawl along.
> 
> Some time after she starts runnign her report (15-20 mins), the
> Payroll Dept starts their check run.
> 
> It access the same DB.
> 
> Notice that right-arrow … and think, “file-level locking” … and
> “Payroll wants to run against this DB at the same time …
> 
> hmmm …. changed the BAT file to this:
> 
> runrptapp.exe xyz abc >temprpt.txt
> copy temprpt.txt lpt1
> 
> The report took about 15 seconds to run, then it started printing it
> from the local copy on the disk.
> 
> VIOLA! PROBLEM SOLVED.   sort of …
> 
> Monday morning I had another manager wating at my door when I arrived.
> “Weren’t you told not to fix anything for these people? JUST HOLD
> THEIR HANDS, right?”
> 
> "Well, the Finance Mgr said if I didn’t do SOMETHING he’d fire me.”
> 
> <grrr>
> 
> The vendor had sent out their top support people, and even sent their
> DEVELOPERS, and NOBODY had been able to fix this problem. They even
> had some support guys from Banyan come out, and they couldn’t fix it
> either.
> 
> Turns out, the Finance Dept didn’t like this piece of software and it
> came with a 90-day money-back guarantee. They wanted their money back.
> 
> Nobody else who’d tried to fix this problem, including the SMEs,
> couldn’t solve it.
> 
> But silly me … it took me about 15 minutes to fix it. With no
> subject-matter expertise at all.
> 
> And a week later, my contract was terminated. :o
> 
> 
> So it doesn’t surprize me when people report they have trouble finding
> folks with good problem solving skills.
> 
> Unfortunately, the kinds of questions I get in interviews don’t go
> into this at all. They’re mostly general stuff, trick questions, and
> things intended to get a feeling of how good you are with existing
> tools.
> 
> This is the problem. If people have good problem-solving skills, they
> CAN figure this shit out, no matter what.
> 
> But if you don’t know the tools, and regardless of you problem-solving
> skills, BZZZTTT! You’re DISQUALIFIED!
> 
> I’ve also worked at several places where we encountered LAN problems,
> and after a couple of days with their “A+ Certified,” “Novell
> Certified," and “Microsoft Certified” experts being unable to solve
> server/workstation issues that were holding me up, I asked if I could
> “take a look”. In every instance, I’ve been able to solve their
> problems in about 15 minutes, knowing nothing about their specific
> network, but just from my general understanding of networking, LANs,
> and that stuff.
> 
> Yet I could not get a job in an IT Dept if my life depended on it —
> I’m not “certified” and obviously “lack the expertise”.
> 
> This stuff drives me nuts, becuase nobody interviews in a way that
> uncovers problem-solving abilities at all.
> 
> It’s nearly 100% focused on identifying subject-matter expertise the
> candidate may (or may not) have in very narrow technical areas.
> 
> This seems totally naive, but I’d think a company would want to have a
> few people on staff who are excellent problem-solvers, and just loan
> them out to projects and departments that get stuck on various issues.
> Because problem-solving skills are NOT technology-specific. (In fact,
> they seem to be relatively hard to find.)
> 
> -David Schwartz
> 
> 
> 
>> On Jul 28, 2015, at 9:32 PM, Steve Litt <slitt at troubleshooters.com> 
>> wrote:
>> 
>> On Tue, 28 Jul 2015 20:30:31 -0700
>> Sesso <sesso at djsesso.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> "Companies should focus a little less on buzzwords, and a lot more
>>> on someone's ability/desire to learn, ability to think critically,
>>> and ablility to solve problems.”
>>> 
>>> 
>>> I have a hard time finding candidates with all 3 of the above. I have
>>> met many that have a strong desire to learn but lack problem solving
>>> skills. Now for a shared hosting company, this is fine.
>>> Dedicated/Cloud infra. won’t work out.
>>> 
>>> jason
>> 
>> What are both of you meaning by "problem solving skills?" What,
>> exactly, would the work of someone with "problem solving skills" look
>> like?
>> 
>> How does "problem solving skills" differ from "thinking critically?"
>> 
>> I'm not asking out of idle curiosity, this is actually part of what I
>> do.
>> 
>> 
>> SteveT
>> 
> 
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-- 
Keith Smith