IBM job cuts and how to survive them

According to this blog IBM is cutting 2,800 workers - which is probably only about 1% of their workforce but still quite traumatic if you are part of that 1%.

I've been laid off myself in the past so I sympathize deeply with that 1% however it's probably the right thing for IBM to do. I'd be a lot more worried if IBM's response to the current economic climate was to pretend that the global downturn wasn't going to affect them.

Here's a hint for any technical people who are laid off - surf through PlanetLotus and contact any bloggers that are in your area asking if they know of any opportunities. This kind of jobhunting may be right on the edge of Yancy's preferred Code of Conduct but I figure that Loti and affiliates are here to help each other and these are unusual times.

Personally I'm not looking for any new resources this month but if you are in Sydney (or looking to relocate) then feel free to send me your details for future reference. If you don't know the skills I'm looking for then you obviously haven't been reading my blog :)

Good luck to you ex-IBM people.
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Notes R8.5 Help: User-Hostile by design?

Is it just me or is the new eclipse-based R8.5 Help system user-hostile by design? I needed to check the syntax of the 'or' operator in a Hide-When formula so I opened R8.5 Help and clicked on 'Index'.

• Typing in 'or' gave no results;
• Typing in 'Formula' bought up two entries - 'adding to background' and 'wallpapering table cells';
• Typing in 'Hide-When' gave four results which I can't list here because you can't copy and paste from the Help screen and I didn't feel like typing out the results (but take my word for it - they were useless).

At that point I thought to check whether I was actually in Designer Help so I used Alt-Enter to open the Properties Box but unfortunately the new Properties Tab doesn't tell you which database you are looking at. Using the 'Search' feature of Help brings 72 results for Hide-When... none of which seem to cover the way to construct formulae.

Eventually I opened up the R8 Designer Help file on my server and found the answer there in less than a minute.

Bring back the old Notes Help system... please
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OT: Bill Gates proving that MS doesn't have a 'Chinese Wall'

In the Age of Napoleon the British navy was under threat from woodworm. In the Age of Obama (TM) there is a different kind of worm threatening to scuttle Her Majesty's fleet. When the RN standardized on 'Windows for Warships' as the operating system to run the computer systems on their ships there were a number of voices raised in warning about the unsuitability of that OS to perform as required. If you follow through some of those links in that article you will eventually wind up with the statement of Bill Gates given in 2002 when the State of New York and others took on Microsoft Corporation. That's where our story starts...

Have a read of the following sections of Bill's statement from 2002:

216. In a purely theoretical world, one could imagine developing modest software programs in such a way that any module could be swapped out in favor of a similar module developed by a third party. The replacement module would need to conform identically to the interfaces expected by all of the modules with which it interacts. In the commercial world, it is hard to see what value such replace-ability would provide even if it could be achieved. [Apart from allowing other companies to compete with Microsoft - GD] For Netscape Navigator to suffice as a replacement for Internet Explorer, for example, developers at Netscape would have to devote enormous effort to matching the functions of Internet Explorer and enabling those functions to perform in precisely the same way as Internet Explorer. When they were done, they would have software that is nearly identical to Internet Explorer (a “clone”), providing little or nothing in the way of new value.

217. In addition, if Microsoft were obligated to allow ISVs to clone all the functions of all the “Microsoft Middleware Products” in Windows, Microsoft’s ability to improve Windows would be hampered because the interfaces between modules would necessarily be “frozen” so that third parties could write to them. Given the large number of “Microsoft Middleware Products” in Windows under Section 22.x, the effect would be to freeze large parts of Windows.

The sentence I underlined could have been taken from any book on good programming practice. Was Bill really suggesting that Microsoft doesn't document and adhere to the specified APIs when passing off code requests between Windows and other Microsoft applications? Surely the two development teams don't have access to each others internal documentation? If so, it makes it difficult to continue to claim the existence of the legendary 'Chinese Wall' between Microsoft's OS developers and their application developers. I don't think anyone every took that claim seriously but it's interesting to read Bill testifying to the fact that it technically can't exist.
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Secondhand Lotussphere news about Lotus Foundations

I'd like to be at Lotussphere but I'm not. So be it. What I can do is to scan the other blogs and consolidate the news I read about Foundations. So far I've found two gems:

1. Release 8.5 coming for Foundations. Time do dive a bit deeper into XPages.
2. The ability to plug-in a new Foundations server into an existing Domino infrastructure which raises the question of whether existing Notes client licenses are going to be automatically upgraded to Foundations licenses. Up till now the answer has been "No" but management of a combined native Domino server + Foundations server infrastructure while trying to maintain a segregated license model sounds like quite a challenge. I need to do some research on this one.
   

PS I appreciate PlanetLotus readers will already have read this news on other blogs. This post is for those loyal "Foundation and Empire" readers who don't have time to keep up with PlanetLotus.

EDIT: And if you believe everything you read on Twitter then Foundations 'Branch Office' will be released tomorrow.
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Reasons to outsource your IT department?

My searches picked up a blog about reasons to outsource your IT department. I don’t have a problem with the not-so-surprising revelation that the writer of the blog supplies out-sourcing services (Heck … I blog and I also provide consulting services… its all part of marketing yourself) but I was disappointed in the level of arguments he provided:

1. Cut Employee Costs – OK so you can retrench your full-time IT staff but who do you then use to liaise with the external service provider? You either completely trust your new external IT department to look after your own organization’s bottom line or you allocate one of your other managers to deal with them. If that manager is not fully IT-literate (remember you’ve just sacked all of your regular IT staff) then how do you verify what the service provider wants to do?
   
   You want us to pay $10,000 to replace all of the server magnetos and then reboot the network cables… well, I guess you guys are the experts.
   
   This strategy might work if you are a small (<10 employee) company and you have a great long-term relationship with a trusted supplier but I certainly wouldn’t recommend it as the first engagement you have with a new service provider. You need to maintain sufficient internal IT staff to “keep the bastards honest”.
   


2. Benefit from Expanded Knowledge Base- C'mon now - you don’t need to outsource your entire IT department in order to gain knowledge from external consultants. Remember that all service providers (myself included) want to sell you a service and its quite OK to pick our brains for free now and again. Of course, if you do it too often without tossing the occasional chocolate frog the other way then you’ll destroy a beautiful relationship, but in this era of Wikis and on-line discussion Forums there’s no need to stay locked in your own technical tower. Cruise the internet for a while and tell the consultants they can either play the game your way or you’ll go and talk to their competition.
   


3. Buying in Bulk Really Does Save - Using terminology like “…you don’t have to overpay an underproductive employee” is an unwarranted slur against your staff for their personal work habits and your management ability in not keeping them productive. Surely there are better ways to get your point across than descending to that kind of marketing.
   


4. Remote Technology Cuts Time and Expense – Wow! These guys are really getting stuck into the negative marketing tactics. Suggesting that your own IT employees are incapable of using remote access technology is insulting to them and to you.
   


5. After-Hours Accessibility- I’ve never met a system administrator that saw their job as nine to five on Monday to Friday. So if your IT person works on Saturday then give them Monday off. That’s not rocket science.

Bonus: Supplement your IT- Now you’re talking! This should have been your headline with all that guff about outsourcing as your secondary point. It does make sense for a business to have a friendly IT person at the end of a phone ready to and help when needed, but why buy the cow when all you want is the occasional steak?

P.S. “Bastard” is quite acceptable terminology in Australia eg “You lucky bastard”, “Where has that bastard gone” or “Which one of you bastards called this bastard a bastard?”. I realize that some UK readers may have a problem with the word but this is an Australian blog and when in Rome …
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In the “Had to Happen” Department

My google scans picked up a website offering a ‘crack’ for Foundations to let you enter a serial number and get the software working without needing to contact IBM/Lotus. I won’t bother listing the site because the serial number they provide is useless. Even if the serial number they provide was once accurate it will only last until your server phones home to Canada to check for any upgrades. Of course you could disable internet access for your server but then you can’t send or receive external emails. Kind of like stealing an expensive sports car but being unable to drive it on public streets because you know you’ll be caught.

If you want to try out Foundations then go to link where you can download a free evaluation copy of Foundations.
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Back into harness

My six week holiday from blogging is over. It started as a slow news month in mid-December which led into Christmas and finally had to compete with my New Year project of laying 20 square metres of paving and erecting a new garden shed.

My chiropractor is delighted with the results of my paving work and will probably pay for his daughter’s university degree with the fees I’ll be paying him for the next few months while he pushes my spine back into shape. Meanwhile the paving remains only half-done and the unassembled garden shed remains in its packaging…

Of course this may not the best week to get back into blogging since Lotussphere is happening over in Orlando and it’ll probably be a bit difficult to compete with the noise level from that side of the Pacific.
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