Category: Commentary

Due to the amount of spam coming from China, I’ve had to disable comments on my blog.  Live Spaces does not require anything more than you are logged into Live to be allowed to comment on a blog.  This leaves it open to bots to post like crazy.  The result has been an ever increasing number of spam comments to sites in Asia, advertising and selling all sorts of crap.  I’ve been spending more and more time trying to clean up this rubbish but now I’ve had enough of it.  I’ve complained to Live, Microsoft, anyone, and nothing has been done.  The solution would be simple: place a “captcha” on the comment site to prevent bots from submitting a comment.  Instead, MS Live is forcing its users to either leave Live or disable the 2-way communication of a blog.

I am researching the possibility of leaving Live Spaces completely.  My main requirement is being able to take my content with me.  Until there’s a solution or I’ve migrated I won’t be able to re-enable 2-way communications on this blog.

I’ve just switched over to my “7MB” ADSL broadband connection at home.  7MB, eh?  Not quite.  I wonder if they give back 1/7th of my money?  I’m probably not heavily contended (or contended at all) either.  It’s still during the work day here in a small commuter town and most everyone around here is with Eircom.

Ever hear the Fleetwood Mac song, "Tell Me Lies"?  That’s what Vodafone should use in their TV and radio advertising.  The lying such-in-such who said he’d call at 09:00 yesterday never called.  Add that one to the original sales guy lying to me about the contract cancellation and I aint happy.

For example: I received a letter yesterday to confirm my new contract AT THE HIGHER RATE.  Seriously Vodafone, you are playing with fire here.

They really have a UPC customer service thing going on.  I’m contemplating a call to Joe Duffy or Ray Darcy now … they love stories like this.  I think I should make contact with my cousin who works in Neswstalk 106 production as well.  It’d make for a nice piece in the prime time Tuesday tech slot with George Hook.  I wonder how that would affect an expensive TV advertising campaign?

I’m adding to this post at the end as events take place.

Back in early 2006 I chronicled my 3 month saga when Eircom hijacked my broadband from BT Ireland.  They refused to deal with me and started billing.  I refused to pay.  A lawyer contacted me and threatened me on behalf of Eircom.  He said I’d never hear from him again after I promised to take his house, car, savings and pension fund.  Eircom eventually sent me a formal written apology.

On Sunday I got a call from Vodafone who I have a mobile phone contract with.  They offered to sign me up to their home broadband for much less than BT Ireland.  Cool, but I didn’t have my UAN number on me.  They promised to call this morning.  They didn’t.  I checked the website and saw a plan with more capacity that was still cheaper than what I have with BT Ireland.  Cool.  I went through the process of setting up a transfer from BT Ireland.

1 hour later I get a call from Vodfone’s sales team.  “Oh, you should have called us because we can save you 15% because you’re a mobile pay monthly customer.  Why not cancel that contract and sign a new one with us over the phone?”. 

F-UP #1: I was signed into the Vodafone website where my pay monthly plan is visible.  Why didn’t the home broadband system detect this and apply the discount?

I was OK with that, on the condition that they cancel the original web contract.  “Oh yes sir, I can do that” was the reply from Vodafone sales.  “I’ll do that now”.  He went on to sign me up for the reduced contract.  We did the contract over the phone thing.  I knew it was being recorded so at the end I was sure to ask if my original web contract was cancelled.  “Oh yes sir, it is”.  He said he’d call back to do some verification.  5 minutes he called back.  “Now sir, you’ll have to call 1907 (Customer Care) your mobile, press 2 and 2 again to cancel the web contract”.  What?  He lied?

F-UP #2: Don’t lie to me.  I don’t like lies.  I hate people who lie to me and who accuse me of lying.  You won’t like me in either of those circumstances.

I called the number and used the exact options he gave me.  You know what that does?  It cancels your roaming international discounts that were forced onto the communications companies by the EU.

F-UP #3: If you give instructions then make sure they are correct.

At this point I decided to speak to a human in Customer Care.  Frances answered and she said she could do nothing so I’d have to go back to sales again.  She transferred me to Corey, a lead in sales.

I explained all of this to Corey.  I explained that I’d like this all to be sorted out quickly and I’d hate to have to get ComReg involved because I was being double-billed because a Vodafone sales person screwed up and lied to me.  He responded: “What’s ComReg”.  I was stunned.  I asked him why he didn’t know the name of the national communications regulator in Ireland.  He and his staff are supposed to be selling according to the rules that they dictate.

F-UP #4: Don’t call me stupid.

Corey then accuses me of being stupid for signing 2 contracts at once.  (A) I was told by his staff member that the original contract was cancelled.  (B) This jumped up Britney headset wearing beyotch who’s dream is to make €25K a year calls me stupid?  I hung up.

F-UP #5: Don’t make me angry.  You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.

I called Customer Care again.  I told them I’d like to cancel “any and all” (I was very clear about this) contracts with Vodafone.  I wanted to be left on BT Ireland without any service interruption.  Regarding the service interruption issue the woman hummed and doged the question like the offspring of Mary Harney and Biffo (there’s an image!).  I said I wanted a “yes” or “no” answer.  Eventually I was told that some time in the future my broadband would go offline and I would then be able to sign with someone else.  And sure anyway, Vodafone were buying the BT Ireland home/SME business.  “OK” I responded, “I’ll switch my mobile phone to O2 as well while I’m at it.  And if I do have an outage, expect ComReg to call you”.  If I’m promised a 7 day cooling off period then I expect to be able to use it.

F-UP #6: I’m a hard negotiator.  Don’t make the mistake of motivating me even more.

I offered this customer care rep an alternative option.  “Fax me a copy of Corey’s P45”.  That’s the form you get when you’re sacked.  “If you do that then I’ll stay with Vodafone.  I’ll consider not bad mouthing your company to every person I meet.”  So there it is, Corey’s job versus my money going to Vodafone.  I was told I’d get some sort of call later today, hopefully from Corey’s boss.  A formal complaint against him was taken.

It reads to me like a cluster-F by Vodafone.  My advice.  If you are looking for Home broadband or DSL in Ireland then steer clear of BT Ireland (because they will be Vodafone soon) and Vodafone.  If this is what sales and customer care are like then the product must be rubbish.

EDIT #1:

This morning I chased up with Vodafone.  I was promised action by midday, a deadline I set.  At 16:00 I get a call.  A weak apology and a promise to call me at 09:00 on Monday.

At 16:45 I took a call from Ian D. in Vodafone Ireland.  Someone told him about my blog post and he’s actioning responses.  Ian was very reasonable.  He beleived the website should have offered me the discounted rate after I was logged in.  He’s going to follow that up with the devs.  I already know that Corey is being talked to.

I’ve agreed to continue with Vodafone.  They are the cheapest land boradband operator in Ireland.  I have no interest in unreliable wireless broadband.  I barely get a phone signal in my house at the edge of town.  My mobile forwards to the landline when I’m here and I’ve sarted using Skype.

Then something disturbing.  Vodafone Ireland is assuming that everyone will be OK with being offline for 3 days during a transfer to them.  They are not sending out usernames and passwords in advance to customers during the transition.  Here’s their flow:

1. You sign up.
2. 10 days later your phone transfers.
3. 21 days after that your broadband transfers to Vodafone.
4. You now have no Internet access, email, VOIP, etc.  There goes your business.
5. 3 days after this outage you get a new router, all configured to go online … assuming An Post doesn’t delay delivery or you’re in when they call around.

I told him this was unnacceptable to anyone who works from home or for any small business that uses the domestic package (many do!).  He took that, noted it and said he’d give that feedback to the product owner.  I followed that up by suggesting that it would be bad to act like Eircom when they are trying to tease Eircom customers away with mass media advertising.  Heck, I should have even said the dreaded UPC!

This is how it should go:

1. You sign up.
2. You get an email & letter with instructions, passwords and usernames.  That’s what happened when I switched over from Digiweb to BT Ireland.
3. 10 days later your phone transfers.
4. 21 days after that your broadband transfers to Vodafone.
5. You change your password/username in the router and have minimal downtime.

We’ll see how this goes.  Ian gave me the broadband username/password.  I told him I would be chasing Vodafone for lost downtime and costs incurred.  My work relies on me being online.  I will be trying to configure my router with them when the inevitable outage occurs.  Any failure will lead to actions being taken due to lost business and expenses that take place to compensate for lost broadband.

See more here.

In Ireland, unemployment is over 12%.  It’s approaching 10% in the USA.  It’s estimated that the real rate (not the propaganda rate) in China is around 24%.  It’s global and it is indiscriminate.  In Ireland, half of those unemployed were probably in the construction industry.  A sizable percentage are office/skilled workers.  IT is being hit hard.  I checked the jobs pages out of curiosity for Windows admins.  Monster and a few of the Irish sites only had around 10-15 recent job adverts.  Over half of those were for the same job (that internet gaming company on the southern part of the M50 I talked about before).  I saw one looking for a senior administrator for €35,000/year – just over half what it should be.  I’m starting to hear from friends and ex colleagues who are losing their jobs.  There were two last week.

I know unemployment.  I was recruited out of college by a hardware/software/consulting company back in 96.  I stayed with them for 4 years. I thought I was doing great.  Promoted every year, pay rises every year, etc.  I got bored and changed to another company that was a consulting firm – when I joined them.  A month after that they decided to become a “dot bomb” and ignored consulting sales for a year.  I spent a year surfing the net.  Then the inevitable happened.  They started laying people off and my team was second to be hit.  I got a nice payoff and went to the USA for a road trip.  This was the end of 2001.  The IT business was in its own little recession and there was zero work.  What little there was required skills and certifications.

During those last 5 years I hadn’t really developed the way I should have.  I knew products from my first employer.  I’d picked up things a long the way but there was no directed effort, no focus.  I had no certifications.  It was only towards the end of my time with the dot bomb that I’d gotten my first MCP with a plan to become and MCSE.  I was now seeing the few job adverts that there were and they all wanted certs.  Ask a veteran IT pro is a cert worth anything… is it?  Only a little.

• It isn’t everything because it’s book knowledge, not real world knowledge.  Often the materials and questions are out of date, e.g. WSUS 2.0 questions in Windows 2003 exams.  I’ve seen performance related questions where the right answer was the wrong answer.  But I knew to give the answer the pre-programmed test wanted from the out of date book.
• HR people know nothing about what we do.  They just want certs because they assume it means you’re an expert.
• There is definitely theoretical knowledge to be gained that helps you with best practice implementations and troubleshooting.

I had my single MCP and wasn’t even getting rejection letters for my applications.  When you register for the dole here in Ireland you have to also register with Fás, a state training organisation.  They told me thy could do nothing for me.  I hit Amazon and ordered my next MCP exam book.  I did it two ways: MS Press official books and Exam Cram books.  The latter was sometimes better than the former for content.  I found their W2K AD design book was concise and superb.  Every 2-4 weeks I did an exam.  I had all the time in the world.  I’d VMware Workstation on my 2 PC’s and worked out every lab.  I studied from when I woke up until I went to bed.  For 6 months I did that and in the end I got my W2K MCSE.  It became an almost OCD thing … I felt guilty on Christmas day for not studying.  I found myself refreshing notes at 2 or 3 in the morning.

Finally in Feb 2002 I started to get some traction on my job applications with my recent MCSE.  I did some interviews and got a job – which I came to hate.  That didn’t work out and one Friday I got the bad news.  My first reaction to being on the dole again was to go to a book store.  I’d been working with XP, Citrix MetaFrame and ISA.  I bought the best books and started studying again.  I added those 3 exams to my CV over the next couple of months.

After that I got my big break in 2003 after 3 months signing on.  I did a 6 month contract where I proved myself and then landed a job designing, deploying and managing a Windows 2003 network for an international bank.  I was able to use everything I’d learned during my unemployment.  From that job I learned loads more about the larger IT Pro picture.  I got great experiences.  I went from asking questions all of the time to answering a lot of them.  It’s because of the hard work I put in while I was unemployed that I am where I am now.

It’s pretty crap that people are finding themselves out of work.  I’ve been there and I remember the emotions of it.  I know we’re all at risk of being there, especially here in Ireland where or economy was mismanaged before the collapse and has made it worse.  My advice is simple.  If I found myself unemployed tomorrow, I’d hit Amazon.com and order in books on the latest exams.  In the morning I’d be running (I actually was running 5K a day a year and a half ago before I got too busy for it).  Exercise is supposed to stimulate the brain and aid memory.  Then I’d come home, shower, make a coffee and hit the books with virtualised labs with a TechNet subscription.  In Ireland, there might even be a way to get Fás to pay for some of this.  It’s worth asking.  I’d use the free TechNet labs on Microsoft’s site.  I’d sit every exam I could and progress up the cert ladder.  You’d learn a lot.  You’d make your CV more likely to get past the HR people.  Importantly you wouldn’t be sitting in the house, getting depressed.  But most important, you’d look self motivated – show in your CV that’s what you’ve been doing.  It will impress – I promise.

If you are in that boat then I wish you the best of luck.  I’ve been there and I’ve felt like s**t.  But you can get out of it.

If you have anything to add, please post a comment.

Whatever your opinions on music piracy, there is no doubt that what EMI, (Evil) Sony, Universal and Warner are trying to do in Ireland is just plain wrong.  Together they are trying to sidestep the Dáil (the Irish parliament where law is decided for our country) and introduce their own piracy laws in Ireland.  Their lawyers have threatened to sue 4 ISP’s here if they don’t implement a 3 strikes system.  In this system anyone detected downloading copyrighted music 3 times would be banned from the network.  Eircom folded and implemented these rules.  It’s not surprising Eircom folded; they admit to being wrong out of habit these days.  BT Ireland is saying that they are going to fight back along with UPC.  Why would they not implement this system?

• Their administrative costs would increase because they’d have to implement mechanised and human systems to detect downloads.
• Human costs would vastly increase to discriminate copyrighted downloads from open license downloads – there’s no way to really automate this.
• Legal costs could be huge because incorrectly banned users would rightly go after the ISP directly via legal avenues and via the regulator.
• THERE IS NO LAW REQUIRING THE ISP’s TO DO THIS.

How dare corporations try to bypass the elected government of this country.  I hope people continue to pirate your music for this.  Maybe you should have a look at yourselves, eh?  How come a CD in the UK is being advertised on TV €12 but it’ €22 here?  The difference in sales tax doesn’t come anywhere near explaining that and neither do exchange rates.  I just wonder why people in Ireland wouldn’t buy your overpriced crap?

I met an IT manager recently and had an interesting conversation with him.  He’s in an organisation/line of business where the IT budget would be generous and costs would be lower when compared to private business.

We discussed various things.  He talked about one particular problem he has and how he’s going out to tender for a fix.  He’s using an older MS product (1 generation behind) and he needs to make it site fault tolerant.  Certainly he could ease those issues by going to the current generation of the product and the next generation (probably 6 months away) will definitely fix the issue.  If he goes ahead with his tender plans he’ll probably have to spend €3,000 to €7,000 per server in his architecture!  It’d probably be cheaper to upgrade the product.  I suggested he have a look into doing this.  I didn’t care either way – we don’t sell licenses and we’re not a consulting company.  He then went on a bit of a rant about never using the current generation of Microsoft products.  His policy is to always stay 1 generation behind the current release.

I know someone else in his line of work about 1 hour down the road.  He works in a very similar organisation.  But their attitude contrasts very much.  They’ve embraced the latest stuff from Microsoft (and probably from others).  They aren’t doing this because their Microsoft-philes or they’ve bought into the marketing.  They do it to take advantage of new solutions, fault tolerance and flexibility.  They’ve studied the products and made an informed decision.  This is bringing their costs down substantially, increasing their automation and probably making their service better to the “business”.  I bet the staff also are enjoying the job more too.

I think we’ve all encountered organisations like this where someone there has heard of a friend of a friend, that knows someone that met a person that bumped in a guy in the pub who had a new Microsoft product that “brought the business down”.  I can’t say I’ve had that experience myself.  But those networks with that attitude tended to be a mess.  I can think of one company I did some work in that had that attitude.  I left there scared to do anything major in case it all came down around me.  I left … and it all came down.  I met a senior manager from there not so long ago and he admitted I was right all along.

In the first organisation above I know they had a disaster.  With some forward thinking they could have avoided it.  I don’t want to get into specifics here because it’ll become clear to many who I’m talking about.  The point is, being more open minded towards technologies and methodologies will allow you to avoid these issues and keep costs down.  Shouting “boo” at the sunrise and making declarations of “witchcraft” won’t stop the sun from rising.

Maybe this is something like IT security?  You can only do so much to the iron to secure things.  In the end you have to look at the meat sitting between the chair and the monitor?

I had to satisfy my curiosity this morning so I went and had a look.  I checked out 2 of the main recruitment sites that are used in Ireland.  Key words I was looking for were Sysinternals, 24*7*365 and Exchange 2007.  Easily half the adverts were for one job with the aforementioned Internet gaming company in south Dublin, just off the M50.  They have just about every recruitment agency in Ireland trying to find staff for this role with no joy.  Seriously people, if you’re offering a great package (which they most certainly are), there’s an abundance of available skills (12% unemployment, half of which are skilled professionals) and you still can’t fill that role – don’t you think you need to look at yourself and ask some serious questions?

Another recruiter rang me today about the role.  It was a quick “thanks but no thanks” conversation.  He sounded exhausted with this one.  I can’t blame him.

There’s an Internet gaming company here in Ireland, just off the M50 in south Dublin, that’s been recruiting for a senior Windows engineer for at least 4 or 5 months.  I’ve been contacted several times by agencies but I’ve no interest in them.  Normally it’s a place I would have been interested in: massive numbers of mission critical Windows servers including Windows 2008.  Tip off words in their adverts mention car parking, gym membership, 24*7*365, Exchange 2007 and Sysinternals.  That last one’s a dead give away 🙂

I blogged about them back in mid 2007.  I had some experience of how they advertised for an architect and the opening was really for a break-fix engineer.  I found that out in the last of 4 interviews. 

So why are they having trouble filling this job?  That last thing I mentioned is a clue of what they’re like.  I know some people who’ve interviewed there in the past and came out feeling bitter like I did.  I know someone (let’s call him Bob) who did their phone interview and was then asked to come in for 4 in-person interviews … at 2PM on the following Monday.  Bob couldn’t do it.  He has to give 1 months notice for time off.  Skiving off from work isn’t in his nature but the HR person was insistent that the interview would not be after hours.  It seems she wanted to recruit someone for their senior position who had no problem dossing from work.  When the Monday plan wasn’t going to work (after 1 month notice being explained).  Here’s what she offered: “OK, we’ll interview everyone else.  If nothing works out then we’ll call you in for the following Monday”.  The only response Bob could give her “Fine, we’ll then book the day off 1 month from the point you call me to say that no one else was suitable”.  Stupid, eh?  All because Ms. Thing wanted to finish work at 17:30.  That brought an end to his dealings with the company.

Unemployment is at over 12% in Ireland right now.  We have a 4 million population.  Lots of those have been skilled employees with great skills.  There’s no shortage of available people and others who are hunting for more secure work.  Any company that’s been failing to fill a position after 4 or 5 months must look at itself and ask some serious questions. 

• Advertise the job that really is open.  Don’t back load the surprises that spring up in the last interview, the contract or the first day of work.
• A person cannot know everything.  You have a laundry list of requirements so look for people who have similar skills that can transfer, e.g. they can learn new skills.  A handful of people in Ireland know the HP RDP stuff.  Consider people who know WDS because they aren’t too different.
• Be flexible.  Asking people to take a risk by dossing from work in the middle of the day is ridiculous.  People are in fear for their jobs so make allowances.  Do you really want to hire someone who will doss from your company?  Are you going to “change them”?  LMAO!  I suspect in this case that the HR person was at fault.  We IT people are used to working late.  HR … well they clock out at 17:30 (oh that’s 5:30PM, dear).

An Irish subsidiary, DEPFA (aka Hypo Public Finance) has caused the downfall of German bank, Hypo Real Estate.  They were bailed out last year by the German government (at least once) and today I heard they are being nationalised.  Congratulations or sympathies go out to the German taxpayers who just became exclusive stockholders.

Why the heck is this appearing in my IT blog?  I used to an employee of Hypo Real Estate.  Back in 2003, Hypovereinsbank (HVB)  spun off its real estate operations as a private company called the Hypo Real Estate Group.  One of the subsidiaries of that was called Hypo International and had its headquarters in Dublin with around 8 branch offices globally and somewhere around 500 employees – I’m basing that on active user count, not on the shareholders reports which used to make be belly-laugh.  In 2003, the company had over 2 times the assets of the largest native bank in Ireland.  Amazing when you consider we had 35 employees in Dublin.  The company did grow over the following 2 years that I was there to 17 sites (including DR) from New York to Tokyo and many more employees.

Typically of a bank, we had more systems than you can shake a stick at.  That also included some mad-expensive loan risk calculations system designed/deployed by a UK based company.  Funnily enough, they had also deployed it in Anglo Irish Bank, another bank to go bust and be nationalised because of a bad property loan book!

Muggins here was responsible for designing and managing the MS IT infrastructure across Hypo International.  My team of 2 others looked after 170 servers (including DR for half of the sites) and did 3rd level desktop support.  We probably had around 2 hours of non-project work a day thanks to us adopting the principles of Dynamic Systems Initiative and Optimised Infrastructure.  We built according to best practices, to be agile and with as much automation as possible in the network.  Implementing SMS 2003 and Microsoft Operations Manager 2007 changed our lives.  That meant we spent most of our time either working on business projects or doing research, e.g. everything we did was developed first in a lab and then deployed into production, e.g. we were using ADS to deploy servers in the lab and Virtual Server 2005 RC before we put them into production and I built up DSACLS scripts for our AD administrative delegation model in the lab before running them in production.  Our IT department of 15 ran things very nicely from a central point.  Some of the branch offices had no IT, some did and some did but they were more of a hindrance than help, e.g. political nightmares, “slopey shoulders” or spending more time in the pub than in the office.

We could see the endemic problems in the company very early on.  Myself and a guy called Dec (a whiz Lotus Notes guru … poor chap 😉 ), went over to Germany to set up a branch office.  It was funny because the directors spent more time there than in Dublin; Dublin was only the HQ for tax reasons – this was a German bank with mainly German directors.  We had defined hardware standards for everything and in every branch to keep things simple, e.g. 2 laptop models and 2 desktop models, certain server models/specs for every role – all HP.  That meant my job to run it all would be easy.  Munich decided that wouldn’t do.  You see Munich is the home of Siemens, a German IT company.  Fujitsu Siemens makes computer hardware.  The Munich IT guys decided they would only have FS hardware.  I wasn’t having any of it.  We forced them to get local pricing for HP gear.  [Rotten Smells] They then gave us a B.S. story that there were no HP resellers in Munich. Sure they don’t!?!? [/Rotten Smells]  Directors got involved and they were allowed to buy FS hardware which they promptly cocked up.  Their FS servers had onboard SCSI controllers that didn’t support Windows Server 2003 – our standard server operating system that we were deploying in September 2003.  After 9 days of hard labour, me and Dec brought he system alive for a Monday morning start.  100 staff walked in to find PC’s running, applications installed, email working and their data in place.  There was a champagne launch in the mid morning – and the lazy local f***er who sat surfing the net all day long was thanked for doing all the work, not us.  He’d claimed responsibility for it!!!  He continued that sort of behaviour after that – taking credit for the good things and trying to blame others for his mistakes.

Back in Dublin we saw how things would be.  Our compliance officer had to educate us according to IFSRA (finance regulators) rules so everyone was brought in for an hour long class in small groups.  The short story was that:

• We could not accept presents or bribes from anyone
• If we saw anything that was illegal we had an obligation to whistle blow
• Any whistle blowers would be fired

Hah!  Our Infernal (Internal) Audit was laughable.  They spent more time investigating my team and the helpdesk than doing their job.  I’d deployed security systems and audit tracking on everything.  Nothing happened on that network that I didn’t know about.  Anyone who stepped out of line heard from me immediately.  Infernal Audit should have focused on a particular department called Capital Markets and their operators … and themselves.  For example, if I went to Munich to do some work my hotel budget was something like €75/night which got me into an awful hotel.  Strangely, when Infernal Audit went they stayed elsewhere where the rooms were over €200/night.  Our directors offices were an interesting sight coming up to Christmas – packed full of gifts from all sorts.  What happened to “no presents”?

Capital Markets was funny.  The director in charge of it was a buddy of the group CEO.  I was told that he’d tried to do the capital markets thing in HVB before the spin off but it didn’t work out.  They did the same again in Hypo International but it still didn’t work out.

In August 2005, the board announced some changes.  Hypo International was to be merged into a sister company.  The Dublin office was to be spun off as another company called Hypo Public Finance. This would be the third attempt by the CEO’s buddy to do his own thing.  I guess the logic was “third time lucky”.  Part of the corporate change was:

• All Irish staff were to be made redundant
• All of IT was to be moved from Dublin to Stuttgart by the following April including all of the servers
• Staff could apply for a number of junior jobs to be “set up” in the new Dublin company
• There might be openings in Stuttgart but only for fluent German speakers

Political cronies (e.g. a sniffing red nosed tosser we called Hip Flask who’d come in late & hung over and return from the toilets with an even redder nose, sniffing and all perky *ahem*) all became directors and their stooges all became managers.  What happened immediately was that all senior staff were let go, including me.  In my exit interview I told them that “I would be available for contract work” and that “they would never find staff who could move my network to Germany”.

For some reason they invited all current and past staff to the Christmas Party that year.  I went along.  The third-time-lucky-hopeful director visited every table.  We’d (IT) chosen our table to stay away from everyone else so we were the last ones he’d visit.  I was off my face when he sat down beside me.  I told him he’d made a strategic mistake.  I also told him his company would sink.  I think history will show that I was right.

Not long after I was gone a team of consultants from a German firm was flown in.  That cost a fortune.  At one point 35 of them were trying to do the job of 15.  Nothing had moved by the deadline of the following April.  It’s not like the network was a mess – it was in perfect order but it was done with the latest and best solutions and a level of automation that most don’t ever see.  They couldn’t figure it out.  Eventually they tried a migration to Dell hardware and that was a disaster.  I later heard that management considered calling me to see if I’d do some contract work.  From what I understand, they now have an Irish IT services company looking after the IT systems.  Again, that’s gotta be costing them a fortune.  That one is funny.  In 2005 I did a talk for Microsoft on MOM 2005 to a group of resellers.  One of them used to work with me and was asking loads of questions because he didn’t know the product.  A week later he was presenting at a session as an “expert” in MOM 2005.  He’s the senior “techie” in that IT Irish services company.

In 2007 I was in the IFSC in a coffee shop near the office of the company.  I was then doing a 2 week SMS job for a different company.  I’d get in early and get some coffee while reading the paper.  The new director of IT in Hypo saw me.  She came over to say “hi”.  I was pleasant.  Her: “It’s so hard to find good Windows administrators”.  Me: “It definitely is” with a Cheshire Cat grin on my face.

Hypo Real Estate went on to buy another bank called DEPFA and merged it in with Hypo Public Finance.  They provided loans to governments and huge property developers for hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars.  They’d fund that by trading on the stock market, buying/selling loan books and taking short term loans from other banks.  There was no retail operation to leverage.  When things went sour last year then DEPFA was immediately hit and it nearly bankrupted Hypo Real Estate.  This is an operation with huge amounts of assets whose value were plummeting.  The German government had to bail them out at least once and now is being forced into nationalising them.

I pinged a few of my workmates this morning when I heard the news on the radio.  To say we all shared a laugh would be an understatement.  They had a really good thing going with us and they treated us like dirt.  I hope their directors are bankrupted and investigated up the wazoo.

EDIT #1

I used to have a really good laugh at the end of my time there when I saw stockholder reports.  350 employees in Hypo International.  My arse there were 350!!!  The "Last Logon" attribute in AD said there were 800+.  Who would I trust more – a bunch of disgraced directors or a computer system that keeps a track of everything?