Turns out I do have a story of my own to tell, from my last job back in Mexico with a company called Organizacion Sahuayo. These guys are a grocery wholesaler, in direct competition to Sam’s Club and Costco and have their main offices in Mexico City.
They were looking for IT personnel to perform what basically amounts to data capture on IBM i5 servers through dumb terminals. Given these things are big iron, they don’t want just anyone touching them. Started well, put in a lot of hours since backups have to be performed to tape and take an hour daily.
Work was doing the data capture, documenting things in a wiki, making sure all user workstations are in order, that the sales people WinCE computers are transmitting sales data; 10, 11 hours of this everyday. Fast forward six months and my direct boss isn’t pulling his weight. Gets to the point where I walk in to the HR lady and lay it down: Either I get his job or I quit.
Two days later, I get the job. Another two days later I get a little assistant of my own to help me do a server migration, do a full warehouse inventory — manual eye counting! Manual number capture! — and learn what needs to be done daily. At this point I’m at the office from 6AM ’till 10PM everyday, when the daily backup starts and I can let the minion mind it until done.
The Boss himself is coming from Mexico City along with a “new” 15 year old server to make things go faster, as we’re losing sales due to slow service — that manual capture thing again. We’re also getting help from the Lady in charge of Ciudad Juarez’s IT.
Minion and me get to know the Lady, and she gets my opinion of what the guys in Mexico City are doing with their big iron: slowly killing the company by sticking with the story that their servers are fast, secure and will never ever fail. Showed her a couple of skunkworks projects I had going to try and improve things, then spread them to my colleagues in other cities.
The Boss shows up. We close up shop early, start the migration, which takes 60+ hours, starting Friday evening and finishing in the early hours of monday morning. I show up at 6AM as usual, and get stuff done. 10AM turns and the minion and the Lady show up. I get told to go to HR. I get told by HR The Boss has determined I lack the proper attitude for a head of IT and I’m being terminated immediately, with eight weeks severance thrown in.
Turned out the Lady was The Boss’ squeeze and told him all about my little projects and opinions. Two years later I’m typing this up on Reddit and wishing to get back into IT.
Basicamente mi historia durante mis tiempos en Organizacion Sahuayo, subsidario de Grupo Corvi. Mi opinion de los sistemas que usan ahi sigue siendo la misma.
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