[ale] Awful story...

[Ken Price]

On Mon, 16 Nov 2009 11:04:47 -0500, Pete Hardie <pete.hardie at gmail.com>
wrote:
> The part that really baffles me is that the contractor was fired for
> asking about what he needed - he had not refused to use IE, just that
> he was making sure it was absolutely required.
> 
> Someone in the chain is entirely too tightly-wound

I don't agree that he should have been fired for this.  That's a little
harsh.  But then, he wasn't fired for asking about what he needed.  In
fact, they were going to send him a windows laptop to make sure he could
finish the process and start the work.  He was fired for not keeping his
eye on the ball - he bypassed "chain of command" and contacted a different
department to change [inquire about changing] things which were not within
his job description.  He caused waves.  Linux/Firefox didn't work.  He was
told he needed MS/IE.  He should stopped there, swallowed his pride, and
used MS/IE.

I'm sure I'll get razzed for this, but what professional contractor
doesn't have a computer or laptop with Windows laying around somewhere?  Or
at least has access to one?  My work and home workstations run Ubuntu and
my staging and production environments are CentOS.  I run virtualized
(Virtualbox) copies of WinXP for QA on my Ubuntu workstation, keep an old
(PIII-600) WinXP laptop laying around, AND an older (AMD Duron 650) Win2003
Server.  Brand new Vista laptops can be had for $300 - I just bought one
for my wife.  Come on.

As both a technology director, and a part-time contractor for fortune
100's, I'm not ignorant to the fact that Windows and IE still dominate the
market.  Nor do I fail to realize that most large companies are still tied
to Microsoft products on the front-end, despite their commitment to Linux
on the back-end.

To be frank, I fail to see why everyone is up in arms.  You want a perfect
world?  Compared to 10 years ago, mixed MS and Linux environments now
dominate the landscape.  SCO is no more and SUN is hurting.  Linux has come
a long way already.  Besides, IMHO, only in the last couple years has the
Linux desktop matured enough to be a viable alternative to Windows.  As a
contractor, sometimes the cost of doing business is concession.  Sometimes
an unwritten job requirement is flexibility.  And sometimes egos need to be
put aside for the sake of a paycheck.

I'm done ranting.  :-)

-Ken