17

This day I have received the most glorious news in e-pistolary form. For some years, I was suffering in support of a client who was, well, insufferable. My presence there paralleled the divine comedy in both essence and fact.

I opened the missive, expecting another plea to bail them out of whatever clusterfuck they found themselves in. Instead, what I found was something truly magical.

"Hey Human,

I hope this finds you well. I'm not sure if you remember a few years back, we were trying to decide between IBM Cloud and AWS. Well, after years of battling FF*, we're finally moving ahead with AWS. He failed one too many times to deliver anything visibly. After you left, there was no one left he could use to steal credit, ideas, and work.

FF is still pushing to have them use IBM cloud as a "warm backup" in the event "AWS fails." We will see where that goes.

I figured you'd like to know; you were the void in the wilderness for a long time. I don't want to think about how much time we could have saved if we had just listened.

PeeEm**"

This event represents a personal victory, albeit belated, over a few peoples' absurd amount of privilege. Towards the end, I was vicious about my contestation to the insanity of adopting a desperate hedge attempt-as-cloud offering from a failing company. Some examples:

// cloud 'strategy meeting'
Moi: What cloud platform are we looking at using?
FF: We're looking at IBM cloud and AWS as a second.
Moi: Why is that? I understand you're obligated to rep your offering first, but that decision doesn't seem to have the customer's best interest at heart.
FF: IBM cloud is a market leader; AWS isn't as good.
Moi: I see. I mean, that's the tech equivalent of the company's fleet management considering monkeys on tricycles as a strong competitor to service trucks, but I get what you mean.

// steering meeting
Director: Who can we look to as an example? Who is currently using the IBM cloud?
Moi: No one; they account for a single-digit portion of the actual cloud market. Their long game to sell you a "Hybrid Cloud," which means put some front end payload in a CDN, and buy n-frame units of IBM z servers for the DC with IBM gateway appliances acting as connective tissue. So it's not the cloud at all, really.
Director: How does it compare in cost?
Moi: It's generally 40% more expensive than other clouds, and it only goes higher as you option their software.
Director: What about Watson? I hear Watson is good?
Moi: It's a brand name. Most of the "Watson" product is just a facade on top of FOSS products like Spark, Hadoop, Elasticsearch, etc.
Director: Those were words. They sounded good. FF say it's good tho so we'll believe him because we're from the same city.
Moi: *deletes Director from LinkedIn*

Moral of the story: Never trust a vendor that only recommends their products.

*FF = FatFuck - an embarrassingly rotund individual whose girth is roughly equivalent to his height. He shit his way into an IBM architect position in his mid-20s purely due to winning the visa lottery. He had fake hair glued to his head for his wedding to hide his male pattern baldness; his arrange-married wife undoubtedly cries herself to sleep after sex.

**PeeEm - the then project manager, now portfolio manager of some satellite projects. An overall decent human being, capable.

Comments
  • 3
    Wow I think getting to know you were right even when they don't actually need to inform you about it is now a new life goal for me. The anount of respect they probably had for you is incredible
  • 2
    @hubiruchi
    I pulled their ass out of so many fires, and always arranged the drinking sessions.
  • 1
    @mcfly
    Moi is a beast, to be sure.
  • 2
    I was able to experience professional IBM support.
    Great company!
    They got me waiting for a month to get service account for managed mysql database.
    Turned out it haven’t got all requested permissions.
    So I waited another month for permission alter.
    I recommend their services for everyone who have problems with money.
    They will take care of it.
  • 1
    @vane
    They hire only the finest high school dropouts in all of Pune.
  • 1
    @SortOfTested they’re gonna be fine with anyone.
    The more cheap labor they can get the bigger contracts they can sell. Who cares if those products are made by 5 people and contracted for 1000s. It’s just a matter of good sales and accountants that can move money back and forth and redistribute commission.
  • 1
    @vane
    True. Though their help desk is actually staffed by high schoolers.
  • 0
    There are no good plots anymore - even on a supposed-to-be happy end after the hero defeated IBM, Amazon stills wins...
  • 0
    I know that feeling. Pretty rare.

    Remondis me when I met by accident an old apprentice ... And after having a talk at a coffee station he thanked me "for being the biggest arsehole he ever met in the first weeks". He was a lazy bum... I fixed that. (hrhrhrhrhr)

    Did you have a weird facial expression stuck in your face afterwards, too? XD
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