In the early days some startups did not believe in full time techs. They brought them in as needed. I answered an advert for a bloke to set up some SUN servers. It was one of the first ISPs in Wollongong starting up. I set up user accounts for people who signed up for internet access and they all connected via modem. I also set up some instances of apache server with many virtual hosts ready to be handed over to clients for their web sites.
The company blossomed to 11 employees: salesmen, advertising, accounting, other office staff, but no IT people. I was being called in more and more frequently. The owner said there would be a full time job for me if I was willing to work on the office PCs. I thought “Why not?” After all Windows and the desktop PC were the things of the future. The owner then brought in Stephan Medeiros (who is no longer in IT) to maintain the office PCs. Stepho claimed to be an MCSE on his application but it turns out he wasn’t; he was “planning on it” so he put it down anyway. If I hadn’t been wasting so much time in the motor trade I would have just taken the job. So much for being a free spirit.
I had earlier informed the owner that to have any security they would need at least Windows NT on all PCs with a domain controller. This was cheaper than the Novell offering at the time. The software was purchased and was waiting to be installed. Stepho bungled it. I stepped in so that people could get some work done.
I told Stepho to install the domain controller and create 3 domain admins (him, me and the owner) and 4 domain groups (accounting, sales, advertising, IT) - the preferred Microsoft set-up at that time. Then do all the PCs in turn and put everyone in their group. When I came back he had made himself the only domain admin and everyone else a local administrator and no PCs were on the domain. At the same time he had been convincing the owner that I was an idiot and that knowing UNIX was nothing like setting up a real computer.
I turned to the owner, and told him this just wasn’t going to work. He seemed satisfied with the setup, everyone was doing their job and it was just like before. I told him that, in that case, purchasing NT server for the domain controller was a huge waste of money. They should not have bothered switching over from Windows95. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Stepho in the doorway gesticulating. He was communicating with the owner and did not think I would see him. I turned while he was rolling his eyes, shaking his head and waving his hands in a “don’t believe him” gesture. I said “This is your open door policy, is it?” I didn’t care one way or the other I had been paid for my work. I found out later that people were sharing files by printing things out. Also, in a panic, the accounting PCs had been disconnected from the network. For some reason the firewall was not protecting the office network and they suspected someone had hacked into one of them from the internet. Later I commented to the owner “You should have disconnected all of them, solved the firewall problem, then hooked all the PCs back up.”
“Well Stepho said it was impossible to test and this was safe enough.” It was only impossible if you didn’t know how to set up a firewall and set up a UNIX machine to monitor the traffic. Stepho did not know any UNIX. Who knows how much data had been sapped out of these PCs. The one thing that endured unscathed in that office was the email system I had set up on Solaris for all the office users. They were accessing it through Netscape. When I found out about the difficulty with file sharing I told them to email documents to each other as a stop-gap measure until they got an admin who new what he was doing.
The lesson here is that Stepho lasted surprisingly long at that company, longer than I did. He virtually managed the office infrastructure, however incompetently and destructively, extraordinary as it sounds. He had what it took to survive as a manager. He had masqueraded as a tech and failed, then masqueraded as a manager and was able to endure in that role. I am working on a theory of why this is so easy to do.
My Intro to IT
In the early days some startups did not believe in full time techs. They brought them in as needed. I answered an advert for a bloke to set up some SUN servers. It was one of the first ISPs in Wollongong starting up. I set up user accounts for people who signed up for internet access and they all connected via modem. I also set up some instances of apache server with many virtual hosts ready to be handed over to clients for their web sites.
The company blossomed to 11 employees: salesmen, advertising, accounting, other office staff, but no IT people. I was being called in more and more frequently. The owner said there would be a full time job for me if I was willing to work on the office PCs. I thought “Why not?” After all Windows and the desktop PC were the things of the future. The owner then brought in Stephan Medeiros (who is no longer in IT) to maintain the office PCs. Stepho claimed to be an MCSE on his application but it turns out he wasn’t; he was “planning on it” so he put it down anyway. If I hadn’t been wasting so much time in the motor trade I would have just taken the job. So much for being a free spirit.
I had earlier informed the owner that to have any security they would need at least Windows NT on all PCs with a domain controller. This was cheaper than the Novell offering at the time. The software was purchased and was waiting to be installed. Stepho bungled it. I stepped in so that people could get some work done.
I told Stepho to install the domain controller and create 3 domain admins (him, me and the owner) and 4 domain groups (accounting, sales, advertising, IT) - the preferred Microsoft set-up at that time. Then do all the PCs in turn and put everyone in their group. When I came back he had made himself the only domain admin and everyone else a local administrator and no PCs were on the domain. At the same time he had been convincing the owner that I was an idiot and that knowing UNIX was nothing like setting up a real computer.
I turned to the owner, and told him this just wasn’t going to work. He seemed satisfied with the setup, everyone was doing their job and it was just like before. I told him that, in that case, purchasing NT server for the domain controller was a huge waste of money. They should not have bothered switching over from Windows95. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Stepho in the doorway gesticulating. He was communicating with the owner and did not think I would see him. I turned while he was rolling his eyes, shaking his head and waving his hands in a “don’t believe him” gesture. I said “This is your open door policy, is it?” I didn’t care one way or the other I had been paid for my work. I found out later that people were sharing files by printing things out. Also, in a panic, the accounting PCs had been disconnected from the network. For some reason the firewall was not protecting the office network and they suspected someone had hacked into one of them from the internet. Later I commented to the owner “You should have disconnected all of them, solved the firewall problem, then hooked all the PCs back up.”
“Well Stepho said it was impossible to test and this was safe enough.” It was only impossible if you didn’t know how to set up a firewall and set up a UNIX machine to monitor the traffic. Stepho did not know any UNIX. Who knows how much data had been sapped out of these PCs. The one thing that endured unscathed in that office was the email system I had set up on Solaris for all the office users. They were accessing it through Netscape. When I found out about the difficulty with file sharing I told them to email documents to each other as a stop-gap measure until they got an admin who new what he was doing.
The lesson here is that Stepho lasted surprisingly long at that company, longer than I did. He virtually managed the office infrastructure, however incompetently and destructively, extraordinary as it sounds. He had what it took to survive as a manager. He had masqueraded as a tech and failed, then masqueraded as a manager and was able to endure in that role. I am working on a theory of why this is so easy to do.
Barry