This kind of reminds me of . . . . . . . . . . .
Kind of reminds me of my first job as an independent contractor after finishing school. A small shop that had DBase III, a contractor with a tube bending contract for the Abrams tank (this was when the Army Tank Plant was still in Warren, Michigan). What I am about to tell you was unbelievable, they had two Apple II computers. No hard drive and to use the DBase III they had 8008 cards to emulate an 80 based machine. And did I tell you it was CP/M OS? They had informed us that it worked just like an IBM, yeah right. It was a good thing that I am good at learning OS's. They had a database that would tell them how many tubes the government wanted and when. How many were bad and how many they owed. What this company did was piss off the only person that knew how to operate the database and she quit. What they expected was miracles, they wanted use to rewrite the database so that they could use it, that was okay. Unfortunately they had no concept of what was involved. My partner and I thought it would take a few days to document their system and get it back to them. Well I guess their computer expert (one of the machinists in back), I overheard him tell the boss, "All you have to do is put the stuff in the computer and out will come what you need to know (I think he watched the "Forbin Project" once too often)!" Yeah, as simple as all that. Needless to say they told us not to come back for a few days, but to continue to work on it for them. They never did call us back but they owed us money, so we sued. The Judge was even worse then the shops resident computer expert. In the end the Judge says to the boss, "You know you could have just went to a computer store and bought it off the shelf!" Another, Yeah, right! Needless to say we lost, we had everything documented though and still lost.
The point is that non-computer people just do not have the vision or concept of what is involved in the IT process. To the non-IT person does not have any idea what is involved, their total concept is, "Well it is a computer, no problem at all, should be done in no time at all!"
My partner and I did learn one thing though. If'n the company doesn't have documentation, run the other way, fast!
This points to unrealistic expectations of computer/IT people.
