Re: How to find out the current time zone in Oracle?

nsouto_at_optushome.com.au.nospam (Nuno Souto) wrote in message news:<3b93851c.584314_at_news>...
> No need, Dusan. :-)
> Not all management is stupid. Some are, some aren't. Same as for
> techies, or anybody else. Nothing we can do about it other than
> identify and correct if possible.

True, but usually between techies and management is some kind of wall. Techies has the knowlegde (or should has) and management has the power (or should has), that makes communication between them sometimes difficult.

> 100% agreed. I'm not a great follower of "new releases" from ORACLE
> (or any other large maker). I call it the "bleeding edge", as opposed
> to leading edge. For obvious reasons. I'll let the long IT history
> of point releases, service packs, patch levels, whatever, speak for me
> on this subject.

Yes, I have a big admiration to those pathfinders, whos crashed servers, lost data and ruined companies are origin of all Service Packs. :-)
However I never had ambitions in this field.

> Sure. You just touched one of my "buttons". This is one of my pet
> peeves with IT as it is today. May I suggest the following:
>
> Are you willing to believe someone else's "proof of reliability"?
> Get 8i in there, by all means. Release3. It's a good release, lots
> of new interesting stuff. And getting very stable (at bloody last!).

Yes I have this one on my home test box and its survivability is very good. :-)

> At the same time (or slightly after!) let your techos play with 9i.
> You can do it without commiting to an upgrade. Negotiate an
> evaluation, whatever. Easy.

I will start with 8i -> 9i upgrade on my home box, just after I'll solve problems with my new Thunderbird 1200 and MSI board (AMD-761 chipset), I have something which can be named a semi stable release. :-)
I think that evalution is not the problem even for longer times, because we run more than hundred of Oracle Server EEs, so we're quite popular in local Oracle office.

> No commitment, of course. But let them play with it. Or you may find
> them looking to go somewhere else. Nothing worse for a techo nowadays
> than to block them off a new version of software. Particularly one as
> important as 9i.
>
> Now, there's a school of management that says: "stuff them, do as I
> say and that's it. Nobody is indispensable. Techos are a dime a
> dozen".

I haven't exact information about situation in USA or Australia, but here a good techie is a really precious stuff. On our website is a dozen of positions in IT to fill and some of them are there for 6 months or even more.
One my team member just gave me a call today, he said that he had a three interviews with candidates (JAVA and PL/SQL developer) and all of them was just a junk. We have this problems, even if we are one of the best employers in the country. They can get 4+ times more than average salary in that area as startup salary.

> Terminally stupid. The day someone does a *true* cost analysis of how
> expensive it really is to loose the "dispensibles", is the day
> corporations, companies, etc will save a *bundle* in their IT costs.
> Remember: hardware is cheap and getting cheaper, people are expensive
> and getting more so.

To be honest if I'll lost three key men, I'm deep in trouble. And word trouble is suitable in this situation only because we're on public news, in private I would use a different, more accurate word. :-)

> Staff turnover has a solution. Respect their careers, and it will
> disappear. Ignore them and watch IT costs spiral. No amount of "book
> manipulation" will hide that in the long run. I'm not suggesting for a
> moment this is your case. Just letting you know what the feeling of
> many techos is, nowadays.

I understand techies feelings very well, I'm still one of them (I hope so). Just someone was needed to take care of things, make reports, determine trends, so now I'm the head of this team. I can make a great things with MS Project and Excel. :-)
I want to be something between techie and manager, still have a knowledge, but have a broad view and the power to select and control the path.
Yes, I can easily do my job like others, just with few buzzwords from latest magazine issue, but I think that my decision are more accurate with detail understanding of backgrounds. Maybe I'm wrong and I'm just a bad techie and a bad manager together in one person. :-)

> I've seen it happen, again and again, over many years. Lollies, like
> "stock option" schemes, are only a stop gap solution. The techos that
> go for these are *not* the ones you wanna keep. They're the ones that
> will leave no matter what. Because their motivation is not their
> career.

Yes, I need techies which motivation is keeping my systems running. Their motivation should be their brains and desire to solve technical problems.

> There is the argument that allocating hardware resources to this
> self-training is a heavy, unnecessary cost. Fertilizer, of the
> highest calibre! Computing resources have never been cheaper.
>
> Any el-cheapo Linux box will do for this type of self-training. Let
> them do it. It costs absolutely *nothing*, compared to training a
> replacement. And at the end when you feel 9i is stable enough, you
> have a pool of staff that knows the product already, and *also* knows
> your operations. There is your proof of reliability, no need to trust
> somebody else's.

Oh, I do not think that anyone in this building even thinking about using a Linux. :-)
However problem is not with HW resources, we have a lot of servers been replaced by newer ones. If I need a new test box then just one high school will not receive a sponsor gift from us and I have one old server to play with. :-)
Problem is that our people has no time to play with new toys, because we're in the mid of transitional period and everyone has a lot of work to do.

> No, they won't leave! People naturally resists taking unnecessary
> risks. Sure they can be poached, but they leave now mostly because
> they see their careers at dead ends with current management and HR
> ideology. 30 years ago when this type of in the job self-training was
> common, nobody left. The difference now is that it's *much cheaper* to
> do it. HR people just haven't realised this, living in lah-lah land
> like they usually do.

Who cares about HR people ? I didn't seen anyone from HR for few months. We have very low fluctuation, because we offer interesting work, latest technology (HW and after some time to test even SW) to play with and indeed a competetive salary. Oh, that sounds like a classic HR talk. :-)

> I'll let the "staff turnover/cheap labour/value for money" brigade
> take over from here. There is bound to be one dying to jump in.
> Probably freshly booted from a sinking company, or looking to place
> another boatload of third world "instant experts"...

Hm, third world is a broad term, sometimes I think that for US is third world everything out of borders (maybe even including Utah, Texas etc.). :-)))
We're employing some programmers from East (mainly Slovakia), some companies also employs Russians or Ukrainians, but we don't because with them are more problems than benefits (not necessarily their fault, but that's the reality).

--
_________________________________________

Dusan Bolek, Ing.
Oracle team leader


Note: pagesflames_at_usa.net was cancelled due to changes (maybe we can
call it a overture to bankruptcy) on USA.NET. I'm still using this
email to prevent SPAM, maybe one day I will change it and I'll have a
proper email even for news, but right now I can be reached by email
supplied in my news posts. Sorry.