Hello Paul!





 AW>> support at IBM I generally didn't have time to scratch

 AW>> myself, with 7 MVS systems to mollycoddle. And where have

 AW>> you worked that you haven't seen operators program anyway?



 PE> Qantas, FNS.



 AW>> Operators program every time they write JCL, automate



 PE> JCL is programming is it?  More like providing a list of files.



Now you know that's a simplification. Whilst it may only be a bunch

of control statements, I like the example out of a book:



MS-DOS:

Copy old-name new-name





JCL:

//COPY#1 JOB 2215,'COPY',CLASS=A

//STEP1 EXEC PGM=IEBGENER

//SYSPRINT DD SYSOUT=A

//SYSUT1   DD DSN=old-name,DISP=SHR

//SYSUT2   DD DSN=new-name,DISP=(NEW,CATLG),

//            UNIT=SYSDA, VOL=SER=PACK12,

//            DCB=(RECFM=FB,LRECL=80,BLKSIZE=6400),

//            SPACE=(6400,(100,20),RLSE)

//SYSIN    DD DUMMY



Granted no one writes JCL from scratch, but a proficient operator who

knows most of the JCL, JES2 and JES3 statements can make a major

difference to the speed and efficiency of a batch machine. Finding a

problem with a piece of JCL can be quite challenging when you take into

account the order and positional importance of many operands.



 PE> Next you'll be counting farting as programming.



;-)



JCL was more difficult for me to learn than COBOL. My landlord, who has

written books on and teached JCL and PL/I,  actually finds PL/I the

easier of the two to teach.



 AW>> procedures in REXX, or setup scheduling in OPC/A.



 PE> Not many wrote REXX, as for scheduling, I see you took my farting crack

 PE> seriously!



Forget the scheduling then.



 AW>> The typical programmer was the arsewipe that I had to beep

 AW>> or phone five times to get out of bed and come in to fix his



 PE> The typical operator rang up because they couldn't read a 7-character

 PE> Message ID in the manual (actually I'm lying, but I've heard others say

 PE> that).



No. It was typically because the programmer was too lazy/stupid to

modify his job to require less than 600 cylinders at the same time as

the largest IMS jobs were running.



 AW>> job. His sleep was typically more important than my state of

 AW>> mind after fielding 100 calls asking why most of the DB/2

 AW>> stuff wasn't available because the main batch jobs were

 AW>> still running because shit for brains needed his beauty

 AW>> sleep.



 PE> They used to watch TV in both Qantas and FNS.  An ex-FNS operator working

 PE> in the State Bank told me about that too.  At FNS they sat on their butt

 PE> doing nothing all day and all night.  At Qantas it was the same, and

 PE> that's why they had "Assistant Computer Operators" to
actually do the work

 PE> (mounting tapes, changing printer).  The FNS people (it was a small site)

 PE> were so lazy that they kept on haranguing us that they wanted to do

 PE> disk->disk backups so they didn't have to keep mounting tapes.



I wish you could have spent some time as an operator at IBM. Let me

just make the point that nothing like this happened there. The TV was

watched on the odd night, not by me though. I was too busy downloading

OS/2 utils such as the lpex editor.



 PE> When I joined the computer industry, the only computer people I had ever

 PE> dealt with before were rabid enthusiasts, and I didn't know any other

 PE> sort. I expected everyone else to be the same.  I started off as an

 PE> Assistant Computer Operator in Qantas, and boy was I in for a shock.  I've

 PE> never seen a bigger bunch of brain-dead people in my life.  I would have

 PE> sacked the lot if I was in charge.



The operators I struck were totally professional. I thought the

operators were a pretty smart bunch, although none were what you

would call computer enthusiasts. I find the same thing where I

currently work, so perhaps it's the norm in the industry.



 PE> Nope, I expect people to work for the company for the money they get.  If

 PE> you are, as you said, run off your feet at IBM, then that is fine.  But if

 PE> you are watching TV, it's time for you to apply yourself to improving the

 PE> company (I don't mean "you" personally BTW).  You should
be looking at

 PE> ways to improve productivity.



Well I'm not at IBM now. Where I work at the moment is terribly

inefficient, and confirms most of what I previously suspected about

the public service.



As for improving productivity, well that's simple. All legal officers

should have to learn to type their own letters rather than writing them

longhand, or dictating them, getting a draft back, changing that and

going through the rigmarole a few times. That would save about 50 jobs

and whilst taking longer at first, would improve their efficiency in the

long run. Only the very highest in the hierarchy at IBM had their own

assistants. The rest made do quite happily without. All companies

should be the same.



 PE> I'm a pretty hard bastard I guess.  I remember seeing a show on SBS about

 PE> Japan, and one of the workers at the end of the factory line was saying

 PE> that he had nightmares that the things kept on falling off the end of the

 PE> line and he  couldn't keep up.  I like to see people taking their job

 PE> seriously.  BFN.



I find your ideas not totally ridiculous. I think I stuffed up a job

interview after IBM with this attitude. The interviewer asked me what

I would do if I were a supervisor and someone came in 10 minutes late

for the second time, with the same excuse of major domestic trouble at

home. I said she should be sacked and no one should be a minute late,

even if she was the best worker. Stiff shit about the marriage break-up

she was going through.







Regards, Alan



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