Just before I left I was offered the Network managers role, but turned it down (as management wanted a ‘Yes’ man). After I left the NEW Network manager even bragged to me that they ran without a firewall for two months … which was illegal (as they’re in the finance sector) as well a totally stupid. I’m surprised nobody hacked in.

While I was there they’d had a few attempts to hack into them (mainly via Korea and soem other places) and Management (who were mainly accountants) still couldn’t see why security was important. (Which is one of the reasons I left. It’s a matter of time before they have a major breach … and they fired the Security guy who was always on our side [Networks] and installed some other guy who seemed to know nothing about security).

It’s a weird world … I just hope when that company is breached they put all the managers up against the wall for their stupidity.

The only time when I had problems doing this was when I was working in Singapore. However, honestly though, the typical Singaporean management style is exactly as you’ve mentioned… ie. cheap/free couldn’t be good. And this creeps way up the social hierarchy.

For all the technological advances that Singapore has over Malaysia and other countries in SE Asia, this is definitely one area where almost every other country in this region can kick Singapore’s ass. Singapore just isn’t going to be a hotbed of Linux and/or Open Source development.

Getting back to the topic… yeah the geeky/techie crowd is almost always turning any scenario into a good vs evil kind of thing. Probably it’s a natural reaction.

And yeah… whatever happened to “that last company you worked for”?

It seems a lot of people (particularly on Slashdot) want to make the world into an MS versus Google type thing, where Google are good and MS is evil, and they’re hoping Google will challenge MS everywhere and anywhere.

‘Let’s be honest, which company doesn’t use Linux in one way or another?’

Last company I worked for, we had a few Linux Machines, but the managers wanted them out, as they equated FREE with Doesn’t Work. I know other companies who also refuse to use Linux, which is a shame, as the attitude that ‘Free = Doesn’t work’ versus ‘Expensive = must be good’ is just stupid. But, try convincing managers and accountants of that.