A Business Case only A Retarded Monkey Could Understand

The decision of whether or not to deploy IPv6 is a decision that is largely dead simple. Oh no, not for Terry. Its an excuse to overanalyze, debate and investigate something ad infinitum in the hopes that a) people around will get too bored to notice this study has been ongoing for the past 6 years, and b) no one doing the study will ever be tasked with ever implementing the strange, overly complex and surely bespoke architecture that Terry invents to deploy IPv6.

Keep on Rockin in a Terry-Free World

IP (v4 or v6) is not the way forward

14# - IP (v4 or v6) is not the way forward. Just because everyone is using it does not mean we need also need to. It just means its worth funding a study to investigate it further.

If You Can't Join Em - Leave and Build It Yourself

Apologies but this post sat in

Most of us have now left the domain of Terry Telco, and thus this post sat dormant in the to-be-published queue. Apologies for this!

Terry-yaki

So it has been quite a while since we have posted on the list. Many of us have taken new jobs and have not been in sight of Terry for what seems like Donkey years now.  However, one of our colleagues from TerryTelco recently took a gig where he had to work with a particular Japanese service provider.  Much to his surprise, he found that Terries are not isolated to Europe or North America, but they also reside at the Telcos in Japan!  So thanks Mr. Rabbit (his code name) for discovering Terry's cousin in Japan, whom is BTW named Terry-yaki.  More posts on the new far-east Terries coming soon!

You know traffic lights are controlled over analogue private circuits, don't you Terry?

So Terry is doing some work in an exchange.

He's trying to locate a pair he needs to connect a customer.

He shorts out one of the pairs with his pliers, and hears a screeching sound
outside.

"That's weird" he thinks. "Wonder what it was". He thinks some more.
"maybe if I try it again the same thing will happen".

He shorts out the pair.

Sure enough. "SCREECH!!!"

"Wow!", says Terry to himself. "what's this????"

Terry knows his mate Fred is in the exchange, and is an old hand at this
sort of thing.

So Terry goes to get Fred.

"Fred, take a look at this". If I short out this pair here there's a weird
screeching noise comes from outside the exchange!"

"What", says Fred. "Show me".

"Sure", says Terry and shorts the pair out.

"SCREEEEECH! CRUNCH!!!!!!"

"Blimey", says Fred. That's sounded like it came from just outside. Let's
take a look."

Fred and Terry swipe themselves out of the building (separately of course -
otherwise they'd never get back in).

The sight that meets their eyes is one of disaster. Two cars have collided
at the crossroads outside the exchange.

"Oops!", says Fred. "You know traffic lights are controlled over analogue
private circuits, don't you Terry?"

In a world that doesn't

Droid: "in a world that doesn't, Droid does."

Where as "Terry Telco: doesn't, in a world that does."

Keeping customers according to Terry

I saw a sign hanging from the ceiling of a work area the other day that read "Keep your customers...Think 2 year PSTN"

[Photo withheld to protect the guilty].

Laws of Terry

#12: The most non-obvious, completely ass-backwards, most expensive, most complicated approach will always be taken.

#13: Any perceived progress or actual things happening at a Telco happen randomly/by chance.

#14: IP (v4 or v6) is not the way forward. Just because everyone is using it just means its worth funding a study to investigate it further.

#15: Any meeting is worth having again. Any great meeting is worth a recurring Outlook invite.

The Hierarchy of Things

In Terry's world, there is a rigid hierarchy that must be observed. A chain of command if you will. Take any short-cuts through the chain and the links you have hopped over will become agitated and may retaliate in interesting ways.

If you have an issue, it must first be discussed with your manager. Preferably in an official fashion via email, or with meeting minutes. If it is determined that you must get an answer from someone above this person, the whole discussion must first be rehearsed and "sanitized" or "filtered" prior to going out. This usually comes in the form of an email message being previewed prior to being sent up the chain. If messages are to be sent to senior management then messages must be doubly-checked and filtered so as to not "offend the sensibilities" of the seniors. After all, these guys generally have the attention span of a 4 year-old with severe ADD, and so catching their attention for more than 20 seconds is a challenge in itself, but getting an actual reply that is meaningful and that can be acted upon -- that is indeed the trick.

The Irony of Meetings

The irony of meetings with Terry is that "meeting actions" are always to take further non-action.

Terry Wants You to STOP Using The Internet

It is ironic that when Terry plans to build a network, it is well over-built: 4-ways redundant paths, multiple power-failure counter measures, massively over-provisioned, etc... But when it actually comes time for users to do what their name implies -- use the service they are paying to consume, well, Terry doesn't quite like that and often recoils.

http://brainstormtech.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2009/12/28/what-brought-att-to-its-knees/

Could Richard Attenborough Be The Voice of Terry?

I've been thinking would would be the voice of Terry if we ever decided to make a movie about Terry Telco, and I've come to the conclusion that it would be Richard Attenborough:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Attenborough

Terrnovation

Terr-no-va-tion [terr-noh-vey-shuh] n,

-noun

The lack of innovation. Opposite to progress. To stop things in dead in their tracks.,

See innovate.

Related Forms: Terrivation (verb)

Terry-thon

A long event (sometimes called a "HotHouse" or "brain storming session") whereby Terries gather together and devise very non-clever, and backwards methods for network design based on arcane, 70's circuit-switched methodology such as pushing new and clever mobility technologies over PSTN landlines.

Not-so-Working Model for Internal Operations

After messing around with an online training course entitled "TerryTelco's (not-so) Working Model for Internal Operations" for 3 hours the the other day due to Terry designing it to work only on a specific (internal) build of Windows, on a Terry-approved laptop/desktop system, via the Terry-approved VPN (that only works on previously said configuration) I've learned one thing: That Terry's "Working Model for Internal Operations" is really about about keeping employees busy instead of being productive by having them spend 3.5 hours to complete a training course to learn about the model.

Marketing People Believing Their Own Marketing

I was watching an interview last night on the news with the CFO of GM. His whole schtick was about how they were going to be reinvented into a new company through brand reductions and wait for it.... pumping more money into marketing and advertising. I thought to myself, does this guy really believe that more adds will sell more shiite cars? Then it occurred to me that TerryTelco.com has similar minded executives. For example, in a place that believes that internet use is down because there is nothing on the internet worth using or looking at -- not that its because the performance of the broadband network is so poor (or the access lines provide so little bandwidth) -- Terry instead will pump loads of money into marketing the next bump in access speed and call it "Ultra Super Duper Quick Broadband". There will be millions spent on lavish and exciting advertising around the launch of this service, but in the end the reality for the user will be the same as with anyone who has bought a GM car recently: disappointment.

When Life Gets Bad, Lower Your Expections Until It Gets Better

Not long ago the leadership team at TerryTelco.Com was instructed to go to an HR-sponsored "leadership training". During this training we were instructed on the virtues of repositioning our thoughts and feelings about different situations and how this could be done in such a way as to be to our advantage. At first this seemed to make sense until it turned into an L. Ron Hubbard Dianetics seminar. The instructor told us that in essence, it was our minds getting in the way of our happiness at work, as well as perhaps a lack of progress. What we needed to do is one of three things:

1) Accept the situation.
2) Think more positively about the situation until it made us happy.
3) Leave.

Since the first option was counter to what the seminar was on, we skipped that one. We also conspicuously skipped the third one: no one ever leaves TerryTelco.Com, right? Finally, we dug into what the second point -- the brunt of his thesis -- was. So he gave us this example where we had to think of a situation that was seemingly impossible, and to think more positively about it. Magically, those of us that have not been brainwashed through 30 years of employment at TerryTelco were amazingly unconvinced. This is rediculous, right? It gets better. One of our more outspoken colegues decided to give an example of how this was complete and utter bullshit. He explained why one of the systems we were made to use was well, I will not use the actual term he used, so for lack of a better term let say he called it "a sham." When he explained that there was no way in hell that thinking better about this system could make it better, the HR representatives blinked in utter puzzlement. Then they looked at each other, much like two deer might in the woods, smiled then completely ignored his point and re-explained his original point as if our colegue was daft and just didn't get the point. When I looked around the room, I noticed that the other Terries in the room were too shocked. Afterall, whatever HR feeds us is good -- don't resist, is apparently the mantra for Terry.

When our colegue re-explained his point -- using a much louder tone this time as he is known to do -- the HR people looked at each other with even more confused and then frightened looks. At this point I really thought they would call security and have him taken away to the HR centre to have his brain 'fixed'. Fortunately that didn't happen. We left it at that and continued on to the next section of rediculous training.

Terri-Tastic!

The title of this post really has the opposite of what you might think. Terri-Tastic has more of a negative meaning than anything else. For example, when you sit through a one hour meeting, where the first 15-25 minutes is spent figuring out how to get everyone on the call, saying hellos and general small talk, getting the silly collaboration "tools" working, planning for the next call, etc... and then you finally have the discussion where absolutely nothing happens because you've revisited a discussion that you had 20 times already over the past 2 years, that is Terri-Tastic.

Another example is when the IT department mandates the use of their special PCs and Windows build (which is badly broken to begin with), and that uses a different version of Java to run the VPN client than is required to run the time booking/management/vacation tracking system. So as soon as you are connected via the VPN, you cannot manage your time/booking/vacation because the Java application won't run on your IT-sanctioned PC. Ready to rip your hair out yet? I am.

The final example of this term would be a discussion about some topic, call it designing high speed lollipops, where the product management - who has spent months and months compiling the so-called requirements -- decides that they no longer like them because they wish to use a different technology to build this high-speed lollipop than is needed by the customer requirements -- decide to change (yes change!) the requirements. When it is pointed out that they are no longer customer requirements, and you then get a blank stare this is a Terri-Tastic moment.

Talkitecture

Talkitecture - Architecture based loads and loads of discussion situated in a fantasy world. Most often performed by Terries with "Chief Something or other" in his title.

I have been in numerous meetings over time with Terries from our Chief Technology Office who have titles like "Chief Architect of " and I can tell you that %99 of these discussions have been useless -- completely useless. Why you ask is this so generally the case? The answer is easy: these guys specialize in what I call Talkitecture. This is the dark art of endless (often circular) discussions about a topic without ever actually resolving any issues or (gulp) implementing anything.

Take for example, the seemingly endless discussions around whether or not to do Fibre to the Premise (FTTP) versus Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC) that go on in just about every Terry Telco outfit these days. These discussions often go like this:

Question: Why do we need to upgrade our access plant to support FTTP/C?

Terry: Well, architecturally speaking, we've had technologies like PON available for decades. The problem is that there has never been a business case to do this. After all, what would anyone do with all of that bandwidth anyway?

This same discussion will go on and on (seemingly forever at some Telcos) cycling between FTTC as a compromise, and FTTP beacuse its "cool". At some point, some pointy-haired manager will request that we bring in the "big guns" from the CTO office to mull over the problem with them. Heck, they've likely been on full-time research projects related to FTTP/PON since the late 1970s, so they should know a thing or two about this stuff anyways. What happens then is they come in and bring their Talkitecture to the party. They talk, talk, talk and talk some more -- often across months of meetings. At some point in the discussion, we will cycle through all of the arguments that the original architecture team has gone through, and finally -- the coup de grace -- will be to cycle back and revisit the original discussions that even the CTO Terries brought forward. Hence, completing the cycle of Talkitecture.


The smart operations cut out