Being Forced to Say Goodbye
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It's incredible how that proprietary software is actually inefficient e-waste. Most FOSS isn't bloated or slow, but proprietary software got the high ground because of contracts and "security", I'm sure.
I always advocate for FOSS solutions at my work, but most of the time I get shut down with some variation of “We prefer $MSP’s solution because it gives us someone else to blame if shit hits the fan”. I hate that sentiment, but I appreciate the honesty.
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But it's also difficult to prove you didn't make it similarly 2 times. Just do some name changing, reordering and some slight changes and you should be golden.
I don’t know if there’s any precedence for this, but I could see a court asking to see the git commit log if things went that far.
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Yeah, I had some cool Ansible integrations, Docker containers running internal infrastructure monitoring, OSTicket FOSS ticketing system, Open Project for project management, Tailscale for secure remote access, etc.
Oh well, I got a bunch of great experience building it, and I can still use that stuff on my own infrastructure at home.
[email protected] and find yourself so many projects at home you'll never find time for anything but computers again
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My company's buyout has been completed, and their IT team is in the final stages of gutting our old systems and moving us on to all their infra.
Sadly, this means all my Linux and FOSS implementations I've worked on for the last year are getting shutdown and ripped out this week. (They're all 100% Microsoft and proprietary junk at the new company)
I know it's dumb to feel sad about computers and software getting shutdown, but it feels sucky to see all my hours of hard work getting trashed without a second thought.
That's the nature of a corpo takeover though. Just wanted to let off some steam to some folks here who I know would understand.
FOSS forever!
That sucks. I know what it’s like to feel like the only voice of reason when your company is shooting itself in the foot.
I see from other comments you’re already looking for a new job, which is a very good idea. From your description of this buyout, it seems very likely that you’re about 6 months to a year out from the layoff stage of the private equity playbook.
At the end of the day you’ll always have the experience you gained from building all that stuff. Perhaps you’ll get a chance to build it back even better somewhere else!
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My company's buyout has been completed, and their IT team is in the final stages of gutting our old systems and moving us on to all their infra.
Sadly, this means all my Linux and FOSS implementations I've worked on for the last year are getting shutdown and ripped out this week. (They're all 100% Microsoft and proprietary junk at the new company)
I know it's dumb to feel sad about computers and software getting shutdown, but it feels sucky to see all my hours of hard work getting trashed without a second thought.
That's the nature of a corpo takeover though. Just wanted to let off some steam to some folks here who I know would understand.
FOSS forever!
At the end of the day, they are just digital things. You had some great learning experiences with them. Now it's time to put those skills to use, and learn what's next that makes you happy.
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My company's buyout has been completed, and their IT team is in the final stages of gutting our old systems and moving us on to all their infra.
Sadly, this means all my Linux and FOSS implementations I've worked on for the last year are getting shutdown and ripped out this week. (They're all 100% Microsoft and proprietary junk at the new company)
I know it's dumb to feel sad about computers and software getting shutdown, but it feels sucky to see all my hours of hard work getting trashed without a second thought.
That's the nature of a corpo takeover though. Just wanted to let off some steam to some folks here who I know would understand.
FOSS forever!
Start your own company
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I know it’s dumb to feel sad about computers and software getting shutdown, but it feels sucky to see all my hours of hard work getting trashed without a second thought.
Sadly, something we all have to get used to. Everything we do is ephemeral and the next guy will likely have better/different ideas on how to do things.
Basically everything I've ever built has been torn down or somehow bastardized eventually.
the next guy will likely have better/different ideas on how to do things.
The extra fucked up part comes when the "new guys" purge all the people and systems that were already working and proven end up just circling around to more or less the old things. While of course acting like it was all their "ideas" after spending more money than was ever needed. The workers get fucked and the undervalued knowledge is lost (and the new workers also get fucked by being underpaid and overworked themselves). So fucking done with how much the wasteful executives giving themselves bonuses and keep cutting more and more corners. -
My company's buyout has been completed, and their IT team is in the final stages of gutting our old systems and moving us on to all their infra.
Sadly, this means all my Linux and FOSS implementations I've worked on for the last year are getting shutdown and ripped out this week. (They're all 100% Microsoft and proprietary junk at the new company)
I know it's dumb to feel sad about computers and software getting shutdown, but it feels sucky to see all my hours of hard work getting trashed without a second thought.
That's the nature of a corpo takeover though. Just wanted to let off some steam to some folks here who I know would understand.
FOSS forever!
This won’t be the last time, I’m afraid. At the end of the day, software developers build sandcastles.
If you want to build something that will outlast your company, make sure you also have a hobby or craft outside of computing.
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Oof, that's rough. My spouse is a software engineer and has been through a similar thing recently.
Based om all the replies in this post it seems like it happens quite a lot. Or it all just happens now for some reason...
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Can you run WSL or whatever it’s called? I se to remember some coworkers getting a Linux shell on windows. Of course that still leaves you with the shitty windows UI.
My last job was Windows desktop, so I installed vmware and ran Linux in fullscreen mode.
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My company's buyout has been completed, and their IT team is in the final stages of gutting our old systems and moving us on to all their infra.
Sadly, this means all my Linux and FOSS implementations I've worked on for the last year are getting shutdown and ripped out this week. (They're all 100% Microsoft and proprietary junk at the new company)
I know it's dumb to feel sad about computers and software getting shutdown, but it feels sucky to see all my hours of hard work getting trashed without a second thought.
That's the nature of a corpo takeover though. Just wanted to let off some steam to some folks here who I know would understand.
FOSS forever!
Well... shit. My company just sold my department to another company. The phrase they use in the office is "a Microsoft shop". We're talking Windows, Teams, Azure and O365.
The transition is going to be shit. After the transition is over, it will be shit.
I might just operate my workflow entirely out of WSL2 out of spite.
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the next guy will likely have better/different ideas on how to do things.
The extra fucked up part comes when the "new guys" purge all the people and systems that were already working and proven end up just circling around to more or less the old things. While of course acting like it was all their "ideas" after spending more money than was ever needed. The workers get fucked and the undervalued knowledge is lost (and the new workers also get fucked by being underpaid and overworked themselves). So fucking done with how much the wasteful executives giving themselves bonuses and keep cutting more and more corners.Check your formatting
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Good question. I was in the process of testing out DokuWiki for internal documentation, that was really cool.
But probably using Tailscale to phase out our janky ipsec VPN solution. Super high speed and bandwidth aren't a concern at my current place, so Tailscale would be a great solution to fix the current setup we have and make remote work much easier for end users.
I was looking at a Grafana/Prometheus stack for active monitoring and metrics too, which would have been really cool.
I was also talking to the former owner about developing an in-house piece of software that used machine learning and OCR to pull relevant data out of huge construction PDFs, convert it to CSV formatted data, and import that directly into our estimating software, saving our estimators massive amounts of time having to manually parse those documents and input the data line by line, cell by cell.
That last thing. Can you do it under an Open License and put on git?
Seems like an improvement for all. -
Hoard a copy of your work. Even if your new overlords are gutting and replacing it, ot might be useful elsewhere one day.
Source: Similar situation once upon a time. I am currently using on a daily basis what was once replaced in a different company.
Yeah.
I retired a year ago, every now & then I say to myself "I'm sure I had a script for that..." bit then I can't find it of course, which makes me sad.Oh & I used to sign in to GitHub with a username & password, then GitHub said I needed to change my password, and emailed me a link to my old work address, which I can no longer access.
So I'm going to have to fork my own stuff!
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I know it's rough. Trying to find a job that pays well and isn't deep into proprietary stuff like SQL Server, C# and alike. Sadly this scenario is overwhelmingly the case, and until the crowdfunded and open source scenario get strong (they still aren't) there isn't too much of an option.
I’d argue that most mainstream FOSS is extremely strong. Something like 80% of servers and 60% of smartphones run Linux. Up until recently, Cloudflare was using Nginx for their entire CDN. The thing they replaced it with is technically also FOSS.
I think the real “weakness” of FOSS is that they don’t have the money or the desire to schmooze corporate decision makers. They also don’t have sexy GUIs, but anyone could contribute that if they wanted.
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I always advocate for FOSS solutions at my work, but most of the time I get shut down with some variation of “We prefer $MSP’s solution because it gives us someone else to blame if shit hits the fan”. I hate that sentiment, but I appreciate the honesty.
"But it wouldn't hit the fan so much if we stopped using Microsoft's half-baked products!"
It always falls on deaf ears. I can't believe how many millions my employer throws at Microsoft every year just to complain about how broken it is.
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Well... shit. My company just sold my department to another company. The phrase they use in the office is "a Microsoft shop". We're talking Windows, Teams, Azure and O365.
The transition is going to be shit. After the transition is over, it will be shit.
I might just operate my workflow entirely out of WSL2 out of spite.
Teams is its own plane of hell. Sorry to hear.
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Teams is its own plane of hell. Sorry to hear.
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I tried to push back, but they are a much larger company and they made it clear that I would be playing by their rules, not mine.
I was thinking of quitting immediately, but at least in my region of the country, the IT market is really rough right now, so I can't afford to be out of work for months.
I won't last long here though. They are half owned by a private equity firm, so they run everything based on the bottom line. Their IT team is understaffed, underpaid, and they are always looking for excuses to lay folks off or fire them. Their turnover rate is pretty high, burnout is rife.
Everything based on the bottom line
Using azure.
Pick one! I know why they’re a full Microsoft organisation, you’re already using office and exchange, so 365 makes sense, then teams makes sense, then may as well have some sharepoint storage, power platform is snazzy, and then oops we’re full azure hosted. I get why, it’s very convenient, has some good ecosystem integration benefits for the user and all the rest, but it certainly isn’t cheap.
Anyway, I’m sorry they’re kicking Linux and trashing years of hard work. That really sucks. Sadly new job time I think. But that’s easier said than done these days. Best of luck!
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Well... shit. My company just sold my department to another company. The phrase they use in the office is "a Microsoft shop". We're talking Windows, Teams, Azure and O365.
The transition is going to be shit. After the transition is over, it will be shit.
I might just operate my workflow entirely out of WSL2 out of spite.
I work at a "Microsoft Shop" in a division that was a previously acquired software developer that used an entirely linux based dev stack.
That stack is still all linux and we basically have to do all our work in WSL. It's a pain.
