I work at the State Dept. Let's talk email.

[rickford66]

53. Some well know corporations doing DOD work have terrible IT systems.

On one job some important data was provided to me on YouTube of all places AND I was prevented from viewing YouTube due to security measures required by the customer that provided the data. The desktop PC provided didn't have some applications installed that were needed to access data and other vital information. I had to remotely log on to a manager's PC and use their desktop icons to access the applications. While two monitors are very productive for software development, the engineers were the last to get that innovation. The CEO of course had two large flat screen monitors to play solitaire. In some cases internal email took over an hour to be received. On one occasion I missed an important meeting because I didn't receive the meeting notice until 24 hours after the meeting. I showed them that it was sent to everyone at the same time. Accessing the company email from outside was so unreliable that nobody used it. I started having all my company email forwarded to my personal account. The phone system was a complicated mess and mine never worked properly and I had to use another engineer's phone for calls. When the engineers finally were given laptops to make on site trips more productive, they were of course hand-me-downs from the front office and close to being obsolete. Mine had a heavy external battery that didn't work but had to be connected for the AC to work. So I had to lug that brick around for a couple years. The list goes on. It's amazing that we accomplished as much as we did. I worked a several places in 35 years and the story was the same. The TV and magazine ADs would have you believe they were state of the art and behind the scenes not so.