Shortsighted

When I came on board at this agency eighteen months ago as a contracted "imaging specialist," they were hip deep in a statewide PC refresh project that was not going well. (I had interviewed with them two prior times during the previous six months to assist with this project, first as a "morning after" service desk technician and then as a PC tech. I was rejected both times—and at that point they were already nearly a year behind schedule.)

Initially the new equipment was being pushed out with Windows 10. It was resoundingly hated by the user base, but more importantly it didn't play nice with several mission-critical software applications. (You'd think they would've done some testing first, but no—this is the gub'mint after all.)

About three months into my tenure, the grousing from the users and the software incompatibilities became such an issue that it was announced that we were no longer to be rolling out Windows 10, and were reverting to 7 from that point forward. The machines that were already in the field with 10 were going to remain unless they needed to run that incompatible software (or the users screamed loud enough).

Prior to this gig, I had next-to-no experience with 10, and after fighting to get it to behave (as did all of my colleagues), I welcomed the news that everything was going back to 7.

But then something funny happened. As my contract was starting to wind down, I decided to load 10 on my own workstation. All the job postings I looked at required at least a modicum of Windows 10 experience, so I figured I'd better grab what I could while I had the opportunity.

And it turned out I actually came to like the OS—not enough for me to ever want to give up Apple for my own personal computing, but in a work environment it really wasn't bad!

The main part of the refresh project ended last fall, but instead of packing my things and saying goodbye as I'd anticipated, they offered to keep me on as a pc/desktop tech (with a 30% increase in pay). Naturally I accepted, so I didn't need the Windows 10 experience, but I'm still glad to have gained it.

We just completed Phase 2 of the statewide refresh, and Windows 7 is still being put out there. Surprisingly, there's been no talk of revisiting Windows 10, even though Microsoft's support of 7 will be ending in about 30 months—only halfway through the agency's 5-year hardware refresh schedule. I find that more than a little short-sighted, especially since as far as I know, nothing is being done to get the non-compliant applications brought up to speed.

I guess if nothing else it's job security for me…