ALKHOBAR, 17 August 2004 — More than at any other time of year it is during the long hot summer months that IT madness seems to infect the Middle East. Documents disappear from machines. Files become corrupted. Employees go on vacation leaving essential information locked inside password protected systems. Help desks are understaffed and helpless. Spare parts are backordered till September. In Saudi Arabia the situation is especially dire. Due to a shortage of competent IT staff and the habit of half the technicians in the Kingdom leaving during the months of July and August, getting network support takes a miracle.
Last summer I found out that thanks to some family connections mixed with a bit of corporate desperation, a 19-year-old university student with no IT qualifications whatsoever, had been employed for the summer by a major Saudi IT hardware vendor. The student was responsible for providing contractually mandated emergency support for the computers of senior executives at a major petroleum firm.
How did I become apprised of this situation? Well, late one night Ahmed, the student, rang my son, a computer engineering major, to ask him for some advice. Ahmed had torn apart a workstation and couldn’t remember how to put it back together. Over the next few weeks Ahmed telephoned frequently and eventually I insisted that my son stop helping him. Two inexperienced young men using the trial and error approach over the phone to diagnose the cause of equipment failures is not reasonable tech support and I thought that the poor client involved deserved something better.
When I mentioned the situation to a few business contacts, most had an interesting response. First they all agreed that the vendor involved should have been more responsible but then they asked for my son’s telephone number. It seemed that even imperfect onsite tech support was in such short supply that small businessmen were more than willing to pay for someone, actually anyone, who might have a clue about what was wrong with their systems, to come and take a look.
This summer my 20-year-old son, a Saudi, has been employed full time as the head of the Technology Department for a local firm implementing a few major projects in the Eastern Province. Once his university starts up again in a few weeks, my son will switch from working days to working evenings. With all the reports of high unemployment in the Kingdom I thought this situation was surprising and asked the owner of the firm why he didn’t find a Saudi with an IT degree to take over the job in September.
The man explained that a degree wasn’t really the main qualification required for the job. He needs a Saudi with up-to-date hands-on IT skills, who speaks excellent Arabic and English and is dependable, enthusiastic and gets the work done on time. Such individuals are few and tend to be hired by major enterprises. Since the company is small, visas for foreign technicians are tough to come by. So the company uses the visas they can get to bring technicians with specific skill sets. My son keeps tabs on the pace of the work, checks the quality of the implementations, lends a hand when needed, interfaces with the clients and vendors, shows up on time every day, needs no supervision and answers his mobile. “What more could I want in an employee?” the company owner asked me.
When I mentioned my son’s work situation to others, several businessmen offered to hire him at a better rate, even for part time work. I advised my son of the offers and he turned them down, explaining that he was committed to completing the projects he was currently managing. I stared at him for a moment, startled by his answer, and then the thought crossed my mind that he would make an excellent business partner. That’s something I’ll have to work on for the future.
In the present though I am still caught up in IT gone awry. I recently received some photos, from Judy Weber that I’d like to share with everyone. Judy forwarded the photos which came from someone she knows named Jason. The images were attached to the following e-mail:
“Hello everyone, I just got these pictures from a friend. These digital cameras are amazing. I just did some quick math and figured you can put around 1400 photos on a CD. That’s a picture a week for over 26 years. Anyway, the pictures were taken just after the marathon so we don’t look too hot. I ran the marathon with the two friends whom I trained with -— Ryan O’Conner from Olympia Washington and Jeff Christoforetti from Pittsburgh, Penn. Ryan is the bearded one who has a scarf on in one of the pictures. He is working in Portland this summer for the federal public defender’s office. Jeff is in Boston this summer making big bucks for a firm. Hope to see you all soon. Jason.”
Over the years Judy has sent me many e-mails. I believe that she is an older woman living somewhere in the US. I tried at first to get her to stop sending me the mails because frankly, I don’t know Judy. But Judy has persisted despite my e-mails advising her of the situation. Now, Judy has started sending me images as well as text.
I’ve written before in this column about e-mails sent out to the wrong people but now thanks to advanced digital technologies combined with new legislation, the situation is getting a lot more serious and could have greater consequences. A few months ago a public relations company sent me a press release, which due to their improper use of Microsoft Word, showed me all the tracked changes and comments. It gave me a unique insight into the policies and direction of their client. Someone else sent me a really nasty joke about women on his corporate mail account when he clicked “reply all” instead of “reply” on a received e-mail – (apology not accepted). Then there was the lawyer in Riyadh who sent me the invoice belonging to another client in regards to payment for specified services. At that office there was an ugly scene over the error.
Yes, mistakes are inevitable but it seems that a few simple procedures could reduce the number of errors or at least minimize the consequences. First, make sure you understand the IT applications you’re using. Read a book about new or upgraded applications or take a course. In IT nobody knows it all anymore. Keep separate mail accounts to use for business and personal contacts and create separate contact lists a well. If you have used your business e-mail for personal use in the past, send an e-mail to all your contacts explaining your change of policy and ask them to cooperate with you. If you have special mailing groups, be sure that you know who is in each group and update them at least annually. Think twice before clicking “reply all.” Last but not least, when writing e-mail while talking on the phone, save the mail as a draft. Once you get off the line, you can focus for a moment and check that the mail’s address matches the intended recipient – then send it.
Despite all reports to the contrary, the mistakes that result from the use of IT are always still in some way a product of mankind’s inadequacy. That concept was brought out in living color when I went to see Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11” last week. Saudi Arabia doesn’t have movie theaters but for those of us living in the Eastern Province, Bahrain’s cinemas are just a quick drive over the causeway.
In Bahrain all the movies are subtitled in Arabic. This means that no matter what language the film’s dialogue is in, all Arabic literate individuals can understand the movie. It can be annoying watching these subtitled films, especially when the subtitle covers some vital portion of a scene, but it does up the enjoyment level for the audience as a whole. Unfortunately, in the Moore movie it resulted in a bit of lunacy. You see, in a few parts of Fahrenheit 9/11 the dialogue actually is in Arabic. Instead of the subtitles at those points switching to English, they continued on in Arabic. The Arabic speakers in the audience were momentarily confused with both voice and text coming at them in Arabic and the English speakers couldn’t properly grasp the meaning of those parts of the film. Yes, a computer was used to subtitle the film but it was the fault of the person operating the machine that the subtitles weren’t inserted in the appropriate language.
In modern life we all try to blame technology foibles on the poor machines and it usually works. The fact is we still have a few years to wait before the excuse, “The computer ate my files,” will really be the truth.
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