[Themaintainers] Why Do People Neglect Maintenance?

Wed Aug 7 05:24:05 EDT 2019

Hi,

I'm working in IT where maintenance is a big topic, for example in banks and other large organisations the core systems may be decade-old and sometimes use technologies that are becoming obscure.

In IT people are more easily promoted for creating new systems, and newer technologies are often seen as more performant and easier to use so maintenance is not seen as cool or as a good career choice.

And as maintenance is often not seen as important or difficult by management, at any moment your job can be moved to a subcontractor -- for example an offshore one -- when budget cuts are required. The secure path is to jump from a project as soon as it reach maintenance to go to another project that is just starting.

Finally, in my experience, maintenance in IT is often a more complex / difficult work than creating new systems: you have to deal with existing constraints, documentation is often lacking with important knowledge lost, and breaking the system has real consequences.

So in many places things are pretty dire, and I don't think they will improve soon.

Julien

> Le 7 août 2019 à 10:13, Ishi Crew <mediaentropy at gmail.com> a écrit :
> 
> I think of farming and food production (my grandparents were small or family farmers though they actually had or used huge tracts of land because few people lived in that area--north dakota) and i knew people who lived partly by hunting , gathering and gardening in WV.  At one time a large fraction of US population was involved in farming--like 50%. Now they say its just 3% (though there is a much larger population).  However you have a huge supply chain for food---trucking, road maintenance for all these trucks, energy industry for transport, processing food (sometimes into junk or conveniance food, bottled water, coca cola, plastic, huge stores with cleaning , stocking , clerks and security personnel and more) .   
> 
> So the 3% figure which makes things seem simpler, like GIS, involves another kind of complexity. I used to have order paper topographic maps for my hiking trips---now i can get them on my smart phone in like 5 minutes (if i can remember the websites)--very simple.   But making a smart phone and websites is complex.  And even having a smartphone makes my life more complex---have to learn how to use it, and not lose or break it, or have it stolen. 
> 
> On Wed, Aug 7, 2019 at 2:45 AM Hanlie Pretorius <hanlie.pretorius at gmail.com <mailto:hanlie.pretorius at gmail.com>> wrote:
> I found this article very thought provoking - thank you for compiling
> it. I wrote down some of my thoughts here, perhaps not much new for
> people on this list.
> 
> Often people assert that the 1980s marked a turning point in the
> economy with regard to spending priorities, implying that before then
> maintenance was more of a priority. Does this mean that economic
> reasons are the major ones for lack of maintenance? I suspect so.
> 
> Was anything else different in the past or was maintenance a problem
> throughout human history?
> 
> What about the boredom factor? I sometimes find it difficult to
> motivate myself to brush my teeth because it's such a repetitive and
> boring activity.
> 
> I believe people start appreciating maintenance when they have to do
> it themselves or if they have to pay directly to have it done
> (provided it's done properly). Perhaps payment for maintenance should
> not be part of general taxes, it should be a specific levy that can be
> traced back to actual maintenance performed.
> 
> The more complex our society gets, the more extensive and intensive
> the maintenance requirements get. Under the guise of  simplifying our
> lives, technology has pushed maintenance to the back stage where other
> people have to think for us. In my industry (Geographic Information
> Systems), the move away from desktop software to the web has
> simplified (the quality of the simplification is debatable) GIS for
> users not trained in GIS. But behind the scenes, my work has become
> far more complex.
> 
> Perhaps we humans just can't help ourselves when it comes to
> maintenance, just like we can't help repeating the cycles of
> civilisation rise, complication and collapse.
> 
> I live in South Africa where the visible evidence of no maintenance or
> incompetent maintenance is just downright scary.
> 
> Regards
> Hanlie
> 
> 
> > Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2019 10:09:55 -0400
> > From: lee vinsel <lee at themaintainers.org <mailto:lee at themaintainers.org>>
> > To: Themaintainers at lists.stevens.edu <mailto:Themaintainers at lists.stevens.edu>
> > Subject: [Themaintainers] Why Do People Neglect Maintenance?
> > Message-ID:
> >       <CAFfY7rEZbMyYg1jr2dWYtubzU5-j1JniB1PAZj+MP2==GmfSwA at mail.gmail.com <mailto:GmfSwA at mail.gmail.com>>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
> >
> > Hey, everybody.
> >
> > The three Maintainers co-directors - Andy Russell, Jess Meyerson, and
> > I - pulled
> > together a blog post laying out the factors/explanations we often hear
> > about why maintenance is neglected.
> > <http://themaintainers.org/blog/2019/7/30/why-do-people-neglect-maintenance <http://themaintainers.org/blog/2019/7/30/why-do-people-neglect-maintenance>>
> > As is often the case these days, this post attempts to echo back what we've
> > been hearing from others - including all the folks on this list!
> >
> > And as always, we are especially keen to hear feedback from you all. We're
> > hoping this post kickstarts discussion about how to think and theorize
> > about and empirically study these issues. Please give us feedback in anyway
> > you see fit - in the blog comments, on Twitter, via private/direct
> > messages, such as email, and ESPECIALLY on this list!!! :-)
> >
> > Hope everyone is doing well.
> >
> > Lee
> >
> > --
> > Co-Director
> > The Maintainers
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