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[Chernobyl] In Soviet Russia....

124678

Posts

  • CristovalCristoval Registered User regular
    Same thing happened with the Escanaba power plant explosion in NYC. Check it!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYqvinNUeic

  • mcdermottmcdermott Registered User regular
    edited May 2019
    The state clearly doesn't care about its citizens, and yet the characters characters are willing to give their lives for the cause.

    I disagree with this. The state does care, it just also places value on the state as well. That leads to some of the errors and decisions that exacerbated the impact on some groups (like the failure to evacuate Pripyat immediately). But you can see other instances in which they clear go to great lengths and expense not to spend lives unnecessarily. For instance sending men into that roof was a last resort, and even then all feasible measures were taken to minimize the risk to them (even though it was substantial).

    The state wasn’t slow to take lives for disloyalty. And it did seem willing to spend some number of lives to save face on the world stage. But there was still a baseline of loyalty to the collective on the part of the state. Humans are expendable, but not valueless. They cared.

    As somebody who rode in a HMMWV with scrap steel hung on the sides, two years into a war, because properly armored HMMWVs were too expensive to procure quickly, I’m acutely aware that *all* societies draw those lines.

    mcdermott on
  • Al_watAl_wat Registered User regular
    One of the guys I work with was a liquidator at Chernobyl. I'll have to see what he thinks of this show

  • y2jake215y2jake215 certified Flat Birther theorist the Last Good Boy onlineRegistered User regular
    Yes it’s mostly deexcitation of nitrogen

    C8Ft8GE.jpg
    maybe i'm streaming terrible dj right now if i am its here
  • WinkyWinky rRegistered User regular
    I’m finally getting caught up. It really is just a collection of moments of personal cowardice being counterbalanced by moments of personal courage of different people that really makes the difference. If anything, I find that to be the message of this show.

  • KanaKana Registered User regular
    If anything I feel like the miniseries has been less about "nuclear bad" as it has been "if you refuse to believe the science because the truth is inconvenient, people will die."

    Which is, uhh, a pretty broadly relevant theme for us today.

    The threat of nuclear contamination is obviously terrifying in the show, but I think that's part of a larger environmentalist theme, it's never really argued against nuclear power in general.

    A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
  • HacksawHacksaw J. Duggan Esq. Wrestler at LawRegistered User regular
    edited June 2019
    Kana wrote: »
    If anything I feel like the miniseries has been less about "nuclear bad" as it has been "if you refuse to believe the science because the truth is inconvenient, people will die."

    Which is, uhh, a pretty broadly relevant theme for us today.

    Yes, what with the climate science denial being pushed by the Trump administration and oil industry shills (but I repeat myself).

    Hacksaw on
  • GvzbgulGvzbgul Registered User regular
    I've seen three of the episodes now.

    I've kinda been "spoiled" on the show by seeing the creator/director/writer/producer Craig Mazin's previous work. Much has been made of the Chernobyl series high Rotten Tomatoes score, but when you look at his other stuff it is dire.

    So it got me thinking and trying to spot badness. Weird direction, strange editing etc.

    Is the show just being carried by the subject? The wonderful costumes/locations?

    Is it actually good and I'm just seeing things (especially after seeing Game of Thrones)?

    There's a lot of information lost in some of the scenes. But it works? The viewer is often just as confused as the characters. So it's deliberate?

    Maybe Craig was hamstrung by not getting the full creator/director/writer/producer combo in his previous works?

  • CristovalCristoval Registered User regular
    edited June 2019
    Sometimes you just gotta cash a lot of paycheques in Hollywood in order to finally get to your passion project. There's a lot of variables that go into making a bad movie that all can't be pinned on the writer/director.

    A bunch of those movies were terrible but quite a few made bank, and that gets you a lot more leverage than simply being critical darlings.

    Cristoval on
  • nexuscrawlernexuscrawler Registered User regular
    Being a screenwriter is quite different from being a showrunner

  • HappylilElfHappylilElf Registered User regular
    Gvzbgul wrote: »
    I've seen three of the episodes now.

    I've kinda been "spoiled" on the show by seeing the creator/director/writer/producer Craig Mazin's previous work. Much has been made of the Chernobyl series high Rotten Tomatoes score, but when you look at his other stuff it is dire.

    So it got me thinking and trying to spot badness. Weird direction, strange editing etc.

    Is the show just being carried by the subject? The wonderful costumes/locations?

    Is it actually good and I'm just seeing things (especially after seeing Game of Thrones)?

    There's a lot of information lost in some of the scenes. But it works? The viewer is often just as confused as the characters. So it's deliberate?

    Maybe Craig was hamstrung by not getting the full creator/director/writer/producer combo in his previous works?

    I think the mistake you may be making is believing that Rotten Tomatoes scores of someone's past work in a different role is some kind of authority on something. It's really not.

  • y2jake215y2jake215 certified Flat Birther theorist the Last Good Boy onlineRegistered User regular
    Gvzbgul wrote: »
    I've seen three of the episodes now.

    I've kinda been "spoiled" on the show by seeing the creator/director/writer/producer Craig Mazin's previous work. Much has been made of the Chernobyl series high Rotten Tomatoes score, but when you look at his other stuff it is dire.

    So it got me thinking and trying to spot badness. Weird direction, strange editing etc.

    Is the show just being carried by the subject? The wonderful costumes/locations?

    Is it actually good and I'm just seeing things (especially after seeing Game of Thrones)?

    There's a lot of information lost in some of the scenes. But it works? The viewer is often just as confused as the characters. So it's deliberate?

    Maybe Craig was hamstrung by not getting the full creator/director/writer/producer combo in his previous works?

    I think the mistake you may be making is believing that Rotten Tomatoes scores of someone's past work in a different role is some kind of authority on something. It's really not.

    Normally I’d agree but the man wrote RocketMan.

    C8Ft8GE.jpg
    maybe i'm streaming terrible dj right now if i am its here
  • GvzbgulGvzbgul Registered User regular
    edited June 2019
    RocketMan is good, actually.

    RT is many things but it does provide a snapshot of general quality of media. Personally, I certainly wouldn't go to bat for any of his other work.

    Gvzbgul on
  • TynnanTynnan seldom correct, never unsure Registered User regular
    edited June 2019
    RocketMan was a fun movie

    Tynnan on
  • DanHibikiDanHibiki Registered User regular
    in case anyone's interested, Joker and the Lunar Lander ended up being dumped along with the rest of the machinery in a junk yard
    5djkm03rr1bx.jpg

  • Dark Raven XDark Raven X Laugh hard, run fast, be kindRegistered User regular
    IMDb got an exclusive little preview for the finale

    https://t.co/EPMGzWItqR @skyatlantic https://t.co/zZd5ndhtJv
    that visual of the metal cubes dancing around is fucking terrifying.

    So when they withdraw a rod from the reactor, does it's cube move in this big ol' plate? Wondering what the utility is of that big thing. Looks like the control room panels have a corresponding light map too. My curiosity about this mechanism is piqued, and the Wiki pages I've scoured don't offer much clarification!

    Also I'm amazed at the restraint the show has had in apparently going ahead and filming the catastrophe as it occurred and saving it til now to show it. Wonder if they built a replica reactor hall, or filmed in another real one?

    Oh brilliant
  • CristovalCristoval Registered User regular
    There are decommissioned rector halls very similar to Chernobyl, and even inside Chernobyl itself they could have filmed in.

    Those little cubes aren't supposed to move at all no, so the visual alone of them doing that is done frightening.

    Iirc, they had a big robot arm type thing that could retract and insert different rods depending on their needs, as Chernobyl served both as a regular powerplant and as a source of uranium for nuclear weapons (if it was built exclusively for one or the other it would have been safer, as they would not need the giant, unprotected warehouse space above the reactor to fit the machinery to do this).

  • tinwhiskerstinwhiskers Registered User regular
    that visual of the metal cubes dancing around is fucking terrifying.

    So when they withdraw a rod from the reactor, does it's cube move in this big ol' plate? Wondering what the utility is of that big thing. Looks like the control room panels have a corresponding light map too. My curiosity about this mechanism is piqued, and the Wiki pages I've scoured don't offer much clarification!

    Also I'm amazed at the restraint the show has had in apparently going ahead and filming the catastrophe as it occurred and saving it til now to show it. Wonder if they built a replica reactor hall, or filmed in another real one?

    Answer

    The RBMK reactor was designed for on line refueling. Rather than shut the reactor down, every X number of year to refuel it, there was a special machine that would go over one of those hatches, remove it, take out the spent fuel rod and replace it with a fresh one. There's a picture in the collection I'm linking.



    Someone on reddit made a great imgur album of photo's with captions https://imgur.com/a/TwY6q that goes over the plant construction/town/the meltdown/liquidation/etc. It's really great.



    If anyone is looking for an interesting read / listen, I really enjoyed Atomic Accidents. https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asin=B00HVPI1IA&preview=newtab&linkCode=kpe&ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_yql9CbK03W1MM

    The author is a former nuclear engineer, so it definitely has a bias but it goes through a slew of accidents that part you've probably never heard of. Really its a fucking miracle civilization made it through the 50s and 60s. He does a pretty good job explaining a lot of the arcana around nuclear-reactions as well. For as "run away death machine" as these reactors are, actually making one work is pretty fucking hard.

    I'm strongly considering doing vacation in Ukraine at the end of summer and doing a Pipirat tour while there. Anyone ever done one?

    6ylyzxlir2dz.png
  • CristovalCristoval Registered User regular
    edited June 2019
    I've just watched that clip and it is so eerily close to that Zero Hour: Disaster at Chernobyl episode (as eerily close as two things covering the same step-by-step process in a historical disaster can be) that it confirms my theory that Craig Mazin watched the same doc and was inspired to stretch it into an HBO special.

    EDIT: That special was also filmed in the remaining reactor hall/control room of Chernobyl, so I wouldn't put it past HBO to film there as well unless it is in a different state than it was in 2004.

    Cristoval on
  • GONG-00GONG-00 Registered User regular
    that visual of the metal cubes dancing around is fucking terrifying.

    So when they withdraw a rod from the reactor, does it's cube move in this big ol' plate? Wondering what the utility is of that big thing. Looks like the control room panels have a corresponding light map too. My curiosity about this mechanism is piqued, and the Wiki pages I've scoured don't offer much clarification!

    Also I'm amazed at the restraint the show has had in apparently going ahead and filming the catastrophe as it occurred and saving it til now to show it. Wonder if they built a replica reactor hall, or filmed in another real one?

    Answer

    The RBMK reactor was designed for on line refueling. Rather than shut the reactor down, every X number of year to refuel it, there was a special machine that would go over one of those hatches, remove it, take out the spent fuel rod and replace it with a fresh one. There's a picture in the collection I'm linking.



    Someone on reddit made a great imgur album of photo's with captions https://imgur.com/a/TwY6q that goes over the plant construction/town/the meltdown/liquidation/etc. It's really great.



    If anyone is looking for an interesting read / listen, I really enjoyed Atomic Accidents. https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asin=B00HVPI1IA&preview=newtab&linkCode=kpe&ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_yql9CbK03W1MM

    The author is a former nuclear engineer, so it definitely has a bias but it goes through a slew of accidents that part you've probably never heard of. Really its a fucking miracle civilization made it through the 50s and 60s. He does a pretty good job explaining a lot of the arcana around nuclear-reactions as well. For as "run away death machine" as these reactors are, actually making one work is pretty fucking hard.

    I'm strongly considering doing vacation in Ukraine at the end of summer and doing a Pipirat tour while there. Anyone ever done one?

    Blinking White Guy meme, Drew Scanlon, did some travel vlogs that can be found on youtube under his Cloth Map channel.

    Black lives matter.
    Law and Order ≠ Justice
    ACNH Island Isla Cero: DA-3082-2045-4142
    Captain of the SES Comptroller of the State
    xu257gunns6e.png
  • Jealous DevaJealous Deva Registered User regular
    Winky wrote: »
    I mean, the message of Chernobyl is not that nuclear power is bad and dangerous. The message of Chernobyl is that bureaucracy and personal cowardice on the part of self-interested individuals kills.

    EDIT: Like, the fundamental failure of what happened at Chernobyl was administrative in nature.

    Yes, it's quite clearly about a system designed wherein everyone simply covers their own ass ends up being horrific.

    Dude kept saying THERE WAS NO EXPLOSION when there quite clearly was, because admitting there was an explosion would have been the end of his career.

    They found the problem with the graphite tips on the boron rods and nobody changed a thing, they just removed it from the manual.

    Nuclear power and its constituent parts can be contained through modern means quite well, but in the hands of the wrong people in the wrong system it can be absolutely catastrophic.

    Its interesting to watch something like Deepwater Horizon after/in conjunction with this and see how the same factors lead to and exacerbate the disaster even though the political and economic systems are completely different.

  • Dongs GaloreDongs Galore Registered User regular
    Homyuk's weird ability to storm through Soviet bureaucracy is kind of irritating. If you try to enter a restricted zone and dare the Interior Troops to arrest you, you won't get to see their boss, you'll spend a few days in isolation.

    Also Legasov's naivete about the KGB seems out of place in the USSR, where even careless academics like Homyuk know to talk in code on the phone.

  • DanHibikiDanHibiki Registered User regular
    Homyuk's weird ability to storm through Soviet bureaucracy is kind of irritating. If you try to enter a restricted zone and dare the Interior Troops to arrest you, you won't get to see their boss, you'll spend a few days in isolation.

    Also Legasov's naivete about the KGB seems out of place in the USSR, where even careless academics like Homyuk know to talk in code on the phone.

    yeah it's like she's a completely made up character that they threw in for some reason.

  • GONG-00GONG-00 Registered User regular
    DanHibiki wrote: »
    Homyuk's weird ability to storm through Soviet bureaucracy is kind of irritating. If you try to enter a restricted zone and dare the Interior Troops to arrest you, you won't get to see their boss, you'll spend a few days in isolation.

    Also Legasov's naivete about the KGB seems out of place in the USSR, where even careless academics like Homyuk know to talk in code on the phone.

    yeah it's like she's a completely made up character that they threw in for some reason.

    She is a composite character, taking the experiences of multiple people and melding them into one person for narrative convenience and clarity. IMO, not completely made up.

    Black lives matter.
    Law and Order ≠ Justice
    ACNH Island Isla Cero: DA-3082-2045-4142
    Captain of the SES Comptroller of the State
    xu257gunns6e.png
  • KanaKana Registered User regular
    Homyuk's weird ability to storm through Soviet bureaucracy is kind of irritating. If you try to enter a restricted zone and dare the Interior Troops to arrest you, you won't get to see their boss, you'll spend a few days in isolation.

    Also Legasov's naivete about the KGB seems out of place in the USSR, where even careless academics like Homyuk know to talk in code on the phone.

    I don't know that much about life in Soviet Russia, but certainly reading about life under the communist regimes in China and North Korea it doesn't feel far-fetched.

    Some people are just naive, and sincerely believe that the secret police would only ever arrest bad people, no matter how much reason for doubt there is.

    Plus it's easy to view them as foolish with 20/20 hindsight, but these folks have lived under the regimes for their whole lives, their available information is limited, and up until now they've never had reason to doubt the system.

    A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
  • PhillisherePhillishere Registered User regular
    edited June 2019
    Kana wrote: »
    Homyuk's weird ability to storm through Soviet bureaucracy is kind of irritating. If you try to enter a restricted zone and dare the Interior Troops to arrest you, you won't get to see their boss, you'll spend a few days in isolation.

    Also Legasov's naivete about the KGB seems out of place in the USSR, where even careless academics like Homyuk know to talk in code on the phone.

    I don't know that much about life in Soviet Russia, but certainly reading about life under the communist regimes in China and North Korea it doesn't feel far-fetched.

    Some people are just naive, and sincerely believe that the secret police would only ever arrest bad people, no matter how much reason for doubt there is.

    Plus it's easy to view them as foolish with 20/20 hindsight, but these folks have lived under the regimes for their whole lives, their available information is limited, and up until now they've never had reason to doubt the system.

    The podcasts have an interesting commentary on this - the Soviets at the time were not some bloodthirsty authoritarian dictatorship equivalent to North Korea. They were a massive, severely flawed bureaucracy that was genuinely trying to do what it could to save the most people. Trying to understand what "should" have happened based on dim memories of American propaganda or comparisons to modern totalitarian states isn't going to be any more realistic than what was depicted on screen.

    Phillishere on
  • VariableVariable Mouth Congress Stroke Me Lady FameRegistered User regular
    Kana wrote: »
    If anything I feel like the miniseries has been less about "nuclear bad" as it has been "if you refuse to believe the science because the truth is inconvenient, people will die."

    Which is, uhh, a pretty broadly relevant theme for us today.

    The threat of nuclear contamination is obviously terrifying in the show, but I think that's part of a larger environmentalist theme, it's never really argued against nuclear power in general.

    seeing the episode where they used shitty readers so they could report the highest number it would show

    right after the current us admin decided to ignore what climate models say after 2040... they couldn't have planned it better

    BNet-Vari#1998 | Switch-SW 6960 6688 8388 | Steam | Twitch
  • WinkyWinky rRegistered User regular
    I really enjoy the characterization of Boris Shcherbina. He manages to exemplify some of that bureaucracy and hubris while still coming off as fundamentally decent and wanting to do the right thing. They do a good job of making many of the characters fairly complex.

  • HonkHonk Honk is this poster. Registered User, __BANNED USERS regular
    that visual of the metal cubes dancing around is fucking terrifying.

    So when they withdraw a rod from the reactor, does it's cube move in this big ol' plate? Wondering what the utility is of that big thing. Looks like the control room panels have a corresponding light map too. My curiosity about this mechanism is piqued, and the Wiki pages I've scoured don't offer much clarification!

    Also I'm amazed at the restraint the show has had in apparently going ahead and filming the catastrophe as it occurred and saving it til now to show it. Wonder if they built a replica reactor hall, or filmed in another real one?

    Answer

    The RBMK reactor was designed for on line refueling. Rather than shut the reactor down, every X number of year to refuel it, there was a special machine that would go over one of those hatches, remove it, take out the spent fuel rod and replace it with a fresh one. There's a picture in the collection I'm linking.



    Someone on reddit made a great imgur album of photo's with captions https://imgur.com/a/TwY6q that goes over the plant construction/town/the meltdown/liquidation/etc. It's really great.



    If anyone is looking for an interesting read / listen, I really enjoyed Atomic Accidents. https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asin=B00HVPI1IA&preview=newtab&linkCode=kpe&ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_yql9CbK03W1MM

    The author is a former nuclear engineer, so it definitely has a bias but it goes through a slew of accidents that part you've probably never heard of. Really its a fucking miracle civilization made it through the 50s and 60s. He does a pretty good job explaining a lot of the arcana around nuclear-reactions as well. For as "run away death machine" as these reactors are, actually making one work is pretty fucking hard.

    I'm strongly considering doing vacation in Ukraine at the end of summer and doing a Pipirat tour while there. Anyone ever done one?

    I was in Kiev a month ago but thought about it too late, you do need to book at least a week or more in advance which is logical considering permits and whatnot. I’ve been thinking about going back for a Pripyat tour this summer. Kiev was a very nice city too, extremely densely packed with historical things to see in the older part of the city. Like essentially the central west side of the river had a monument or cathedral every third block.

    PSN: Honkalot
  • jungleroomxjungleroomx It's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovels Registered User regular
    What a bittersweet ending.

    I enjoyed that very much. Make more things like this, HBO.

  • SmrtnikSmrtnik job boli zub Registered User regular
    The preview for Years and Years looked neat.

    steam_sig.png
  • bloodyroarxxbloodyroarxx Casa GrandeRegistered User regular
    What a bittersweet ending.

    I enjoyed that very much. Make more things like this, HBO.

    The end montage was very emotional

    I cried

  • ObiFettObiFett Use the Force As You WishRegistered User regular
    That Gorbachev quote at the end was surprising.

    Lies and hiding the truth are what ultimately brought down one of the most powerful nations on the Earth.

    Hm.

  • VariableVariable Mouth Congress Stroke Me Lady FameRegistered User regular
    edited June 2019
    when the truth offends we lie and lie until we can no longer remember it's even there. but it is still there.

    as the red recording light burns on the camera in the background and the boom mic hangs over him

    I literally got chills. oh my god.

    edit - what literally brought them down is that they not only went with the cheap option, but didn't tell their own people that they went with the cheap option. that's just sickening to me.

    equally sickening and similarly dishonest is that they didn't track the people who were there and helped with cleanups! on purpose, so it would be difficult to see who died from it, but it's almost like they never considered that from the other side, you could easily tell stories that actually overestimated the deaths (or they didn't care?)

    "why worry about something that isn't going to happen" is such a perfect statement also grabs so many current events in it's generality. goddamn.

    and finally, they totally got me with the "he's the villain but actually YOU are the villain!"

    Variable on
    BNet-Vari#1998 | Switch-SW 6960 6688 8388 | Steam | Twitch
  • So It GoesSo It Goes We keep moving...Registered User regular
    Winky wrote: »
    I really enjoy the characterization of Boris Shcherbina. He manages to exemplify some of that bureaucracy and hubris while still coming off as fundamentally decent and wanting to do the right thing. They do a good job of making many of the characters fairly complex.

    Plus his hair is perfect

  • y2jake215y2jake215 certified Flat Birther theorist the Last Good Boy onlineRegistered User regular
    Good finale to a good show but I found the ending montage, at best, misleading

    I did laugh my ass off at my one of my favorite dril tweets making an appearance

    kcvm2tx0ze9z.jpeg

    C8Ft8GE.jpg
    maybe i'm streaming terrible dj right now if i am its here
  • VariableVariable Mouth Congress Stroke Me Lady FameRegistered User regular
    what was wrong with it? I agreed with your feelings in the early eps, if only because I got the sense thousands were dead/gonna die really fast really badly and that seems to have not been the case. I did think that was misleading.

    but I thought the last ep did a great job of setting things right. curious what you didn't like.

    BNet-Vari#1998 | Switch-SW 6960 6688 8388 | Steam | Twitch
  • JRoseyJRosey Registered User regular
    What a fucking tour de force of a show. If you had told me I'd be crying during the epilogue of a drama about a historical event I had researched ad nauseam (in college) 5 weeks ago, I would have called the KGB on you, comrade. Nothing but pitch-perfect acting, atmosphere, scoring, and writing. The swings between thrilling, terrifying, and touching are unmatched. Thank you GoT for making me subscribe to HBO because hot radioactive damn, this was my favorite television in years. 3.6 out of 3.6 R/h.

  • FeralFeral MEMETICHARIZARD interior crocodile alligator ⇔ ǝɹʇɐǝɥʇ ǝᴉʌoɯ ʇǝloɹʌǝɥɔ ɐ ǝʌᴉɹp ᴉRegistered User regular
    edited June 2019
    I finally finished this tonight.

    I loved the final episode for all the reasons others have mentioned.

    But mostly because I sympathized so hard with those scenes of that 25-year-old engineer in the control room. Haven't so many of us been there - just with lower stakes?

    In my first IT job post-college, I was 21 years old and I was sent to do network wiring in an commercial office, after business hours supervised by a dude who I was pretty sure was a moron (and later my suspicions were validated). With zero training I was cutting holes in drywall and crawling through crawlspaces and fishing cables through conduit. I didn't have any clue what the fuck I was doing, I knew I was out of my element, but I had student loans and I needed a job (any job). I might have drilled through asbestos; on others I used non-fireproof cables across floors; I probably mixed low-voltage cable with electrical cable in the same conduit.



    (Also, my boss at that job was verbally abusive, smoked cigarettes, and had a mustache. Dyatlov practically gave me flashbacks.)

    When the two control room engineers look at the documentation binder with crossed-out lines and then look at each other like, "what the fuck is this?" I know that look. I once had to do a full disaster recovery failover for a financial institution using slipshod documentation and nobody on staff who conceptually understood the process. I had plenty of IT experience by that point but I knew nothing about the financial industry.

    MOSstqA.jpg

    Several years ago I decided I needed to learn more about storage area networks (SANs). SANs are big boxes containing lots of high-speed hard drives, for fast and large data storage. A low-end entry-level SAN can easily set you back $30k; a moderate SAN deployment is usually measured in multiples of $100k or $1m. This isn't something you get hands-on experience with unless your university or employer trains you on them.

    I interviewed with multiple jobs and I was upfront about how I had no hands-on SAN experience but wanted to get some. I was hired by one company, who promised me SAN training. Their "training" was accompanying another technician to a live SAN deployment for a customer while he showed me how he sets them up, complete with lines like "I don't know what this command does but it doesn't work unless I do it" and "I guess we choose this option, I think." He'd obviously learned what little he knew through the tribal oral tradition where you absorb ancestral knowledge passed along by your elders.

    I quit that job and took a second offer. Within my first month at the second company, we had a severe SAN failure. I was the most senior technician there - I'd replaced the old senior technician. Nobody there understood SANs, either. We didn't have a contractor to call. I had to crab-fab it on the phone with the SAN manufacturer tech support, pretending like I knew what the fuck I was talking about, while the CIO and CEO are utterly failing to hide how stressed they are that the entire business is down and I can't give them a straight answer about what the problem is or how long it will take to fix. This was at a job where I said, up-front, in the interview, that I didn't have hands-on SAN experience but I wanted to learn. Suddenly, the whole business was riding on me.

    owt4jinqoahq.jpg

    Obviously nobody died in any of these situations. There were no explosions. Nothing actually caught on fire... I think... (I can't really vouch for some of those early-career wiring jobs, though.)

    They still sucked for everybody involved.

    Why do we put good people with insufficient training into situations that they're ill-prepared to handle?
    Because it's cheaper.

    Feral on
    every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.

    the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
  • Jealous DevaJealous Deva Registered User regular
    edited June 2019
    Feral wrote: »
    I finally finished this tonight.

    I loved the final episode for all the reasons others have mentioned.

    But mostly because I sympathized so hard with those scenes of that 25-year-old engineer in the control room. Haven't so many of us been there - just with lower stakes?

    In my first IT job post-college, I was 21 years old and I was sent to do network wiring in an commercial office, after business hours supervised by a dude who I was pretty sure was a moron (and later my suspicions were validated). With zero training I was cutting holes in drywall and crawling through crawlspaces and fishing cables through conduit. I didn't have any clue what the fuck I was doing, I knew I was out of my element, but I had student loans and I needed a job (any job). I might have drilled through asbestos; on others I used non-fireproof cables across floors; I probably mixed low-voltage cable with electrical cable in the same conduit.



    (Also, my boss at that job was verbally abusive, smoked cigarettes, and had a mustache. Dyatlov practically gave me flashbacks.)

    When the two control room engineers look at the documentation binder with crossed-out lines and then look at each other like, "what the fuck is this?" I know that look. I once had to do a full disaster recovery failover for a financial institution using slipshod documentation and nobody on staff who conceptually understood the process. I had plenty of IT experience by that point but I knew nothing about the financial industry.

    MOSstqA.jpg

    Several years ago I decided I needed to learn more about storage area networks (SANs). SANs are big boxes containing lots of high-speed hard drives, for fast and large data storage. A low-end entry-level SAN can easily set you back $30k; a moderate SAN deployment is usually measured in multiples of $100k or $1m. This isn't something you get hands-on experience with unless your university or employer trains you on them.

    I interviewed with multiple jobs and I was upfront about how I had no hands-on SAN experience but wanted to get some. I was hired by one company, who promised me SAN training. Their "training" was accompanying another technician to a live SAN deployment for a customer while he showed me how he sets them up, complete with lines like "I don't know what this command does but it doesn't work unless I do it" and "I guess we choose this option, I think." He'd obviously learned what little he knew through the tribal oral tradition where you absorb ancestral knowledge passed along by your elders.

    I quit that job and took a second offer. Within my first month at the second company, we had a severe SAN failure. I was the most senior technician there - I'd replaced the old senior technician. Nobody there understood SANs, either. We didn't have a contractor to call. I had to crab-fab it on the phone with the SAN manufacturer tech support, pretending like I knew what the fuck I was talking about, while the CIO and CEO are utterly failing to hide how stressed they are that the entire business is down and I can't give them a straight answer about what the problem is or how long it will take to fix. This was at a job where I said, up-front, in the interview, that I didn't have hands-on SAN experience but I wanted to learn. Suddenly, the whole business was riding on me.

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    Obviously nobody died in any of these situations. There were no explosions. Nothing actually caught on fire... I think... (I can't really vouch for some of those early-career wiring jobs, though.)

    They still sucked for everybody involved.

    Why do we put good people with insufficient training into situations that they're ill-prepared to handle?
    Because it's cheaper.

    Been there. Corporate, government, its all the same.

    I was once hired for a position that was basically supposed to be a purely technical one, was told on the first day that I was now the managing supervisor because I was the only one with the (totally irrelevant) educational requirements for the position still on staff... It was not anything anyones lives depended on but it was a 10+ employee local government department with a million dollar budget. For the first 6 months or so I basically just had lower level employees handing me paperwork I had no idea how to handle, that they had no idea how to handle, and that my manager had no idea how to handle, on the basis that “the previous supervisor just took care of this”. While still being expected to do the job I was hired for(I actually had to miss even the usual basic employee training because they needed me in my job asap so my manager gave me a waiver I didn’t ask for) in a department that still had 2 critical positions vacant. Needless to say there was a lot of just doing what looked right and hoping it didn’t matter/we didn’t get audited.

    I asked what happened to the previous supervisor. “She quit because she wanted to reduce her hours, she had a baby.” Oh, why didn’t they just let her stay on part time then? “She was a mission critical employee and they didn’t think they could do without her”.

    ...


    A year later they let another critical employer go without consulting me, the supervisor in charge, over them wanting a very reasonable raise for an increase in responsibility, and posted her job for an amount higher than the amount she had originally requested.

    I figured out then it was time to go.



    Every one I know, from factory jobs, to health care, to tech, to government, has these stories. I honestly wake up surprised every morning that civilization doesn’t just randomly collapse. The whole thing is held together by spit and bubble gum.

    Jealous Deva on
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