You know how you make the expertise in a large organisation?
You call for volunteers to run a pilot, move one team or a product to open source alternatives, learn what skills are needed in your tech people, what transition training is needed for staff
Have the pilot group select the desktop environment, change it if the choice generates too many tickets
Take that and roll it out more broadly, possibly aligned with new desktop hardware rollouts
Add to the good - you get to know that the US government couldn't lean on a single American company for access to your organisation's secrets
I watched the process where a set of Unix machines we had were up for replacement. The first version of the request had as the preferred option IBM hardware and Linux, the second version - after it had been to the executives - had the preferred option as IBM hardware and AIX
Like the exec knew what either were, but they would have had a consultant check the proposal. Then they pretend to have respect for the professionals they employ
It's not all that bad. I'm sure there are as many youth keen to learn computers and they have easy access to all the tools they need to develop knowledge and skill
It's just as we have become more knowledgeable, more capable, the difference between us and the normal people seems incredible.
But put us in an area needing different specialist knowledge and we'll struggle like they do with computer technical stuff
We speak jargon. They don't know the words, or if they do they use them wrong.
Also it sucks for us in IT work; when you are in an agile team and the manager two levels up doesn't understand agile they do things like break up high performing teams (mine had been a team for four years - from the day the organisation decided to test agile) to share the people around so they can teach the others how to be high performing
Had they read anything about agile, they would know that longevity of a team is a good predictor for performances — but they wouldn't read about agile, it's an IT technical thing
I'm fortnightly* helping some friends upgrade from win7 to more modern windows. They're smart people, one's an accountant, the other a school librarian. But since neither of their professions nor their hobbies are computer technical they need help
They're currently at the step "ring Microsoft to troubleshoot the licence"
If you had a question that attracted an expert in a relevant field, you'd get a good answer. If your question didn't attract them you'd get a random internet stranger
The idea is protection from crime. You can have the window tilted and thieves theoretically cannot climb in through that window, where a swinging or sliding window while open allows someone to climb in through it
Of course in practice they're less safe where they're popular as there is a tool, a hook, which allows someone breaking in to hook the handle, pull the tilted window shut, and open it again in swinging mode, allowing them in
My understanding is sliding windows are the easiest to secure as you can bolt lock them at any point of openness. My sliding windows have bolt points at closed and at 5cm open
I would rather have my team happy and working well rather than bitching about a crappy commute. I don't enforce the organisation's WFH rules on my team
And people from a different culture than the people who trained the AI