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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: Is your ISP Influenza-ready?
On Mon, Apr 17, 2006 at 02:05:41PM -0400, Jared Mauch wrote: > Back to the original question, how well could you cope for such > an event? It's always challenging to think about what would happen > as sometimes it includes the unexpected. All the guidance suggests you're going to lose as much as 40% of your workforce. Well, what intrigues me, is: which 40? I don't think the virus is going to select sales, marketing, and Tech support in that order (unless it's an STD epidemic, har har). Were that the case we might actually look forward to such outbreaks. On the other hand, at *every* substantially sized network I've worked at, the Network Engineering types that might reasonably do something useful in such an emergency situation are generally: 1) A close-knit group, going to lunches together and cohabitating cubicles so as to avoid exposure to aforementioned sales, marketing, and tech support or customer service. Indeed, at a few places I worked, they even spent most every weekend together. For all the rest of the world decrying geeks as socially inept, they are highly efficient at social assimilation of their own kind. 2) Given a 'low desirability' office space. No windows, usually poor air circulation. It is often called "The Back Room" or similar, or is located in a space you wouldn't expect to find humans. This isn't (usually) anyone being mean: engineers seem to like dark corners, something about making it easier to read monitors, and locations that provide fewer interruptions due to unlikelyhood of foot traffic. 3) Better at taking care of their networks than themselves. Or at least, more willing to - too frequent is the case I see an engineer, hacking, coughing, and wheezing at his monitor, plucking away at the keyboard deep into the night. So there you have it. They're likely to come to work even though they're sick (presuming they don't know it's a lethal virus), where they work and spend all their face-to-face time in close quarters with recirculated air with the rest of the company's engineers. It's like someone intentionally optimized this function specifically to be the most pessimal. So I think it's actually highly probable that a meatspace-viral vector would take out the entire engineering staff at most service providers I've worked at if only one of them caught the bug. I have to imagine this is representative of other work environments. We all seem to share the same collective experience in this sense, at least the folks I've talked to. And that loss would be way under 40% of the total company's staff, a mere blip really. So, which 40% can you afford to lose? How likely is it that the 60% that's left behind will be able to do the job? Will they need step-by- step instructions so that even an untrained monkey can muddle through? -- David W. Hankins "If you don't do it right the first time, Software Engineer you'll just have to do it again." Internet Systems Consortium, Inc. -- Jack T. Hankins Attachment:
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