

One Way to Get IT's Attention - tom6a
http://www.omninerd.com/articles/One_Way_to_Get_ITs_Attention

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mistermann
At my current job (very large corporation), I requested certain specs for my
development machine, basically just lots of RAM and an SSD. I said I would be
more than happy to pay for the hardware myself and they could have IT install
the standard desktop.

It took 6 weeks for this request to be emailed around to various people for
approval and no one (I saw the email chain) had the balls to make a decision
_or even give their opinion_ on the matter. Luckily, it finally hit someone
that had both a brain and balls, whose reaction was basically "of course, give
it to him immediately, the extra cost is meaningless."

The point of this is, at least to some degree, costs are not what hampers IT,
you can offer to pay for something and they will still not let you have it. At
mt previous job I got some very suspicious looks from a manager for bringing
my own printer to work (to save 5 minutes a day walking to the printer).

I've seen it in many companies.....there's something else going on other than
just budget, but I can't put my finger on it.

~~~
omh
For many people, including the lower ranks of large IT departments, it simply
isn't part of their job to ever make a decision or use their own opinion.

If you think for yourself and get it wrong then your boss won't be happy. If
you just pass the request around then you can't be blamed.

~~~
theBobMcCormick
When people wonder why big companies make stupid decisions and why they are
are _so_ slow and inefficient... this is it.

If an entrepreneur sticks his neck out for an opportunity that has high risk
but potentially high rewards, he's doing it because he expects to _get_ a
large portion of the rewards if he's successful. In a big "enterprise"
company, your share of the reward for sticking your neck out is likely to be,
if you're lucky, nothing more than a Lucite plaque and a mention in your
review. But your share of the risk could be quite a bit larger (loss of your
job for example). All the individual incentives in most organizations are
tilted toward risk avoidance.

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jasonkester
He mentioned billable rate, which might be the reason this isn't going to get
fixed. If you're billing a client $250/hr for your employees' time, your
incentive as a company is to maximize the time it takes to do things. Adding
random 3 minute pauses to the workflow of your most expensive people would be
an example of a "good thing" from a strictly financial perspective.

But then companies are seldom that aware of what's going on. Back in my
Consulting Engineer days, I spent plenty of time trying to explain the simple
math: "since you're billing me out at a 3.5 multiplier, it actually makes you
more money to give me a raise". It never flew. So eventually I did.

Personally, I'm all in favor of big companies behaving this way. Less
efficiency in other shops is a competitive advantage for mine.

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iwwr
What was the lag situation after an OS reimaging or reinstall?

Take a snapshot of a fresh OS install, with all necessary applications
installed, _running on the old hardware_. Compare that with a snapshot of the
old OS (before reinstallation), _running on the new hardware_. Generally,
unless the hardware is really old, reinstalling Windows will get you a
snappier system back.

If you're using an old HDD, consider swapping for a SSD.

If a little more performance is needed, consider overclocking the CPU by
15-20% if that's possible (a cpu cooler is much cheaper than a new machine).

Additionally, you should disable all graphic "special effects", Aero and other
crap that comes with Windows.

~~~
dangrossman
Be careful, because sometimes disabling Aero actually makes the system slower.
With Aero enabled, rendering the desktop and window UI/compositing/etc is done
on the GPU. With it disabled, all that UI is now contending for CPU time.

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bradleyland
I've had a lot more success with this tactic in small businesses than I have
with large. It's really easy to go to an owner operator and express PC
hardware costs relative to employee salary. For a $35k/year employee, an $875
PC upgrade is only 2.5% of their salary. It's hard to argue that you won't get
a 2.5% productivity increase from keeping users in new PCs every couple of
years. It's amazing how much more willing someone is to do their work when you
make it less frustrating for them.

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angdis
There's another obstacle besides IT: co-workers.

I once worked with a guy who used a 10 year old blurry "CRT" monitor.
Repeatedly, I told to at least switch to LCD, but he wouldn't do it, citing
that it would require a "business justification". If I were him, that monitor
would have met with an unfortunate accident.

In such an environment, asking for a workstation that goes beyond "secretary
grade" specs paints one as a gear-dandy.

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monk-e-boy
In one of my first jobs as a coder we had little crappy PCs for development.
They were ok, but a bit slow. When I left I wrote a polite email to the CEO
pointing out the same thing - lag time x wages per hour x number of people in
the team. A week later one of the devs emailed me and said they'd just
recieved amazing new machines.

~~~
iwwr
It's not always clear that faster machines really produce net productivity
gains, unless the employee's time is already saturated with work. The net
gains may manifest themselves into lower working hours, but the company can't
just then start paying employees for 7.5 hours instead of 8 (although it can
let go of 5% of the workforce to the same effect).

~~~
Dylanlacey
But employees can get more done in their 7.5 hours then they could in 8.

Rather, those 7.5 hours are less interrupted by waits, lag, pauses and
compiles. Switching from IDE to reference is more seamless, and so the
preservation of flow is much more likely.

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domchi
I don't know what makes you think that you've achieved anything. Or, in other
words, your main problem remains unsolved. :)

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grammaton
" but that has allowed me to experience a migration from Windows 2000 to
Windows Vista."

Well there's your first mistake. This could just as easily be an argument to
stop using crappy MS products.

(yhea yhea, i know, never going to happen).

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pmorici
"He urged me to summarize my data and findings in an email and then he would
pass it on to some VP in the IT world."

ha. mail > /dev/managment_blackhole

