Discussion
I want to scream, we’re having an all-tech-hands meeting about how everyone is having trouble getting their work done because the big central Remote Desktop server we have to use for certain things is overloaded, but we’re being roadblocked by the Corporate Overlord on provisioning more ram, more ssd storage etc.
Thirty highly skilled people having a meeting about how we can’t get two thousand euros in routine maintenance expenses to do our jobs approved.
@cstross @0xabad1dea I have ceased to be surprised by the fact that it is possible to go to budget holders in most organisations with a clear cut proposal that will save money within days or weeks and be told "we can't afford that."
I mean, getting capital expenditure (pay back in years) I always suspected would be hard work, but it took several rounds of watching "this will save you money by next week" being turned down before I managed to accept this was actually "normal business practice"
@cstross @0xabad1dea So much so that I was actually quite shocked when in one recent work place my manager issued me a virtual credit card on the first day and said "it will cost me more than $100 in time to do any meaningful due diligence on a purchase, so if something useful costs less than that just buy it"
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@0xabad1dea
Management bullshit is eternal.
In 1990/91 I worked for a tiny UK vendor of high end graphics cards—the predecessors of today's GPUs. The mainstay of the line sold for £16K and had 4 64-bit i860 RISC cpus and a separate TMS 34020 to do the 2-D head up displays. The software team had one board to share—it cost about £30K in 2025 money.
At one point the 34020 (a £30 chip) died, but the CEO refused to buy a new one, leaving the DSP assembly guy twiddling his thumbs for three months.