From julian@peeves.com Sat Oct 24 20:44:20 PDT 1998 Article: 104808 of alt.peeves From: julian@peeves.com (Julian Macassey) Newsgroups: alt.peeves Subject: Outsourcing For Fun Date: 24 Oct 1998 17:19:12 -0700 Organization: The Vatican Buggery Club Lines: 159 Message-ID: <70tqq0$ogm@limerock.chunkstyle.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 209.160.43.6 X-Trace: 909274843 LO0AHNKJI2B06D1A0C usenet57.supernews.com X-Complaints-To: newsabuse@supernews.com X-NNTP-Posting-Host: 209.160.45.200 Path: news1.meer.net!news3.best.com!news1.best.com!su-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.gtei.net!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!Supernews73!supernews.com!Supernews69!news.intercomm.com!not-for-mail Xref: news1.meer.net alt.peeves:104808 It has been an interesting week. Well, more like ten days. My Boss's boss is an interesting character. He is a fastidious bachelor with no friends and no social life. He is an accountant by training and says he was a junior army officer in Vietnam. He is in charge of Internal Audit (Snooping through accounts) and the Computer department. He refuses to use Voice Mail - on his phone, he is happy to leave a message on yours. He only uses his PC for e-mail. His understanding and like of technology is close to zero. His management style is he judges activity by reports and graphs. If those reports and graphs are a pack of lies, he doesn't care. If someone doesn't churn out reports, he obviously isn't working. As someone with an accounting background, this may make sense. For someone who claims he was in special forces in Vietnam it doesn't make sense. For the past couple of years, the bee in his bonnet has been "outsourcing PC management". That means paying outside people you have no control over to do simple jobs at inflated rates. How can getting an outside supplier save you money? This is of course the question that no one dare ask. The hip management way to save money is to "outsource" and concentrate on "core competences". All very trite. But what is the core competency of the computer dept? Shouldn't it be computers? So, if you outsource your "core competency" what are you doing? I have of course pointed this out. No one seemed to be amused. Then as I pointed out, if outsourcing is cheaper, then take out food has to be cheaper than home cooked. To justify the massive expense of paying an ignorant school leaver to do your work, plus the overhead of the company doing it, plus your overhead of "managing" the company doing the work, they came up with some bogus numbers. What bogus numbers? Why the infamous Gartner group study that says that the actual cost of maintaining a PC on a desk per year is $10K per year. I recently read a story where Ed Zander of Sun Microsystems quoted this figure. But as far as I know, this very study was paid for by Sun and Oracle in order to prove that the Network terminal/Javastation is cheaper to maintain than a full blown PC with Billyware loaded on it. This is a bogus number, it assumes that highly paid people will be looking after software on a "buddy" or opinion leader basis. Yes, that happens now, execs who are hip will help out others. If you then fire the in house PC people and hire some clueless clowns to come in on their whim to do PC work, the hip people who can do this but it isn't their job will be doing more, not less of this work. How did I point out this bogosity? First of all, every time this "Gartner group study" was bought up as a justification for spending four million dollars having our PCs looked after I would ask: "Who paid for that study?". Then when I told them, because they didn't know, I asked: "Why did they pay for that study?". Then I told them. But of course I as pointed out to one of the big VPs in mahogany row who was against this: If looking after our own PCs costs us so much, show me that cost on our balance sheets. He took this and ran with it. Of course the VP in charge of computers who is an accountant was stumped by this question. Believe it or not, outsourcing PCs would directly affect my department. Yet, in all these negotiations, my input was never sought. I was never shown the contract. I can only assume that they knew what I would say and therefore didn't ask me. I do have a reputation of savaging vendors who step out of line. If my BS detector goes off during yet another vacuous Power Point presentation, I have been known to bring everything to a halt while the sales suits do the shitstain shuffle. They obviously didn't want this to happen to their pet project. My boss, came on board a few months ago. To impress his boss as the go gettem new boy, he took the outsource the PCs stupidity and ran with it. As someone who colours his hair and likes to weasel free tickets from vendors, he really believes that if you provide enough overheads, hand out three ring binders and print meaningless prose in various colours you will look like you know what you are talking about. This probably works. Judging by the number of arseholes in badly fitting suits flying round the country doing this, I assume it must work sometimes. So, the plan was to replace about one hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth of payroll for four million dollars paid to people we have nop control over. Well, the other VPs may not be rocket scientists, but they can tell when they are being bamboozled and someone is trying one on. This plan of arrogance and stupidity was presented to the assembled board and not well received. Most people know, when the board isn't happy with a project, either drop it or take it out of view and make it a bootleg job. But no, these guys had convinced themselves that they had the plan that worked and they were going to get it through. Because they had the overheads, they had the "business case". The other biggies on mahogany row thought otherwise. I heard rumblings from my spies that all was not well with the "PC project". Mind you, while all the shuck and jive has been going on, I have been unable to buy PCs as this wonderful contract that had outsiders buy and install our PCs was going to happen "any day now". So, since July, no PCs have been replaced and we have a serious backlog of several hundred that need replacing. Last week, as I was wandering around mahogany row getting a document notarised, the big VP that is in charge of all the divisions asked me if I could step in his office for a moment. He spent an hour and a quarter grilling me on the the PC outsourcing, what I thought of it, had my bosses consulted me and taken note of my input, etc. He made notes and I am told had spoken to and visited several other people in the Computer division. A few days later, while wandering in mahogany row again, another VP grabbed me for a grilling, one and half hours this time. I was told by this VP, "The PC project isn't going anywhere". Then a couple of days later, one of my informants came into my office and closed the door. He told me that the VPs had killed the PC boondoggle and that the VP of computers and stuff had been severely injured politically. He was no longer being invited to meetings - never a good sign in a company. Then my boss called me in. He was not happy and complained that despite months of work the PC project was officially dead. I tried to hide my joy. So, sometimes there is justice. Sometimes, the right thing is done. I tried to hide my glee and do what I really wanted to do. Rub their damn noses in it. I have been trying to get an Alternate LEC (Phone Co) to bring in fiber to one of our warehouses. To do this, mahogany row wants to sign the contract. Not that they would understand it anyhow. So, getting this signed, depends on my boss and his boss saying it needs to be done. Well, it has languished for months. A couple of weeks ago I screamed at my boss for costing the company money by not getting it signed. He claimed that it was not signed because I did not present a "Good business case". To which I replied: "It's cheaper, it's more reliable. Any questions?" Excuse me while I gloat. I will be thanking my allies on mahogany row who helped kill the "PC management"disaster. I will also ask that they make sure I get my fiber optic contract signed. -- There are reasons for vigilence. There are never reasons for oppression.