Heat loss from big corporate projects
rachelbythebay.com
Heat loss from big corporate projects
1–10 of 57 posts
Re: Heat loss from big corporate projects
#2I work in a corporate environment in business intelligence and this rings true. This year we are tasked with retiring an arbitrary number of reports (mostly old Crystal reports) since they take too much of our time to maintain them. This will mean telling business partners that we are shutting down their reports, which in turn will cause them to create more Excel spreadsheets and Access databases. And in the process there will be the "heat loss" described in the article.
Re: Heat loss from big corporate projects
#3The whole system where all of these projects generally go towards some form of advertising where we convince people to buy things they don't really need is a far worse form of heat loss than this. Buying the latest shiny smartphone every year isn't just the heat loss of thousands of engineers making it slightly thinner, it's the actual loss of all the resources that went into last year's batch of smartphones that end up in a landfill somewhere.
And yet, none of this is really a loss as people need something that feels important to do with their time, and building that new smartphone that is the world's thinnest definitely feels like you're making accomplishments. And people are pretty happy when they open the box and see their new smartphone.
Moving corporate resources around is just one more step in a world we don't truly need, but which we create for ourselves anyway. In this case, it's part of the game of proving that our company has the biggest numbers so that our share holders get a smile on their faces when they open their retirement portfolios.
Re: Heat loss from big corporate projects
#4I work in a corporate environment in business intelligence and this rings true. This year we are tasked with retiring an arbitrary number of reports (mostly old Crystal reports) since they take too much of our time to maintain them. This will mean telling business partners that we are shutting down their reports, which in turn will cause them to create more Excel spreadsheets and Access databases. And in the process…
Isn't this the perfect example of lack of markets inside companies? i mean the consumers of your reports are either perfectly prepared to pay your department enough to keep the reports coming, or they don't want them that much. but without a free floating price the larger company will never know.
Roald Coase probably has something to say on it
Re: Heat loss from big corporate projects
#5This happens at the company I recently retired from. At intervals of between five and ten years someone decides that R&D should either be centralised or that the development engineers should be closer to the factories. The people are the same people, the work they do is the same, but the location is different. The justification for centralisation is usually that there will be better communication between the development engineers and the justification for putting them in the factories is that they will be able to communicate better with the management and workers of the factories. The reorganization is always intended to have a valuable side effect. I could never understand why they don't go directly for the side effect.
Re: Heat loss from big corporate projects
#6I work in a corporate environment in business intelligence and this rings true. This year we are tasked with retiring an arbitrary number of reports (mostly old Crystal reports) since they take too much of our time to maintain them. This will mean telling business partners that we are shutting down their reports, which in turn will cause them to create more Excel spreadsheets and Access databases. And in the process…
Isn't this the perfect example of lack of markets inside companies? i mean the consumers of your reports are either perfectly prepared to pay your department enough to keep the reports coming, or they don't want them that much. but without a free floating price the larger company will never know. Roald Coase probably has something to say on it
How can you have a market inside a company? Markets depend on having multiple suppliers and multiple customers. Nokia tried having internal competition and it didn't go well.
Something like it can work though. Many years ago I worked for Philip Semiconductor at the Mullard factory in Southampton in a department that designed and built production and test equipment. We had a formal project process where if the customer department wanted something they had to ask us first and allow us to perform a feasibility study or produce a prototype while spending up to ten percent of the rough estimate of the project cost. At the end of that we would present a detailed plan and cost. The customer department could then decide whether to offer the job to us or ask an external player such as British Aerospace to do it.
Re: Heat loss from big corporate projects
#7What if the 'heat loss' is just the required 'activation energy' to get from State A to State B, where B is far superior for the customer.
Re: Heat loss from big corporate projects
#8The whole system where all of these projects generally go towards some form of advertising where we convince people to buy things they don't really need is a far worse form of heat loss than this. Buying the latest shiny smartphone every year isn't just the heat loss of thousands of engineers making it slightly thinner, it's the actual loss of all the resources that went into last year's batch of smartphones that end…
I found this insightful, but disagree with two points.
First is that people think working on adtech is important. It may be fun or offer a good lifestyle, but they seem to know it's not the most meaningful, important work to do.
Second, that retirement portfolios are a major beneficiary of all this heat loss. Most of the value is captured lower on the food chain by employees, execs, and money managers.
Re: Heat loss from big corporate projects
#9The whole system where all of these projects generally go towards some form of advertising where we convince people to buy things they don't really need is a far worse form of heat loss than this. Buying the latest shiny smartphone every year isn't just the heat loss of thousands of engineers making it slightly thinner, it's the actual loss of all the resources that went into last year's batch of smartphones that end…
Exactly.
But what are people meant to do? The information isn't there.
Should I chuck away my diesel car and buy a Tesla? I'd certainly have a psychological reward for that, but what about the huge amount of energy/resources already invested in the diesel car? "But your old car will be used by someone else" people will say, and then it all starts to get complicated.
We need tools to make this decision clearer.
Re: Heat loss from big corporate projects
#10The whole system where all of these projects generally go towards some form of advertising where we convince people to buy things they don't really need is a far worse form of heat loss than this. Buying the latest shiny smartphone every year isn't just the heat loss of thousands of engineers making it slightly thinner, it's the actual loss of all the resources that went into last year's batch of smartphones that end…
Isn't it funny, the amount of things like this that go on in the system we've created. Like how weird is it that "competition" - two companies both working on the same things against each other, without sharing what they know - can be better for the consumer than if both companies worked together. None of this is really going to change unless we can somehow make a world where making the world a truly better place can be a more powerful driver than money.