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‘Fix My Computer’ Cry Echos on Social Media; Air Force CIO Responds

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Re: ‘Fix My Computer’ Cry Echos on Social Media; Air Force CIO Responds

#141

Post by seiferteric »

_fat_santa wrote: post #100
joshstrange wrote: post #72

I will never understand when a company/government entity pay people a high salary then give them crap or low-end hardware. You should be maxing out dev machines and the rest of the company should rarely see a spinner or have to wait on their tech. It's a huge waste of time that you are paying for. I once calculated how much time I wasted waiting on slow processes at a job and then multiplied it by my effective hourly…

It doesn't even have to be low end hardware. I just gave back a laptop to a client that I was working with in healthcare. It's a 16" MBP with an i7 and 32GB of RAM. The machine itself is really fast but gets bogged down by all the other crap it has to connect to. They had McAfee endpoint security on these things and it would prevent any unauthorized apps from running as well as hog between 50-70% of the CPU during it…

God my work machine is like this. People (rightfully) complain about power use by crypto, but I wonder how much power is wasted by McAfee et al? I wish there would be public outcry over it :)

Re: ‘Fix My Computer’ Cry Echos on Social Media; Air Force CIO Responds

#142

Post by joshstrange »

ortuna wrote: post #94
joshstrange wrote: post #72

I will never understand when a company/government entity pay people a high salary then give them crap or low-end hardware. You should be maxing out dev machines and the rest of the company should rarely see a spinner or have to wait on their tech. It's a huge waste of time that you are paying for. I once calculated how much time I wasted waiting on slow processes at a job and then multiplied it by my effective hourly…

They don't buy a laptop but a seat for some amount of years. So they're guaranteed X amount of laptops for Y years. The selling company is obviously going to min/max this contract as much as they can. You could order a bunch of laptops if you had the authority I guess, but it will not be making on to the network since that is under contract too (probably the same company)

I understand that's how they are used to operating, I just think it's stupid. I'm sure some beancounter likes everything nice, neat, and predicable but that doesn't mean it's a good idea. If your org has differing compute needs that are all subset/supersets of each other then cycle machines through your workforce (buy new and rotate down hardware to those who need less compute). If that's not possible or the number of people in each group are wildly different then suck it up as a cost of doing business and get the beancounters focused on how to write off as much of the machine as they can with depreciation.

Re: ‘Fix My Computer’ Cry Echos on Social Media; Air Force CIO Responds

#143

Post by swagasaurus-rex »

spamizbad wrote: post #86
joshstrange wrote: post #72

I will never understand when a company/government entity pay people a high salary then give them crap or low-end hardware. You should be maxing out dev machines and the rest of the company should rarely see a spinner or have to wait on their tech. It's a huge waste of time that you are paying for. I once calculated how much time I wasted waiting on slow processes at a job and then multiplied it by my effective hourly…

Part of this is that IT is viewed as a cost center (well, because it is), and often "owns" the expense of issuing laptops. IT's objective is to ship you a laptop that will adequately run the software you need to perform your job duties. How efficiently you perform them becomes a problem for you and your manager.

A company's job is to provide a service or sell a product. The idea that doing that is a "cost" that needs to be reduced is ass-backwards.

Bean counters will, by contrast, rarely cut their own budgets because they control the budget.

Re: ‘Fix My Computer’ Cry Echos on Social Media; Air Force CIO Responds

#144

Post by jahewson »

joshstrange wrote: post #72

I will never understand when a company/government entity pay people a high salary then give them crap or low-end hardware. You should be maxing out dev machines and the rest of the company should rarely see a spinner or have to wait on their tech. It's a huge waste of time that you are paying for. I once calculated how much time I wasted waiting on slow processes at a job and then multiplied it by my effective hourly…

Often the hardware procurement, maintenance and network/account operation are outsourced to an IT contractor. They charge top dollar and provide as little as possible. They are often big multi-national firms.

Companies have been doing this for so long they’ve lost all knowledge of how modern IT is supposed to work.

Re: ‘Fix My Computer’ Cry Echos on Social Media; Air Force CIO Responds

#145

Post by numpad0 »

joshstrange wrote: post #72

I will never understand when a company/government entity pay people a high salary then give them crap or low-end hardware. You should be maxing out dev machines and the rest of the company should rarely see a spinner or have to wait on their tech. It's a huge waste of time that you are paying for. I once calculated how much time I wasted waiting on slow processes at a job and then multiplied it by my effective hourly…

The question is why are those company/government the most stable and profitable, far more than the startup that gives you 32GB RAM workstations to fresh graduates. I'm not justifying those inhumane working environments, but they seems to just work for shareholders.

Re: ‘Fix My Computer’ Cry Echos on Social Media; Air Force CIO Responds

#146

Post by ferrumfist »

dekhn wrote: post #121
joshstrange wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And let's tie one hand behind their backs and cover one eye as well while we are at it. I think the idea of giving devs trash hardware because "it's what our users use" is the worst solution possible to solving that problem. Have the devs or another team test on lower-end hardware before pushing a version, don't hobble them while they are creating.

here's the argument that Brad Fitzpatrick (who espoused this idea) gave: at the time, he was creating livejournal and had a bunch of russian hackers building the site. He noticed that every time they made pages load faster or work better, more people used the site (and site growth is the simple most important metric), and that more and more people were coming from countries with poor internet infra. So, he made his w…

A better approach is to simply buy your devs 2 computers:

1 fast PC for speedy development and 1 slow laptop for testing. It makes no sense to give developers a slower computer simply to make them develop better. It's like saying that post office workers must now use bicycles instead of motor vehicles in order to encourage them to find shortcuts. I'm not a successful CEO, though, so maybe I'm just talking out my ass.

Re: ‘Fix My Computer’ Cry Echos on Social Media; Air Force CIO Responds

#147

Post by AlwaysRock »

joshstrange wrote: post #72

I will never understand when a company/government entity pay people a high salary then give them crap or low-end hardware. You should be maxing out dev machines and the rest of the company should rarely see a spinner or have to wait on their tech. It's a huge waste of time that you are paying for. I once calculated how much time I wasted waiting on slow processes at a job and then multiplied it by my effective hourly…

It's because the people making the decisions about what computers everyone else should get buy themselves the best computer possible and don't feel the pain. Surely X company cant afford to get everyone the best macbook possible. That would be like a few thousand more per device per employee!!!

Re: ‘Fix My Computer’ Cry Echos on Social Media; Air Force CIO Responds

#148

Post by javajosh »

_fat_santa wrote: post #100
joshstrange wrote: post #72

I will never understand when a company/government entity pay people a high salary then give them crap or low-end hardware. You should be maxing out dev machines and the rest of the company should rarely see a spinner or have to wait on their tech. It's a huge waste of time that you are paying for. I once calculated how much time I wasted waiting on slow processes at a job and then multiplied it by my effective hourly…

It doesn't even have to be low end hardware. I just gave back a laptop to a client that I was working with in healthcare. It's a 16" MBP with an i7 and 32GB of RAM. The machine itself is really fast but gets bogged down by all the other crap it has to connect to. They had McAfee endpoint security on these things and it would prevent any unauthorized apps from running as well as hog between 50-70% of the CPU during it…

Oh it's not low end hardware, its endless enterprise crapware designed to secure stuff. Enterprise malware proliferates likes admonishing signs in a government office, and for the same reason: it's easy. And it has the same effect: useless clutter that makes the place worse.

Re: ‘Fix My Computer’ Cry Echos on Social Media; Air Force CIO Responds

#149

Post by buscoquadnary »

numpad0 wrote: post #145
joshstrange wrote: post #72

I will never understand when a company/government entity pay people a high salary then give them crap or low-end hardware. You should be maxing out dev machines and the rest of the company should rarely see a spinner or have to wait on their tech. It's a huge waste of time that you are paying for. I once calculated how much time I wasted waiting on slow processes at a job and then multiplied it by my effective hourly…

The question is why are those company/government the most stable and profitable, far more than the startup that gives you 32GB RAM workstations to fresh graduates. I'm not justifying those inhumane working environments, but they seems to just work for shareholders.

Basically big orgs have more to lose than gain because they are so big. Crippling an employee's machine when you have 15 employees to reduce a risk that has a 5% chance of occurrence is a bad tradeoff. Whereas if you have 1500 employees and a risk that has a 5% chance of happening, that means by crippling the machines you have have prevented 75 incidents. Also you're only crippling the machines of a certain portion of people the secretaries, HR, and Marketing departments that just use their computers for email and facebook don't notice a problem.

Re: ‘Fix My Computer’ Cry Echos on Social Media; Air Force CIO Responds

#150

Post by core-utility »

joshstrange wrote: post #72

I will never understand when a company/government entity pay people a high salary then give them crap or low-end hardware. You should be maxing out dev machines and the rest of the company should rarely see a spinner or have to wait on their tech. It's a huge waste of time that you are paying for. I once calculated how much time I wasted waiting on slow processes at a job and then multiplied it by my effective hourly…

Hardware is not the problem. I had a truly insane spec laptop (insane for what I was doing) that I frequently lost productivity with because of waiting. It's the AV, endpoint, HIPS/HIDS, etc. software they throw on along with constant updates and restarts that really cause the issue.
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