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"The carpets are so clean, we don't need janitors"

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Re: "The carpets are so clean, we don't need janitors"

#61

Post by GFischer »

martincmartin wrote: post #39
kevinalexbrown wrote: post #26

In this case, the downside to saving money by laying off expensive experience is clear. Unfortunately, the downsides are rarely clear before the upsides, and by the time the mistake is obvious, returning to the previous state is difficult, and an incentive has been created for short term savings at the expense of long term ones. By way of example, several years ago I sold tools at Sears. Sears had spent decades build…

In this case, the downside to saving money by laying off expensive experience is clear. Things like time developers spend doing traditional IT tasks are clear to developers. But it's amazing how little of that is visible to executives. They certainly don't get an hour-by-hour breakdown of where developers spend their time. And the time to develop software is notoriously difficult to estimate even using the best techn…

The problem there is that the CIO or equivalent isn't making these things clear to the rest of the executives.

Re: "The carpets are so clean, we don't need janitors"

#62

Post by fallenpegasus »

zcvosdfdgj wrote: post #37
emeraldd wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That sounds bad. But we have no idea what the company does, so we don't actually know if this is a problem or not. That's true. The description of the company does lend itself to the belief that it was sufficiently large enough to make these things a problem. If you have people working in cubicles there is, more than likely, a need for them to have a computer, phone, etc. While it might be possible for them to not…

From the sounds of things, they didn't have a problem with inefficiency prior to the cuts. He includes no details about the IT staffing levels in the company, what the budget was, the size of the company, what the company did, what the employees did, the reason for the cuts (other than speculation), or anything else. For all we know, it was a company with 5 non-IT employees, and a staff of 50 IT people who flipped a…

A company of about 400 total on-site staff, about 8ish internal IT staff before, and 3 internal IT staff after.

FOAD, Hope that Helps, Have a Nice Day.

Re: "The carpets are so clean, we don't need janitors"

#63

Post by fallenpegasus »

Dn_Ab wrote: post #57

I am brought to mind a quote by a god like galaxy: " When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all. "

For a long time, that was my email sig.

Then I realized the problem with it.

Now I still try to do things right, and then try to make sure that a few key people knew what happened.

Re: "The carpets are so clean, we don't need janitors"

#64

Post by stan_rogers »

zcvosdfdgj wrote: post #20
michaelochurch wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things were running well. The executive thought that IT was bloated and made cuts. Things were no longer running well. Far more money was lost in the company's dysfunction than saved by the cuts. Sounds like a bad executive to me. I never implied that there aren't good managers and executives, but only that most of them aren't, because most of them get caught up in "boredom trading" that doesn't solve problems, but i…

First, he said the savings almost certainly less than the cost of the waste. This sounds like a guess. He gives no numbers, and doesn't appear to have quantified anything. Second, maybe IT was running so smoothly previously because it was bloated, and was a huge drain on company resources. Maybe it was running smoothly because a bad manager refused to put a limit on anything, leading to a division whos costs were com…

There is a difference in meaning between most certainly (what was actually written) and almost certainly (your misquotation, and apparently your reading).

Re: "The carpets are so clean, we don't need janitors"

#65

Post by zcvosdfdgj »

fallenpegasus wrote: post #62
zcvosdfdgj wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the sounds of things, they didn't have a problem with inefficiency prior to the cuts. He includes no details about the IT staffing levels in the company, what the budget was, the size of the company, what the company did, what the employees did, the reason for the cuts (other than speculation), or anything else. For all we know, it was a company with 5 non-IT employees, and a staff of 50 IT people who flipped a…

A company of about 400 total on-site staff, about 8ish internal IT staff before, and 3 internal IT staff after. FOAD, Hope that Helps, Have a Nice Day.

thank you.. that tells me far more about the situation

Re: "The carpets are so clean, we don't need janitors"

#66

Post by jaylevitt »

zcvosdfdgj wrote: post #20
michaelochurch wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things were running well. The executive thought that IT was bloated and made cuts. Things were no longer running well. Far more money was lost in the company's dysfunction than saved by the cuts. Sounds like a bad executive to me. I never implied that there aren't good managers and executives, but only that most of them aren't, because most of them get caught up in "boredom trading" that doesn't solve problems, but i…

First, he said the savings almost certainly less than the cost of the waste. This sounds like a guess. He gives no numbers, and doesn't appear to have quantified anything. Second, maybe IT was running so smoothly previously because it was bloated, and was a huge drain on company resources. Maybe it was running smoothly because a bad manager refused to put a limit on anything, leading to a division whos costs were com…

I think you're trying to argue (in multiple responses) that the evidence in the article doesn't rule out all other hypotheses, so we shouldn't take it as proof.

Sure.

It's not a formal proof. It's a narrative of a general pattern that we might want to learn from. If we can learn from narratives that are completely false - raganwald's excellent posts come to mind - then surely we can learn from narratives that are not scientifically rigorous.

Re: "The carpets are so clean, we don't need janitors"

#67

Post by emeraldd »

fallenpegasus wrote: post #62
zcvosdfdgj wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the sounds of things, they didn't have a problem with inefficiency prior to the cuts. He includes no details about the IT staffing levels in the company, what the budget was, the size of the company, what the company did, what the employees did, the reason for the cuts (other than speculation), or anything else. For all we know, it was a company with 5 non-IT employees, and a staff of 50 IT people who flipped a…

A company of about 400 total on-site staff, about 8ish internal IT staff before, and 3 internal IT staff after. FOAD, Hope that Helps, Have a Nice Day.

8ish is significantly less than I was expecting. My hat's off to them for keeping things running so smoothly!

Re: "The carpets are so clean, we don't need janitors"

#68

Post by jaylevitt »

zcvosdfdgj wrote: post #41
rosstafarian wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OP does have details to back it up, just not hard numbers. He states how new employees had problems getting setup, old employees dealing with misc problems, things not running smoothly in general. Yes most companies consist of more than IT but these days the problem is many organizations seem to look at IT as an extra expense they can skimp on or even completely do without("The bosses son is really good with comp…

The OP does have details to back it up ... employees had problems getting setup Ok.. tell me about those employees. How much do they get paid? Minimum wage? What do they do? Do they even require a desk? A week to setup a desk that the employee doesn't even need because they are required to travel constantly is not a problem. You're taking this awfully personally I'm not taking any of this personally. You're just sens…

Similarly, we don't know the names of any of those executives. That means we don't know if we currently work for them. If we work for other executives, we shouldn't assume that we can generalize this story to our experience!

In fact, since the odds of this exact management team starting a new company in exactly the same industry with exactly the same business model are close to zero, I think we can agree that it would be impossible to learn anything from this story even if we DID know all the details.

Re: "The carpets are so clean, we don't need janitors"

#69

Post by bdunbar »

fallenpegasus wrote: post #62
zcvosdfdgj wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the sounds of things, they didn't have a problem with inefficiency prior to the cuts. He includes no details about the IT staffing levels in the company, what the budget was, the size of the company, what the company did, what the employees did, the reason for the cuts (other than speculation), or anything else. For all we know, it was a company with 5 non-IT employees, and a staff of 50 IT people who flipped a…

A company of about 400 total on-site staff, about 8ish internal IT staff before, and 3 internal IT staff after. FOAD, Hope that Helps, Have a Nice Day.

Even if they'd kept 3 of the best and brightest they'd be hard pressed to keep up.

Re: "The carpets are so clean, we don't need janitors"

#70

Post by [deleted] »

robomartin wrote: post #27
michaelochurch wrote: post #2

Executives are day traders. I've known day traders to argue that they make more money trading in the first and last 30 minutes of the day than they do if they're trading all day, because they end up getting involved in "boredom trading" that is break-even at best (and blows out their variance) and quite possibly losing. As for executives, they're disciplined, they can enjoy their easy jobs and high compensation and a…

> As for executives, they're disciplined, they can enjoy their easy jobs and high compensation and accept the boredom associated with rarely being needed, because if things are running well, they aren't operationally necessary I'm sorry but you have zero clue as to what running a business is like. Zero. There really isn't much more I can say other than to quote Twain: "He who holds a cat by the tail learns something…

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