"The carpets are so clean, we don't need janitors" • Hacker News Board

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

#91

Post by mark-r » Sun, Aug 05, 2012, 3:02 AM UTC

fallenpegasus wrote: post #59

zcvosdfdgj wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's clear from the article that he thought the company was worse off.. but really had no details to back it up. All we know from the article is that IT was worse off. But we have no idea how the company as a whole is doing. Maybe you aren't aware, but most companies consist of more than the IT dept.

A few years later, the company itself was effectively dead.

Which leaves the question, was the cut in IT a cause or a symptom? It could have been the last in a long line of bad decisions; I can't see this bringing down a company all by itself.

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

#92

Post by Retric » Sun, Aug 05, 2012, 3:15 AM UTC

ams6110 wrote: post #78

NinetyNine wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not really sure how you're implementing scrum. Our scrum standups are always just the programmers, once a day in the mornings, and are used to keep all the programmers on the same page and talk to each other to find out if features might have a codependency, or if other blockers can be solved by something else another dev is working on. There's no "watching" of people or "intimidation". You might want to speak to…

A daily 30 minute standup with 10 programmers (three minutes each) is 5 hours of development time lost. That's 25 hours a week, over half a full-time developer. It's probably more. Let's say stand-up is at 0900. Nobody getting in early is going to really get in the zone because they know standup is coming. Then after standup there's another 15 - 30 minutes getting into the flow. Then it's nearly lunchtime. In other w…

The goal is 45 seconds a developer not 5 minutes. Round up to 10 minutes a day * 5 days a week = one 50 minute developer meeting a week which is fairly common.

PS: You do lose a little time gathering, and people generally spend some time organizing there thoughts etc. But, keeping track of a short synopsis is useful, as is knowing what other people are working on, and most importantly when someone get's stuck working on the same things for a few days. It also adds a lot of pressure to get at least one thing done every day, which many people slack on.

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

#93

Post by Retric » Sun, Aug 05, 2012, 3:27 AM UTC

zobzu wrote: post #35

michaelochurch wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that. Good executives are worth far more than the compensation that they get; but as a class, their net impact is neutral at best and probably negative. As with stock traders (where a lot of them just lose money) most of them aren't very competent. That doesn't invalidate every single one of them or what they're trying to do. It's the CEO-pay debate all over again. No one who actually understands large compa…

I see 2 flaws in an otherwise fine argument. 1/ I don't think anyone is worth 10 million/year no matter how "good" they are. I sure believe a good CEO should be paid adequately but those are just ridiculous amounts, and the CEO is only one part of the puzzle, even if important. As a CEO its hard to screw up (even thus many do), its hard to be very good, but its easy to be in the middle. Like most jobs in fact. 2/Work…

It's not hard to find an athlete that's 'worth' 10 million / year. It's not hard to find an actor that 'adds' 10 million in value to a film. It's not hard to find people that have destroyed 100 million in value in a single year. Suggesting, that you can't find people that add 10 million in value when then can leverage 10,000+ people under them is suspect. At that scale just not fucking up is worth a lot.

PS: Plenty of stocks have dipped when well known CEO's died or left.

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

#94

Post by Dylan16807 » Sun, Aug 05, 2012, 3:52 AM UTC

Dobbs wrote: post #10

Foy wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear nightmarish stories of micro-managers all the time. They feel that in order to do their jobs they have to tweak EVERYTHING that crosses their desk. One memorable anecdote I came across was about an animation artist who was in charge of animating the queen for a 3d chess game. Because he knew his manager's weakness he threw in a duck... Yes, a duck. Fully animated with sound effects and everything. Sure enough,…

The duck story is battle chess: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?title=Talk:Battle_Chess#The_duc... I've often had the opposite problem: companies where the CEO is so disconnected from the company (usually by working remotely 80% of the time) that the company doesn't have direction and languishes.

Aww, so there never was a duck.

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

#95

Post by majelix » Sun, Aug 05, 2012, 5:26 AM UTC

bconway wrote: post #48

It sounds to me (and I know this won't be a popular opinion here) that the original IT department was overstaffed. A printer never out of paper? No projector ever found with a dead bulb? Much like there being a "healthy" amount of unemployment (~3%, I recall?), there's a healthy amount of smaller items not met. It sounds like the company was overpaying for IT.

Given the anecdotal basis of the account, there may be a good bit of selection bias on both sides of the cut here. He may be forgiving or forgetting those times when something did slip (either because it was so rare or because it was so easy to get fixed), and might be extremely harsh on the failings in the future, due to it being the 18th time it's happened that week or just "I told you so!"

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

#96

Post by Natsu » Sun, Aug 05, 2012, 5:57 AM UTC

zcvosdfdgj wrote: post #77

Natsu wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're making a guess based on what? I didn't write that, but it's clear to me that they're basing it on the results.

They got the "scale of the organization" from the results. No kidding.

The OP posted and they appear to have been correct, while your "for all we know" turned out to be almost exactly backwards.

People match stories against their own experience. Any half-decent sysadmin probably has a story or two like this one. So yes, we do have something with which to assess the credibility of the story.

It would appear that you do not share that experience, though.

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

#97

Post by gatordan » Sun, Aug 05, 2012, 7:33 AM UTC

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…

This reminds of a news story I distinctly remember about Circuit City from a few years back. They fired their senior sales associates and hired cheaper presumably less knowledgeable workers to cut costs. They were already on the way out at the time but I have no doubt this sped up the process as it signaled to their customers that experience and knowledge aren't a priority so much as the bottom line.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/retail/2007-03-28-c...

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

#98

Post by tomjen3 » Sun, Aug 05, 2012, 7:55 AM UTC

patio11 wrote: post #86

As fun as getting out our tribal aversion to managers who don't respect geeks is, let's focus on the actionable career point: do not work for cost centers.

Or better. Turn the perception of being a cost center into being a producer.

Most managers wouldn't dare tuch you so long as you say for every dollar put into the department, we save the business x dollars. You could even argue the margins too.

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

#99

Post by cypherpnks » Sun, Aug 05, 2012, 10:24 AM UTC

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…

Got screwed this way be Sears. Won't shop there again.

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

#100

Post by keithpeter » Sun, Aug 05, 2012, 10:56 AM UTC

emeraldd wrote: post #67

fallenpegasus wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

8 to 400 just keeping a system going (assumed MS from the vocabulary in the original article) sounds like a reasonable metric to me assuming no big business application development. 3 to 400 sounds very small, especially if there needs to be a Windows roll out (e.g. xp -> 7).

Disclaimer: I'm an observant end user who has worked in organisations ranging from 70 to 1200 staff total, and who has seen huge differences in basic it function. As others have pointed out, the cost of the less efficient IT support is 'hidden' in other budgets and in people 'just getting on with it'. I've seen newly appointed people share logins with established people just to be able to do anything which is an obvious security problem. My current employers have noticeably good IT support, but need to make savings, so I am worried.