91–100 of 458 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
One would think the use-it-or-lose-it problem would've been solved by now. It's so obviously dysfunctional. Is there really no better way to determine budget?
There are, of course, better ways; the thing is that non-dysfunctional methodology is not evenly distributed. This comes to mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recurrent_laryngeal_nerve
You should try working in an investment bank as a contractor. You need to find the right team, but a lot of them are massive collections of people doing virtually nothing but getting paid great daily rates. The trick is to look busy and wrap your team/yourself in a perceived sense of enigma and complexity. If you play your cards right, you can end up in a situation where no one will ask questions as long as you fire…
This describes >80% of engineering departments at past large firms where I've worked. Ironically, these people are 'architects' and get paid handsomely.
This is how corporate works. They have budgets for things. The money doesn't come out of the pocket of the person who cuts the cheque. You send in an invoice and it gets paid. If it doesn't, the company is insolvent or they are at risk to lawsuits which will cost them more than your paltry $18000. But they don't even think about the lawsuit part. Bill comes in, cheque goes out.
Can you give my boss the 101? He has me methodically checking invoices against tenders. I would actually argue the other way. As our consultants rely on our return business, they would quickly solve any problem with the invoice even if not to the letter correct. We have bargaining power and they don't want to bite the hand that feeds them.
I'm in midst of a contract that was supposed to take 2-3 weeks - my mate asked for help, they desperately need good developers. I think it's 6 months now ($60k++), while past 3 were "we are almost there now". It's all typical crap - trying to squish some crap into JIRA, molesting Slack in some weirdest ways, tester reporting bugs in less than 6 sentences... All I can think of is that I didn't ask for a high enough ho…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Large companies operate on a completely different scale of money. If this was a page for a product that's going to make a million dollars, this expense was still a rounding error.
But why are they so stingy with salaries, then?
Back when I was in my 20s during my walks from the light rail to the office I would have constant thoughts about how idiotic programming and office work is. The ONLY reason it all exists is because people can't trust each other. And that maybe trust isn't really necessary in a society that lessens personal ownership and has more of a share-all-but-do-your-part approach.
It's literally so unfair the way we've segmented people into knowledge zones. Bankers know how easy it is to double money without taking risk. Programmers know how to pretend something will take 3 weeks when it will only take 2 days.
Recently I've learned how easy it is to set up solar. I cry every time I hear someone get trapped in some solar contract when they sell their house. It's literally mind warping how fucked up every aspect of this economy is.
Great illustration of why hourly billing makes no sense, for either side. In this case, as usual, the amount of hours "spent" on the project has little to do with actual value provided. From the contractor's side, he's excited about getting 12x the original quote, instead of realizing he's been severely undercharging for his work and could've been earning 10x or more all this time. I wonder if the author will start c…
Hourly billing is how you protect yourself against a sloppy client like this, especially with unpredictability. I have seen fixed price blow up so much I would never ever do it personally - I would have to add so much it would be astonishing to be worth it.
This is how corporate works. They have budgets for things. The money doesn't come out of the pocket of the person who cuts the cheque. You send in an invoice and it gets paid. If it doesn't, the company is insolvent or they are at risk to lawsuits which will cost them more than your paltry $18000. But they don't even think about the lawsuit part. Bill comes in, cheque goes out.
Can you give my boss the 101? He has me methodically checking invoices against tenders. I would actually argue the other way. As our consultants rely on our return business, they would quickly solve any problem with the invoice even if not to the letter correct. We have bargaining power and they don't want to bite the hand that feeds them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some organization have this issue where you get a budget for your group, and if you don't use it then upper management will think you don't need more resources next year and will budget less or even cut from your department. If you don't use it, they reallocate it to a department that needs it and you never get it back. Another part is where if you get a hiring budget they expect you to use it because if you aren't s…
You just restated the problem in more detail. What I'm asking is, if the above system encourages managers to waste money, why hasn't anyone come up with a better system?
Budgets are a pretty powerful and widely used tool for managing organizations. And there are other checks and balances. It's not like a manager can necessarily just decide to have a team off-site in Hawaii because there's room left in the budget.