4 ms·

I bet if the hospital is to pay Bob/Charlie $1M for 6 months, post tax to fix it they would gladly do it. Note: this does not mean "We will pay you up to a mill

I bet if the hospital is to pay Bob/Charlie $1M for 6 months, post tax to fix it they would gladly do it. Note: this does not mean "We will pay you up to a million dollars, Net 90, after an invoice is approved and signed off by fifteen people". This means "We will wire a deposit of $250,000 today. The rest will be wired every month in 24 hours after an invoice is issued" The reality is company execs like to talk about fixing problems with money but rarely are they actually willing to fix a problem with money. In my career I dealt with the exact three companies where execs decided to throw money at the problem bypassing all the fiefdoms and bureaucracies created to avoid rapidly solving problems using money in favor of slow moving, don't step on Jackson the IT manager's toes, approaches. All three solved their problems, destroying the local fiefdoms in a process.

viraptor 6y ago
For $1M they can get the new version of the same system installed and likely get a step by step walkthrough of the whole thing by any number of new engineers they want. Also it's a public hospital - for a fraction of $1M they could get people who's only job is to replicate that system running around with pen and paper - they wouldn't have $1M to just drop on a support issue the same day. In context of this case - if they don't have money to fix their backups (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26539988 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26539988) they likely couldn't drop lots of cash without a serious credit line.
- notyourday 6y ago
  That's called priorities. I'm sure as every public hospital it pays a lot money in salaries to those protecting and growing their personal fiefdoms within the hospital.
- tw04 6y ago
  >For $1M they can get the new version of the same system installed and likely get a step by step walkthrough of the whole thing by any number of new engineers they want. A new system isn't going to do them much good when they don't even know who their customers are. I doubt any customer is going to hang around for a year while you rebuild your system from scratch, ignoring the fact that if they're an MSP the customers may not even have their own copy of the data. All of that is ignoring the likely contractual obligations they're likely under to maintain the data on their systems. >Also it's a public hospital - for a fraction of $1M they could get people who's only job is to replicate that system running around with pen and paper - they wouldn't have $1M to just drop on a support issue the same day. Hospital? He said they're an MSP on reddit: >Yeah we're an awful MSP. I've been trying to find a new job for quite some time. https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/ma4mwl/the_absolute_worst_case_scenario_happened_what/grqljsc?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/ma4mwl/the_absolu...
  - viraptor 6y ago
    > Hospital? He said they're an MSP on reddit: This thread is about a different case.
zikzak 6y ago
I have personally turned down an offer very much like this. I could have paid my (at the time) salary and benefits with about 2 days work a week with the option to bill as much time over that as I wanted as long as I agreed to work at least 2 days a week on thier top issues. The ERP system was a nightmare, though, and the company was difficult to work with (key, long term employees). It was a system I inherited, built out of garbage, that I tried to improve. Before I left, I found a very experienced contractor to take over, on-boarded him, and stayed as a support resource for a couple months. Six months later, he's retired and I'm getting panicked phone calls. I valued (and still do) my current job far more, even though I would probably have done better financially in the short term with the alternative. A few years ago, I heard they migrated to a new ERP at long last.
TheRealDunkirk 6y ago
This modern-day feudalism with corporations is really the root of the problem. Managers "patch" broken IT systems with lots of manual labor to actively avoid pointing out how some other manager's system is borked. They doom the company to spend hundreds or even thousands of man hours a year to work around these processes, refusing to allow it to be fixed, keeping the "power" and influence of the broken system with some other manager. They do this hoping to curry favor for the sake of their career prospects. After 25 years, I'm an expert at making small, efficient software tools to fix local IT workflows. God knows, in the Fortune 250's I've worked at, there are endless opportunities. And, while I've written many solutions, I've seen this political game of thrones thwart my efforts many times. This is how you get the kind of 20-year legacy mess described in the original post: People sacrificing long-term success of the company for short-term success in their careers. I guess there are 2 kinds of people. Those that think this is just how the world works, and find this to be a perfectly-cromulent way of getting through it, and those, like me, who find it odious. Luckily, I now work for people like me. We do what we can.
- notabee 6y ago
  This applies to similar problems in government as well. Some people care, some just kick the can to whoever is unfortunate enough to inherit the problem in 5-10 years. If you get a few of the latter people in political power, often the best thought out solutions are offered many times and denied because of internal political wrangling.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

viraptor 6y ago

For $1M they can get the new version of the same system installed and likely get a step by step walkthrough of the whole thing by any number of new engineers they want. Also it's a public hospital - for a fraction of $1M they could get people who's only job is to replicate that system running around with pen and paper - they wouldn't have $1M to just drop on a support issue the same day. In context of this case - if they don't have money to fix their backups (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26539988 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26539988) they likely couldn't drop lots of cash without a serious credit line.

notyourday 6y ago
That's called priorities. I'm sure as every public hospital it pays a lot money in salaries to those protecting and growing their personal fiefdoms within the hospital.
tw04 6y ago
>For $1M they can get the new version of the same system installed and likely get a step by step walkthrough of the whole thing by any number of new engineers they want. A new system isn't going to do them much good when they don't even know who their customers are. I doubt any customer is going to hang around for a year while you rebuild your system from scratch, ignoring the fact that if they're an MSP the customers may not even have their own copy of the data. All of that is ignoring the likely contractual obligations they're likely under to maintain the data on their systems. >Also it's a public hospital - for a fraction of $1M they could get people who's only job is to replicate that system running around with pen and paper - they wouldn't have $1M to just drop on a support issue the same day. Hospital? He said they're an MSP on reddit: >Yeah we're an awful MSP. I've been trying to find a new job for quite some time. https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/ma4mwl/the_absolute_worst_case_scenario_happened_what/grqljsc?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/ma4mwl/the_absolu...
- viraptor 6y ago
  > Hospital? He said they're an MSP on reddit: This thread is about a different case.

zikzak 6y ago

I have personally turned down an offer very much like this. I could have paid my (at the time) salary and benefits with about 2 days work a week with the option to bill as much time over that as I wanted as long as I agreed to work at least 2 days a week on thier top issues. The ERP system was a nightmare, though, and the company was difficult to work with (key, long term employees). It was a system I inherited, built out of garbage, that I tried to improve. Before I left, I found a very experienced contractor to take over, on-boarded him, and stayed as a support resource for a couple months. Six months later, he's retired and I'm getting panicked phone calls. I valued (and still do) my current job far more, even though I would probably have done better financially in the short term with the alternative. A few years ago, I heard they migrated to a new ERP at long last.

TheRealDunkirk 6y ago

This modern-day feudalism with corporations is really the root of the problem. Managers "patch" broken IT systems with lots of manual labor to actively avoid pointing out how some other manager's system is borked. They doom the company to spend hundreds or even thousands of man hours a year to work around these processes, refusing to allow it to be fixed, keeping the "power" and influence of the broken system with some other manager. They do this hoping to curry favor for the sake of their career prospects. After 25 years, I'm an expert at making small, efficient software tools to fix local IT workflows. God knows, in the Fortune 250's I've worked at, there are endless opportunities. And, while I've written many solutions, I've seen this political game of thrones thwart my efforts many times. This is how you get the kind of 20-year legacy mess described in the original post: People sacrificing long-term success of the company for short-term success in their careers. I guess there are 2 kinds of people. Those that think this is just how the world works, and find this to be a perfectly-cromulent way of getting through it, and those, like me, who find it odious. Luckily, I now work for people like me. We do what we can.

notabee 6y ago
This applies to similar problems in government as well. Some people care, some just kick the can to whoever is unfortunate enough to inherit the problem in 5-10 years. If you get a few of the latter people in political power, often the best thought out solutions are offered many times and denied because of internal political wrangling.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]