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> But we are told that we can't have "enterprise" funding which means that we need to scrap and claw money from the people that use our services just to keep th

> But we are told that we can't have "enterprise" funding which means that we need to scrap and claw money from the people that use our services just to keep them online. I find how internal budgeting is done in many cases to be very strange. I run into this in my organization as well. Internal budget disputes can stop or start project work, so I can be sitting around idly (while getting paid) while they sort out the internal monopoly money they use. I get why they do it as you can't just dump unlimited resources into something, but it has all manner of side effects that it generates.

rightbyte 5y ago
Internal token money is a great way to mess up incentives in my experience. The most obvious offender is IT that charge silly money for computers. Utilities per head is a fixed cost even though the amount of office area, toilets or Ethernet jacks also are fixed. Etc. Resources that are underutilized are not borrowed by other departments since they have to pay for it even though the marginal cost of usage is almost zero, so they buy their own or don't bother. The end game is that the internal fairy tail costs will be used as a excuse to outsource stuff and pay real money to expensive external suppliers to save the pretend money in the department budgets ...
- theshadowknows 5y ago
  One of the systems that my team is the owner of is our member facing communications platform - email, sms, mobile push, paper, IVR. We had a meeting a few weeks ago where we were going through budget for an internal client to onboard - we were going to vastly simplify and expand their capabilities. But when they saw the sticker price (only platform utilization, none of the resources on my team are "funded.") they blew up! "I can send email from my outlook for free!" ... "My kids send messages to each other all day and it doesn't cost a thing!!" ...so...the project died right there. It's so crazy to me.

rightbyte 5y ago

Internal token money is a great way to mess up incentives in my experience. The most obvious offender is IT that charge silly money for computers. Utilities per head is a fixed cost even though the amount of office area, toilets or Ethernet jacks also are fixed. Etc. Resources that are underutilized are not borrowed by other departments since they have to pay for it even though the marginal cost of usage is almost zero, so they buy their own or don't bother. The end game is that the internal fairy tail costs will be used as a excuse to outsource stuff and pay real money to expensive external suppliers to save the pretend money in the department budgets ...

theshadowknows 5y ago
One of the systems that my team is the owner of is our member facing communications platform - email, sms, mobile push, paper, IVR. We had a meeting a few weeks ago where we were going through budget for an internal client to onboard - we were going to vastly simplify and expand their capabilities. But when they saw the sticker price (only platform utilization, none of the resources on my team are "funded.") they blew up! "I can send email from my outlook for free!" ... "My kids send messages to each other all day and it doesn't cost a thing!!" ...so...the project died right there. It's so crazy to me.