4 ms·

Okay, now I'm just laughing out loud. My org has an internal/external reputation for not exactly being fast moving and having convoluted IT processes, yet we ca

Okay, now I'm just laughing out loud. My org has an internal/external reputation for not exactly being fast moving and having convoluted IT processes, yet we can onboard people within a few days. If it takes you 2-3 weeks to onboard ANYONE please realize that your IT processes are complete, unmitigated garbage. Paying Microsoft for some Windows VMs through the nose isn't going to change anything about that.

ssully 5y ago
I assure you, they know their IT processes are garbage.
dboreham 5y ago
Perhaps if there's a significant chance of never seeing the expensive laptop again?
raesene9 5y ago
This it true but I've seen orgs in the past where a business unit would happily pay quite a lot of money to avoid going anywhere near central IT. I think the most extreme example of slow process I saw was an organization where central IT wanted to charge $20k and take two months to quote for a project. In that kind of environment things like this with opex pricing that can be assigned to a project's budget and fast spin up are a much better option :)
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  At my current company, my department would be able to find more experienced contractors for well below what another department here rents them out for. So I can see internal pricing being an issue as well. Internal IT charges for quotes. MSFT just quotes. This happened at a prior company as well. IBM was routinely hired over our internal team as they were cheaper.
- temp8964 5y ago
  Don't you have security policies to make you must go through IT?
  - MattGaiser 5y ago
    When it comes to policies from frustrating departments, people tend to find workarounds, especially if there is no easy way to enforce the rules. At a prior company, one of the only reasons we adopted anything SaaS was that IT didn't have to know it existed.
    - SCHiM 5y ago
      Ohhh man/woman. I'm a security person. I often work with my customers' central IT. I'm not going to have an opinion or judge you, but consider: You're giving people nightmares. I've seen it go very wrong (front-page news wrong). And then the threads commenting on "how incompetent can they be, blabla". I've worked with the people stressed, sad and disappointed that they got pwned because of shadow IT. It's a ticking time bomb. The cloud wont save you from shadow IT's insecurities. In two years, when you switch to another SAAS provider, or the domain changes, and the enterprise app is left in your azure subscription, and the baddies notice... Then you'll call me or someone like me, and I can earn my paycheck :)
      - MattGaiser 5y ago
        I'm too junior to make decisions, but a lot of it basically came down to the organizations I have worked with all either being government or running things on quarters. In the former case there was high turnover (replace the team in 1.5 years) and in the latter cases there was high turnover coupled with a problem more than a month away not being considered a problem. So in the former knowledge poured out the door and in the latter knowledge poured out the door and nobody had an interest in anything beyond the quarter, so you do what gets you to the next review cycle. Basically in both cases the bomb does not matter as you either probably won't be there when it goes off or it doesn't matter as you miss your quarterly goal instead.
      - bachmeier 5y ago
- Macha 5y ago
  I worked at one place where the running joke was if central IT pushed for a solution, it was time to seriously consider the competitors to that solution.
- _carbyau_ 5y ago
  I've seen this arise from financial policies whereby the IT cost centre must be financially self supporting. Hence IT department has to charge everything it does, swamping everyone involved - business and IT both - in bullshit paperwork, taking time from everyone. Like a finance version of fighting entropy, you can have everything perfectly neatly ordered but it takes effort. Then someone in IT gets sick of hearing bullshit hopes and dreams ideas from business; "Ok, but what if cereal box toys were spruced up with crypto? Go cost it up will ya?" And so IT swings the financial ban hammer with $20000 quotes. Bullshit begets bullshit. There will be a "who you know" club of people from business and IT who can skip the bullshit, not fill out the financial paperwork, meet over coffee or lunch and hash out ideas. If this club does not exist, woe betide the company.
MattGaiser 5y ago
Yes it does, because then you don't need to deal with IT but can just deal with accounting and your budget. At a former workplace, we got our own internet connection to not have to deal with IT. We got our own computers for that connection. We hired outside contractors instead of using internal people because IT was a hassle to deal with. We spent tons and tons of money to only have to deal with accounting and not coordinate with IT.
- 908B64B197 5y ago
  > At a former workplace, we got our own internet connection to not have to deal with IT. We got our own computers for that connection. We hired outside contractors instead of using internal people because IT was a hassle to deal with. You built a better IT. Shouldn't they replace your existing legacy IT dept? Seriously, IT shouldn't impede dev teams.
- slownews45 5y ago
  Yeah - the reality is that actually getting good IT is not so simple these days. The setups are complicated - you are doing WFH, so you have network, login (domain vs local), federated AD etc etc. Now if they can simplify this a bit into the cloud, the key for business is to DOWNSKILL this so basically an office manager can do it, then you are golden. If they can even save ONE it salary - amazing. And if users can self service a bit more - also amazing.
exhilaration 5y ago
I've got a friend who got a contracting position at the US Dept of Veterans Affairs and he said they hadn't given him the right access after 2+ months into a 6-month contract.
dmhmr 5y ago
May I introduce you to the US Federal Government?
spicyusername 5y ago
I've consulted for large banks whose onboarding time was 2-3 MONTHS! Just to get a laptop and VPN credentials. The rampant dysfunction in large organizations never ceases to amaze me.
- distances 5y ago
  Can you bill full days the whole time spent waiting?
  - spicyusername 5y ago
    You definitely bill. You'd go out of business otherwise. 30%-80% of consulting is dead time waiting for the client to get their shit together. Time you get a good intuition for including in your Scope of Work from the beginning. It can make it a little awkward when you finally work for a client who knows what they're doing and you do "8 weeks" of work in 5 days, but that's rare. Not really any different than when you're an FTE and you're dependent on external factors to get your work done.
MonaroVXR 5y ago
>If it takes you 2-3 weeks to onboard ANYONE please realize that your IT processes are complete, unmitigated garbage. I want to redirect this to a certain authority in The Netherlands, but I might get shot. It takes more than month to onboard and even then, you still need to do something extra to get certain rights.
lenkite 5y ago
You have tens-of-thousands of profitable companies with such "unmitigated garbage" IT processes. Since they continue to remain profitable despite disaster-IT, they exist and hence will buy stuff like this.

ssully 5y ago

I assure you, they know their IT processes are garbage.

dboreham 5y ago

Perhaps if there's a significant chance of never seeing the expensive laptop again?

raesene9 5y ago

This it true but I've seen orgs in the past where a business unit would happily pay quite a lot of money to avoid going anywhere near central IT. I think the most extreme example of slow process I saw was an organization where central IT wanted to charge $20k and take two months to quote for a project. In that kind of environment things like this with opex pricing that can be assigned to a project's budget and fast spin up are a much better option :)

MattGaiser 5y ago
At my current company, my department would be able to find more experienced contractors for well below what another department here rents them out for. So I can see internal pricing being an issue as well. Internal IT charges for quotes. MSFT just quotes. This happened at a prior company as well. IBM was routinely hired over our internal team as they were cheaper.
temp8964 5y ago
Don't you have security policies to make you must go through IT?
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  When it comes to policies from frustrating departments, people tend to find workarounds, especially if there is no easy way to enforce the rules. At a prior company, one of the only reasons we adopted anything SaaS was that IT didn't have to know it existed.
  - SCHiM 5y ago
    Ohhh man/woman. I'm a security person. I often work with my customers' central IT. I'm not going to have an opinion or judge you, but consider: You're giving people nightmares. I've seen it go very wrong (front-page news wrong). And then the threads commenting on "how incompetent can they be, blabla". I've worked with the people stressed, sad and disappointed that they got pwned because of shadow IT. It's a ticking time bomb. The cloud wont save you from shadow IT's insecurities. In two years, when you switch to another SAAS provider, or the domain changes, and the enterprise app is left in your azure subscription, and the baddies notice... Then you'll call me or someone like me, and I can earn my paycheck :)
    - MattGaiser 5y ago
      I'm too junior to make decisions, but a lot of it basically came down to the organizations I have worked with all either being government or running things on quarters. In the former case there was high turnover (replace the team in 1.5 years) and in the latter cases there was high turnover coupled with a problem more than a month away not being considered a problem. So in the former knowledge poured out the door and in the latter knowledge poured out the door and nobody had an interest in anything beyond the quarter, so you do what gets you to the next review cycle. Basically in both cases the bomb does not matter as you either probably won't be there when it goes off or it doesn't matter as you miss your quarterly goal instead.
    - bachmeier 5y ago
Macha 5y ago
I worked at one place where the running joke was if central IT pushed for a solution, it was time to seriously consider the competitors to that solution.
_carbyau_ 5y ago
I've seen this arise from financial policies whereby the IT cost centre must be financially self supporting. Hence IT department has to charge everything it does, swamping everyone involved - business and IT both - in bullshit paperwork, taking time from everyone. Like a finance version of fighting entropy, you can have everything perfectly neatly ordered but it takes effort. Then someone in IT gets sick of hearing bullshit hopes and dreams ideas from business; "Ok, but what if cereal box toys were spruced up with crypto? Go cost it up will ya?" And so IT swings the financial ban hammer with $20000 quotes. Bullshit begets bullshit. There will be a "who you know" club of people from business and IT who can skip the bullshit, not fill out the financial paperwork, meet over coffee or lunch and hash out ideas. If this club does not exist, woe betide the company.

MattGaiser 5y ago

Yes it does, because then you don't need to deal with IT but can just deal with accounting and your budget. At a former workplace, we got our own internet connection to not have to deal with IT. We got our own computers for that connection. We hired outside contractors instead of using internal people because IT was a hassle to deal with. We spent tons and tons of money to only have to deal with accounting and not coordinate with IT.

908B64B197 5y ago
> At a former workplace, we got our own internet connection to not have to deal with IT. We got our own computers for that connection. We hired outside contractors instead of using internal people because IT was a hassle to deal with. You built a better IT. Shouldn't they replace your existing legacy IT dept? Seriously, IT shouldn't impede dev teams.
slownews45 5y ago
Yeah - the reality is that actually getting good IT is not so simple these days. The setups are complicated - you are doing WFH, so you have network, login (domain vs local), federated AD etc etc. Now if they can simplify this a bit into the cloud, the key for business is to DOWNSKILL this so basically an office manager can do it, then you are golden. If they can even save ONE it salary - amazing. And if users can self service a bit more - also amazing.

exhilaration 5y ago

I've got a friend who got a contracting position at the US Dept of Veterans Affairs and he said they hadn't given him the right access after 2+ months into a 6-month contract.

dmhmr 5y ago

May I introduce you to the US Federal Government?

spicyusername 5y ago

I've consulted for large banks whose onboarding time was 2-3 MONTHS! Just to get a laptop and VPN credentials. The rampant dysfunction in large organizations never ceases to amaze me.

distances 5y ago
Can you bill full days the whole time spent waiting?
- spicyusername 5y ago
  You definitely bill. You'd go out of business otherwise. 30%-80% of consulting is dead time waiting for the client to get their shit together. Time you get a good intuition for including in your Scope of Work from the beginning. It can make it a little awkward when you finally work for a client who knows what they're doing and you do "8 weeks" of work in 5 days, but that's rare. Not really any different than when you're an FTE and you're dependent on external factors to get your work done.

MonaroVXR 5y ago

>If it takes you 2-3 weeks to onboard ANYONE please realize that your IT processes are complete, unmitigated garbage. I want to redirect this to a certain authority in The Netherlands, but I might get shot. It takes more than month to onboard and even then, you still need to do something extra to get certain rights.

lenkite 5y ago

You have tens-of-thousands of profitable companies with such "unmitigated garbage" IT processes. Since they continue to remain profitable despite disaster-IT, they exist and hence will buy stuff like this.