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I've been doing senior sysadmin or adjacent work, mostly for SME corporations with turnover in the $250-750m for 20 years, which has consisted primarily of sayi

I've been doing senior sysadmin or adjacent work, mostly for SME corporations with turnover in the $250-750m for 20 years, which has consisted primarily of saying "oh f, no price list, they're going to want to charge enterprise prices at a level I can't possibly make a business case for", interminable meetings with the dreaded pre-sales Two Suits and a Skirt hydra monster, and some minor stuff with backups and printers. While everything this guy says is largely true - I have after all had purchase proposals rounded up to the nearest $100k ( it wasn't close... ), But likewise it's often true that that $500-1000 credit card is only held by one person in a given team, and there are already many competing monthly charges on it, and it's also said manager's "get out of jail free card" for just throwing money at small problems that come up, without having to talk to their manager. That's an emotional requirement as much as anything, but it's linked to whether said manager can appear competent to their 1-up.. so if you think that $1000 card has more that $250 available for all reoccurring expenses, you may need to reconsider. And you might, justifiably, decide that's a reasonable customer selection filter, because no one wants a customer that behaves like a big enterprise but pays like consumer. But we're not like that, honest - I just want your X for me and the 3 people in the team it'd help, you'll probably never hear from us otherwise. Truly! Come on, we believed your marketing brochure.. meet us half way?

TristanBall 5y ago
Also, finance departments exist primarily to complain about the time it takes to reconcile your credit card charges, and to push as much as possible for said purchases to go through the B2B "on account" purchase process, and in 99.99% of non tech companies the head of finance will have more clout in the board room than anyone in your management chain - or you report to them, because tech is so obviously a finance function, in which case just give hope now* (* Actually, it can be fine, finance directors are often perfectly nice people, with that deeply soothing habit of just rounding up to the nearest $10k/100k/1M.. but really can we get this stuff of your credit card, Clair complains every week about chasing you for receipts)
- thejteam 5y ago
  My wife works as a junior accounting clerk in the finance department of a small-medium (500-ish person) company. She has to reconcile credit cards each month. Yes, it takes days when there are poorly documented charges (federal contractor so all of these charges have to be documented to bill to a contract). Down to the penny. Two months ago my wife spent half a day tracking down a 2 cent discrepancy when somebody's handwritten 7 looked like a 9.
tonyedgecombe 5y ago
>And you might, justifiably, decide that's a reasonable customer selection filter, because no one wants a customer that behaves like a big enterprise but pays like consumer. I get a lot of those. They will send their 27 pages of purchase terms and when I ask what they are buying it comes to $99.

TristanBall 5y ago

Also, finance departments exist primarily to complain about the time it takes to reconcile your credit card charges, and to push as much as possible for said purchases to go through the B2B "on account" purchase process, and in 99.99% of non tech companies the head of finance will have more clout in the board room than anyone in your management chain - or you report to them, because tech is so obviously a finance function, in which case just give hope now* (* Actually, it can be fine, finance directors are often perfectly nice people, with that deeply soothing habit of just rounding up to the nearest $10k/100k/1M.. but really can we get this stuff of your credit card, Clair complains every week about chasing you for receipts)

thejteam 5y ago
My wife works as a junior accounting clerk in the finance department of a small-medium (500-ish person) company. She has to reconcile credit cards each month. Yes, it takes days when there are poorly documented charges (federal contractor so all of these charges have to be documented to bill to a contract). Down to the penny. Two months ago my wife spent half a day tracking down a 2 cent discrepancy when somebody's handwritten 7 looked like a 9.

tonyedgecombe 5y ago

>And you might, justifiably, decide that's a reasonable customer selection filter, because no one wants a customer that behaves like a big enterprise but pays like consumer. I get a lot of those. They will send their 27 pages of purchase terms and when I ask what they are buying it comes to $99.