7 ms·

From the sounds of things, they didn't have a problem with inefficiency prior to the cuts. He includes no details about the IT staffing levels in the company,

From the sounds of things, they didn't have a problem with inefficiency prior to the cuts. He includes no details about the IT staffing levels in the company, what the budget was, the size of the company, what the company did, what the employees did, the reason for the cuts (other than speculation), or anything else. For all we know, it was a company with 5 non-IT employees, and a staff of 50 IT people who flipped a coin once a day to decide which of 1 of them was going to work that day. Prove me wrong. How many people were in the IT dept? What was their budget? What did the company do? You have no idea.. because there are no details in the article. So you do not have enough information to say if there was an efficiency problem.

emeraldd 14y ago
> For all we know, it was a company with 5 non-IT employees, and a staff of 50 IT people who flipped a coin once a day to decide which of 1 of them was going to work that day. You're right on that, we don't have any idea about the total size of the department or the total size of the company as a whole. So, I'll grant you that there might have been some room for cuts in the department but, that really doesn't matter for his point. What we see is that prior to the reorganization everything worked and that after the reorganization it didn't. This looks like someone pruned way too much out of an area that they didn't fully understand. The only thing we have to work from the assertion that: "The total time lost and wasted across the whole company was most certainly greater than the savings of laying off the expensive and skilled IT staff." I am making what I would consider educated guess on the scale of the organization and the impact of the changes. That impact would indicate that they now have insufficient staffing in IT and inefficiencies elsewhere as a result.
- zcvosdfdgj 14y ago
  I am making what I would consider educated guess on the scale of the organization and the impact of the changes. WHAT?! You're making a guess based on what? THERE WERE NO DETAILS. It's impossible for that to be an educated guess.
  - emeraldd 14y ago
    > It's impossible for that to be an educated guess. It would be impossible if I had never worked in IT or support organization. Otherwise I don't see how you could conclude that. While my knowledge of the specific situation is limited, we have to assume there is some degree of sanity to it. (If there weren't, I would expect to be reading something more likely to appear on the daily WTF than on here.) Taking an educated guess is inherently something you do based on a blending of limited information about a situation and a combination of you're own experience. Granted, the information here is limited, its meant to illustrate a point, not rail against any particular perpetrator. Discounting the point because you don't know all the details doesn't make sense. The details are in how you apply the point.
  - Natsu 14y ago
    > You're making a guess based on what? I didn't write that, but it's clear to me that they're basing it on the results.
    - zcvosdfdgj 14y ago
      They got the "scale of the organization" from the results. No kidding.
      - Natsu 14y ago
        The OP posted and they appear to have been correct, while your "for all we know" turned out to be almost exactly backwards. People match stories against their own experience. Any half-decent sysadmin probably has a story or two like this one. So yes, we do have something with which to assess the credibility of the story. It would appear that you do not share that experience, though.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
fallenpegasus 14y ago
A company of about 400 total on-site staff, about 8ish internal IT staff before, and 3 internal IT staff after. FOAD, Hope that Helps, Have a Nice Day.
- zcvosdfdgj 14y ago
  thank you.. that tells me far more about the situation
- emeraldd 14y ago
  8ish is significantly less than I was expecting. My hat's off to them for keeping things running so smoothly!
  - keithpeter 14y ago
    8 to 400 just keeping a system going (assumed MS from the vocabulary in the original article) sounds like a reasonable metric to me assuming no big business application development. 3 to 400 sounds very small, especially if there needs to be a Windows roll out (e.g. xp -> 7). Disclaimer: I'm an observant end user who has worked in organisations ranging from 70 to 1200 staff total, and who has seen huge differences in basic it function. As others have pointed out, the cost of the less efficient IT support is 'hidden' in other budgets and in people 'just getting on with it'. I've seen newly appointed people share logins with established people just to be able to do anything which is an obvious security problem. My current employers have noticeably good IT support, but need to make savings, so I am worried.
- bdunbar 14y ago
  Even if they'd kept 3 of the best and brightest they'd be hard pressed to keep up.

emeraldd 14y ago

> For all we know, it was a company with 5 non-IT employees, and a staff of 50 IT people who flipped a coin once a day to decide which of 1 of them was going to work that day. You're right on that, we don't have any idea about the total size of the department or the total size of the company as a whole. So, I'll grant you that there might have been some room for cuts in the department but, that really doesn't matter for his point. What we see is that prior to the reorganization everything worked and that after the reorganization it didn't. This looks like someone pruned way too much out of an area that they didn't fully understand. The only thing we have to work from the assertion that: "The total time lost and wasted across the whole company was most certainly greater than the savings of laying off the expensive and skilled IT staff." I am making what I would consider educated guess on the scale of the organization and the impact of the changes. That impact would indicate that they now have insufficient staffing in IT and inefficiencies elsewhere as a result.

zcvosdfdgj 14y ago
I am making what I would consider educated guess on the scale of the organization and the impact of the changes. WHAT?! You're making a guess based on what? THERE WERE NO DETAILS. It's impossible for that to be an educated guess.
- emeraldd 14y ago
  > It's impossible for that to be an educated guess. It would be impossible if I had never worked in IT or support organization. Otherwise I don't see how you could conclude that. While my knowledge of the specific situation is limited, we have to assume there is some degree of sanity to it. (If there weren't, I would expect to be reading something more likely to appear on the daily WTF than on here.) Taking an educated guess is inherently something you do based on a blending of limited information about a situation and a combination of you're own experience. Granted, the information here is limited, its meant to illustrate a point, not rail against any particular perpetrator. Discounting the point because you don't know all the details doesn't make sense. The details are in how you apply the point.
- Natsu 14y ago
  > You're making a guess based on what? I didn't write that, but it's clear to me that they're basing it on the results.
  - zcvosdfdgj 14y ago
    They got the "scale of the organization" from the results. No kidding.
    - Natsu 14y ago
      The OP posted and they appear to have been correct, while your "for all we know" turned out to be almost exactly backwards. People match stories against their own experience. Any half-decent sysadmin probably has a story or two like this one. So yes, we do have something with which to assess the credibility of the story. It would appear that you do not share that experience, though.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

fallenpegasus 14y ago

A company of about 400 total on-site staff, about 8ish internal IT staff before, and 3 internal IT staff after. FOAD, Hope that Helps, Have a Nice Day.

zcvosdfdgj 14y ago
thank you.. that tells me far more about the situation
emeraldd 14y ago
8ish is significantly less than I was expecting. My hat's off to them for keeping things running so smoothly!
- keithpeter 14y ago
  8 to 400 just keeping a system going (assumed MS from the vocabulary in the original article) sounds like a reasonable metric to me assuming no big business application development. 3 to 400 sounds very small, especially if there needs to be a Windows roll out (e.g. xp -> 7). Disclaimer: I'm an observant end user who has worked in organisations ranging from 70 to 1200 staff total, and who has seen huge differences in basic it function. As others have pointed out, the cost of the less efficient IT support is 'hidden' in other budgets and in people 'just getting on with it'. I've seen newly appointed people share logins with established people just to be able to do anything which is an obvious security problem. My current employers have noticeably good IT support, but need to make savings, so I am worried.
bdunbar 14y ago
Even if they'd kept 3 of the best and brightest they'd be hard pressed to keep up.