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I've lead roughly $20M in cloud migration projects in the last two years away from vmware to cloud services as replacements. Just insane what MBAs are willing t

I've lead roughly $20M in cloud migration projects in the last two years away from vmware to cloud services as replacements. Just insane what MBAs are willing to do to a product to squeeze short term profits. Even more insane that this country largely sees these people as a benefit to society and not the vultures they are.

broknbottle 9d ago
The cloud see them as a benefit, that’s for sure. They are frothing at the mouth for the customers to migrate their workloads.
BLKNSLVR 9d ago
When the country is run by vultures, they celebrate the discovery of new successful ways to vult.
aleph_minus_one 9d ago
> Just insane what MBAs are willing to do to a product to squeeze short term profits. Even more insane that this country largely sees these people as a benefit to society and not the vultures they are. I do understand the argument that it can be considered as a benefit for society if companies that have a very incompetent management that falls for this kind of trap of getting locked in by some vendor without having an emergency escape plan available get milked or even get bust. :-)
- bornfreddy 9d ago
  Well, it's not actually a trap, since it's not the management who pays the price - it is investors, employees and the society at large that do, while the MBAs have already moved on to their next victim. Problem with incentives, I would say.
ramgine 9d ago
The magic that is opex compared to capex. I'm sure it makes sense to some bean counter somewhere in the company, but for us who manage the resources it's always a loss.
- tstrimple 7d ago
  I'm not sure that's an accurate read. Broadcom changed the calculation by raking capex customers over the coals. Doesn't matter if you own the hardware and lease the data center space if your virtualization stack increases their prices by 1000% with a year notice. They would effectively make companies pay higher than cloud tier premiums for just maintaining their existing services running on VMWare.
- spockz 9d ago
  I think that it boils down to that opex is considered speedy, flexible and agile. Whereas capex reflects slow/glacial but also stable. This is also why lease exists, why we have freelance contracts vs employee contracts for indeterminate amounts of time.
xyzelement 9d ago
Engineer with an MBA here. I don't think anyone finds this flavor of activity beneficial. What's beneficial is the underlying system that is sufficiently free and flexible that great things (like VMware to begin with) are possible. As much as we don't like "this" we don't want to put any bureaucrats in power to squash creativity and enterprise. Much like freedom of speech means someone can speak abhorrently, freedom of enterprise means someone can do bad or dumb business things. But we enjoy the thing in totality.
- throwup238 9d ago
  > As much as we don't like "this" we don't want to put any bureaucrats in power to squash creativity and enterprise. That was literally Broadcom’s reason for existing before Avago even acquired them. It’s the other half of the Qualcomm/Broadcom telecom duopoly.
- someothherguyy 9d ago
  > Much like freedom of speech means someone can speak abhorrently, freedom of enterprise means someone can do bad or dumb business things. No?
- JeremyNT 9d ago
  > I don't think anyone finds this flavor of activity beneficial. What's beneficial is the underlying system that is sufficiently free and flexible that great things (like VMware to begin with) are possible. As much as we don't like "this" we don't want to put any bureaucrats in power to squash creativity and enterprise. Ultimately, the purpose of a system is what it does. We've structured our society such that performing this type of activity is extremely lucrative, and financial engineering is by all appearances the endeavor that humans value above all others.

broknbottle 9d ago

The cloud see them as a benefit, that’s for sure. They are frothing at the mouth for the customers to migrate their workloads.

BLKNSLVR 9d ago

When the country is run by vultures, they celebrate the discovery of new successful ways to vult.

aleph_minus_one 9d ago

> Just insane what MBAs are willing to do to a product to squeeze short term profits. Even more insane that this country largely sees these people as a benefit to society and not the vultures they are. I do understand the argument that it can be considered as a benefit for society if companies that have a very incompetent management that falls for this kind of trap of getting locked in by some vendor without having an emergency escape plan available get milked or even get bust. :-)

bornfreddy 9d ago
Well, it's not actually a trap, since it's not the management who pays the price - it is investors, employees and the society at large that do, while the MBAs have already moved on to their next victim. Problem with incentives, I would say.

ramgine 9d ago

The magic that is opex compared to capex. I'm sure it makes sense to some bean counter somewhere in the company, but for us who manage the resources it's always a loss.

tstrimple 7d ago
I'm not sure that's an accurate read. Broadcom changed the calculation by raking capex customers over the coals. Doesn't matter if you own the hardware and lease the data center space if your virtualization stack increases their prices by 1000% with a year notice. They would effectively make companies pay higher than cloud tier premiums for just maintaining their existing services running on VMWare.
spockz 9d ago
I think that it boils down to that opex is considered speedy, flexible and agile. Whereas capex reflects slow/glacial but also stable. This is also why lease exists, why we have freelance contracts vs employee contracts for indeterminate amounts of time.

xyzelement 9d ago

Engineer with an MBA here. I don't think anyone finds this flavor of activity beneficial. What's beneficial is the underlying system that is sufficiently free and flexible that great things (like VMware to begin with) are possible. As much as we don't like "this" we don't want to put any bureaucrats in power to squash creativity and enterprise. Much like freedom of speech means someone can speak abhorrently, freedom of enterprise means someone can do bad or dumb business things. But we enjoy the thing in totality.

throwup238 9d ago
> As much as we don't like "this" we don't want to put any bureaucrats in power to squash creativity and enterprise. That was literally Broadcom’s reason for existing before Avago even acquired them. It’s the other half of the Qualcomm/Broadcom telecom duopoly.
someothherguyy 9d ago
> Much like freedom of speech means someone can speak abhorrently, freedom of enterprise means someone can do bad or dumb business things. No?
JeremyNT 9d ago
> I don't think anyone finds this flavor of activity beneficial. What's beneficial is the underlying system that is sufficiently free and flexible that great things (like VMware to begin with) are possible. As much as we don't like "this" we don't want to put any bureaucrats in power to squash creativity and enterprise. Ultimately, the purpose of a system is what it does. We've structured our society such that performing this type of activity is extremely lucrative, and financial engineering is by all appearances the endeavor that humans value above all others.