Rant about Large Corporations

[Rewdog]

My sister works with Ingersoll-Rand ( http://irco.com/ ) in charlotte and drove back here early this morning for a doctors appointment. She's staying the weekend, but since its friday she just powered up her notebook and used her VPN key to plug into my router and connect to her companies intranet so she could work for the day. My sister had seen me on forums (such as this) and had thought it would be a good idea to get one for the 30-40 person team she works with. Without my knowledge, she had gotten someone to look into software for such a forum and a company to set it up. They quoted $800-1000 per forum instance, not including hosting.

Well once she told me about that, I said that was ridiculous and showed her phpBB which is a free and does everything they would need. I could host it, but I thought it would be better if IR host it so only allowed members of their intranet to access it. So she instant messaged one of the tech guys asking for an account with FTP access, 500 megs of space, and a MySQL database. The tech guy who was a had a Comp. Sci major had never heard of MySQL so I checked and saw they were on windows. No problem, MS SQL will do. He then asked who would be responsible for the expenses. Obviously anyone here knows it doesn't cost much to host a message board so I was surprised that there was even an expense question. So my sister asked for the costs and he said, "Well initially we'll have to order the parts to build a server that could handle this as well as call qwest to get them to run us another line. Since you stated you would probably want backups, tape drives will be required as well as personell to run them. I'd say around $1400 start up and 800 a month" :bs: :eek:
I about crapped myself. So much money could be saved if these corporations with benjamins coming out their ass just did a little more research instead of just throwing money out the window at the first option.

[interactive]

That's rather funny. I don't know of any big companies to moan about, but I'll come back when I do ;)

[Living Media]

It's amazing, how some corporations seem to be trapped in a "everything must cost uku-bajillion dollarpounds" mindset.

I'm evenly divided: educate them, or get in on the payola.

Naahhhhhh...too much politicking involved in getting the payola. And I'm lazy when it comes to navigating bureaucratic waters.

So many tech companies seem to depend on consumer ignorance. Microsoft didn't pioneer the FUD marketing tactic, but they've sure honed it for all it's worth. Such a lack of technical knowledge. Such a wicked waste. And maybe, such a huge *WHOOMP* as our economy collapses when they finally do figure out how to buy intelligently. (Well, not collapses per se...more like "developing a screaming case of the blind staggers".)

Does anyone have any good, valid reasons WHY a company would not want to use smaller commercial or even open source product? Is it all an internal prestige thing?

[interactive]

Lesli, I think it's because people think of computers they think microsoft, windows, problems (lol jk), etc. Same sort of people who think that AOL is the internet. I'm sure you know what I mean.

[Rewdog]

maybe in 10 years, when people evolve to know a lot more about computers, 8 year olds who are now making webpages will be computer geniuses, and the people who are afraid of computers die out. :p:

[interactive]

Originally posted by Rewdog:
...... and the people who are afraid of computers die out. :p:


One can only hope.

::joking::

[JeremyV]

I could say the same thing about my old job. Almost everyone that worked for us were computer people, run hosting companies, or did programming... but instead of setting a message board up and designing the websites internally, they hired some jackass at a gazillion dollars an hour to do half-assed work. When instead they could have simply assigned people to special assignments and get the work done RIGHT and for a 10th of the cost :mad:

[Robert]

But large corporations can afford it simply because they right it off as a business expense.

The company I work for, The Sports Authority, is the largest Sporting Good Store in the U.S. and they waste so much money.

The footwear department has a Buy One, Get One 50% off deal that runs year-around. The ads that the departments use (The small "Buy one get one 50% off" ads) run the company arund 1.5million dollars to design and print (for all 202 stores). 2 weeks later, they send us NEW ads with it printed on both sides, what a waste of 2.2Million!!

[Chicken]

Originally posted by Rewdog:

So she instant messaged one of the tech guys asking for an account with FTP access, 500 megs of space, and a MySQL database.

...and he said, "Well initially we'll have to order the parts to build a server that could handle this as well as call qwest to get them to run us another line. Since you stated you would probably want backups, tape drives will be required as well as personell to run them. I'd say around $1400 start up and 800 a month"
She should write him back saying, "Yeah Bob that sounds great... orrrrrrrr you could just set me up with 500MB of space on an existing server, run a back-up to another existing server and we could just use our existing connectivity and save $1,400 and $800/mo."

[James]

gesss and i would think big comps would love to save cash right now sence a lot of them are laying off people left and right, for the all mighty buck.
ohoh i fell my rant coming on.
James

[interactive]

Good point James. Think about it, if huge corps wouldn't waste all that money they wouldn't have to lay off so many people. I think it's partly due though to corrupt management.

[James]

agreed,
i looked at the pepsi corp web site once a while back and saw that a few top people made including bonuses.

man they made a butt load of cash:fork: :fork: :crazy:

it just wants to make me :cry: as business lay off people so they can make the big bucks.

i did like the movie richy rich where he cut THERE pay when the comps profits was way down. now if only the real ceo's vp's ect ect would do the same i think we would not be as hard hit with so meny lay offs. yes there would be some but hopefully not as meny.

[Lamont]

Another thing I've noticed is that education ends when the paycheck begins. If these big company techs have had their jobs 5-10 years then their knowlege is 5-10 years old. Pre-historic in terms of the internet and most current technology.

[RRolfe]

Originally posted by Lamont:

Another thing I've noticed is that education ends when the paycheck begins. If these big company techs have had their jobs 5-10 years then their knowlege is 5-10 years old. Pre-historic in terms of the internet and most current technology.

Thats not totally true... a good tech/admin would continue to learn throughout those 5 years.

[Rewdog]

My friend just got a 4 year computer science degree and vows the 2 last classes he took will probably be the only useful ones. Databases, and Networking. How overvalued do you feel those pieces of paper called "degrees" are?

[allan]

Originally posted by Lamont:

Another thing I've noticed is that education ends when the paycheck begins. If these big company techs have had their jobs 5-10 years then their knowlege is 5-10 years old. Pre-historic in terms of the internet and most current technology.

Depends on the company, many of these people are at the cutting edge of technology, and are taking the lead in developing the latest technology and enhancing standards. So, their knowledge stays very current.

[allan]

Originally posted by Rewdog:

My friend just got a 4 year computer science degree and vows the 2 last classes he took will probably be the only useful ones. Databases, and Networking. How overvalued do you feel those pieces of paper called "degrees" are?

Give him some time. Several of my friends who have computer science degrees claim that their most valuable classes were some of the earlier ones, because they taught them how to think like a programmer. Any monkey can code something, but understanding the fundamentals of programming is very different.