Backporch Beer - WE'VE CLOSED! THANKS FOR YOUR PATRONAGE!

Make $11b, Fire 9k

I should probably keep my mouth shut, but rumor and innuendo at work compel me to make a case (even if it goes unheard to the people in power.)

I’ve commented before on the impact former CIOs have had to my employer. (Starts with a “D”, has a slanted “e” and ends in a double consonant.) Two announcements form the CFO and CIO just last week have employees scared for their jobs, and it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. For nearly five years IT was starved by the iron fist of a mythical 1% spend¹. Besides the (mis)perceived benefit to the stock-holders that IT spend was incredibly low, there were two major effects to this policy. The first was that technology was stagnant for five years. A company that used to manage a cutting-edge, tour-quality data centers is now ashamed of the decrepit systems and software they us to keep the wheels on. The second effect was that frustrated business managers created shadow IT systems to support their needs that were not being met by an underfunded IT. Instead of addressing the concerns and pulling the company back to a reasonable moderate position, we are being asked to shoulder another guardrail-to-guardrail drastic measure. IT is being told that the one year we were given to buy what we needed was extravagant, but we’re forced to take on these shadow projects and we’re being forced (again) to tell our business partners that the things they want are not affordable. It is indubitable that while we spend our time trying to support things we did not create, the business must go outside of IT to create what they need.

ISS has this summary:

Corporate Governance Quotient (CGQ®) [[for this company]] as of 1-Apr-08 is better than 71.4% of S&P 500 companies and 96% of Technology Hardware & Equipment companies.

According to stats at Yahoo, the company made $61.13b in revenue last year with a $11.67B gross profit. These are not small numbers, nor are they projected to do anything but grow. It seems apparent that the goal of the board is to maximize the shareholder experience at the expense of all other things. This may be possible in the short term, but it is unlikely to make our buying customers happy and they realize it, too and are afraid for the quality of the product we put out.

I don’t know how much longer I’ll be employed, but I love my company (as I have for over 15 years) and I fear that an irrational approach is what controls its future.

¹ The idea behind “1% spend” is that IT’s Operating Expense should be 1% of the company’s revenue.