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It's All Part 2 of the Process

The Daily WTF
2 weeks ago

Our submitter Tim C. is back as his bureaucratic nightmare continues. Read Part 1 here.

After I'd thrown the WTF Exchange (WTFX) for a loop, they managed to eventually right the ship. But then I faced another hurdle: I had run out of disk space. The software was not live, we were still developing the customer-specific customisations, but I was a bit stuck without a few more gigabytes.

The exchange went something like this:

"Hey Margritte, I need more disk space."

"Oh dear, what's happening?"

"Nothing is happening. I'm just developing the software. I need more disk space, not much. Can you get me another 20Gb? Wait, make that 40Gb."

"We can't just get you more disk space. These things need to be planned!"

"I just need a tiny amount, really. No need for any meetings. Just tell your IT guys to give me another NFS drive or expand one of the existing ones."

"Tim, that's not how things work here. We need to discuss your needs and it's important to us to know what needs you might have in future."

"Um, okay ... ?"

"I'll try to call an urgent meeting."

"Really? For 40Gb?"

"Well, how do we know 40Gb is going to be enough?"

"Because it's double what I really think I need."

"Why on Earth didn't you tell us before that you needed this disk space?"

"I'm telling you now!"

"Why didn't you do projections months ago?"

"At no stage did anyone ask me how much disk space we need! We obviously need some disk space! I have literally never given anyone an estimate! We are not even at the point yet to even estimate how much we'll need on project go-live."

"Well, I'll try to get an urgent meeting going. But it won't be today."

So at lunchtime, I went to the local computer store and bought an external hard drive. I asked Margritte to give it to the IT guys to stick somewhere in their computer room, or at least somewhere on their network.

That just seemed to make things worse.

"We can't take this! We have procurement processes!"

"Take it! This is a freebie from me to you. It'll help unstick a blockage in the project."

"It's not our standard hardware vendor. God knows what stuff is on it. We can't take the risk."

"I have literally not opened the plastic sealed wrapper on the outside of the box."

"Yes, but you could have re-sealed it. When we go via our trusted hardware partners we don't have to worry about things like that."

"You realise I'm making software every day which is running in the heart of your systems?! I work on this laptop here, and at the hotel, creating software, both C++ source code and Windows executables, that run inside your systems!"

"But it's not in the asset register. We need to record the warranty details every time we install hardware. What happens if it fails after you've left?"

"Well, how about we just agree I'll take it with me when I go?"

"Okay, I'll see if I can make the meeting happen tomorrow. To get you more disk space. Using our preferred hardware. Not that ... thing." (Said with disgust.)

Well, I finally got my disk space ... after a couple of days.

I was shocked to learn months later what a small proportion of the overall project budget our company earned. What seemed like an enormous multi-million-dollar contract to us was dwarfed by what WTFX spent on ex-pat "Anderson Androids", all immaculately groomed with expensive suits, who spent weeks twiddling their thumbs in expensive hotel rooms waiting for us to finish our software development, because they couldn't start until we had finished.

So sayeth the Gantt chart! Amen.

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Ellis Morning