Ratio of IT Department Workers To Overall Employees? 385
An anonymous reader writes "I was recently talking to a friend about the Fortune 100 company she works for in IT. She told me the company has 35,000 employees, including over 5,000 IT employees — and it's not a web firm. It has numerous consultants doing IT work as well. To me, from a background where my last job had 50 IT employees and 1,000 total, a 1-in-7 ratio of IT employees seems extremely high. Yet she mentioned even simple changes to systems/software take over six months. So, what ratio does your company have, and what is reasonable? How much does this differ by industry?"
I'd be interested to see how much it differs by OS platform as well.
no set ratio (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:That's a lot o' IT (Score:5, Insightful)
Makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Her IT department is layered, not flat. The fact that simple changes take 6 months shows that it's not 5000 doing anything useful, it's probably more like 2000 doing something useful, who have to ask the 1000 above them, who need signatures from the 500 above them, who need approval from the 200 above them, etc. They sheer number of them is hurting their performance, not helping.
"how much it differs by OS platform" (Score:2, Insightful)
I see what you're driving at, and all, it's just that it's stupid. The fact is that it comes down to the quality of the admin more than it does the platform. A crappy Linux admin is going to spend a lot of time managing 50 systems the same way a crappy Windows admin is. Either system provides the tools to effectively manage a large environment if you know how to use them.
Re:no set ratio (Score:2, Insightful)
how is this flamebait, its accurate.
It all depends (Score:1, Insightful)
It all depends on what you do and how heavily people rely on IT (and the complexity of the IT). I worked at a spook house. Security was the big item, but 1 IT person for 20 people was about right. I worked at another place that had a lot of live data, GIS, bi-directional streaming data (both networked and SCADA) and half a dozen outside agencies feeding or being fed data. Two IT people for 9 users (at any given time, the place was very much 24/7/365) was about right.
Re:extremely high (Score:3, Insightful)
Same here, although at times there are 0% IT staff, like when I'm doing paperwork. And at times there are 200% IT workers, like when I get my better half to lend a hand.
Which brings me over to the question "what is an IT person?"
I am sure that different companies define this differently, and some might consider e.g. payroll processing "IT work", while others include non-IT personnel working for the IT department, like (in order of importance) janitors, cafeteria workers and CIOs. In a big company, they still may be employed in the IT division, and count as IT.
Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd guess that the subtle flaw would *fly* through the 3rd level or red tape,
as the devil is in the details, and generally not in power point presentations.
Re:Very heterogenous environment: 1-in-28 (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:no set ratio (Score:5, Insightful)
So true.
At my first company, over half the employees worked in production. A later company, about 10% were production workers.
The difference?
The first company produced high quantities of inexpensive consumables.
The second company made low quantities of custom control panels. Low quantity, high price. Another major source of income was in servicing the controls.
In some companies, the computers and users are directly related to generating income. e.g. Telemarketing or bookkeeping firm. In others, the computers are more of an overhead expense. e.g. meat packing plant.
I think a more stable number is ratio of computers to IT staff.
Merely depends on how HR defines it (Score:3, Insightful)
The short answer is that there is no answer - although it is my experience that the more different departments there are in the IT organisation, the less efficient it is.
It depends in part on your definition of "IT" (Score:4, Insightful)
What is IT? Does it include desktop PC installation and maintenance? Running the help desk? The guy who helps fix the copier when it's jammed? The guy who runs the network cables through the ceiling? The gal who programs the PBX and voicemail system? The group doing web design and website maintenance for the marketing department?
Different companies would regard all, some, or none of these as "IT" functions and all, some, or none the people who do them as "IT staff". So it depends in large part on your definition of "IT".
That being said, at my main client (a privately-held manufacturer with about 600 US employees and a couple hundred more overseas), there are only ten IT employees - meaning ALL of IT, including of the functions listed above. Plus two half-time consultants. Three employees do PC installation/maintenance/troubleshooting, one takes the help desk calls (and fixes the copiers/phones), five do programming, web, and database wrangling, and one is the manager (and also the network administrator). One of the part-time consultants does mail and system admin (me), and one does more web design. No other outsourcing, and most of the applications are home-grown custom jobs, so there's no large vendor support for anything. In all, it's about 11 FTEs.
This is a manufacturing company and like most of those that I've seen, they run a very lean operation. IT gets what it needs, but nothing more.
Now, a much more useful metric in my mind is "percentage of total company sales spent on IT". I think it's about 2% for this company (though again, definitions of "IT" are tricky). I've heard that 5% is a more typical number for most companies in the US, speaking across a broad range of industries. Anyone know a source for more concrete numbers?
Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is why you have
development -> testing -> live
Bureaucracy doesn't create quality, testing does.
5000 IT workers? Out of 35.000? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't believe it. Maybe your friend was mistaken, but I believe this can't be.
Unless they are working in R&D, in which case they are not really IT, albeit their field of expertise may be IT. I worked for several years in R&D for a very large company in the field of mobile phones and mobile phone networks, and although my job looked like some kind of unix administration, it still was implementation/development. I wasn't in charge of a live infrastructure, I was configuring the storage OS services on our products' platforms.
So let's flame on... (Score:5, Insightful)
And, depending on multiple factors like... how complete their monopoly is, how rich their niche is, how fat their investors pockets are, how crooked their pocket politicians are... they last a widely varying length of time. As they say, the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.
Alas, since they set the methods for, the processes used by so many people, they get to all the conferences, write the papers, fill the text books.... with crap!
So which are the right methods? Which are the best tools?
Nobody actually has the foggiest.
Now. Let me really pour the flaming oil on...
And, no matter what Fred Brook's sacred book says, there really is a magic bullet for software development.
It's called doing software properly. From the top to the bottom. It's called relentless simplicity. It's called sound design. It's called proper UI design. It's called Quality beats Schedule.
Compared to the rest of the dump shoddy pack, yes, two orders of magnitude improvement are available.
Alas... nobody knows what it is.
Nobody even knows what "improve" is. The field is obscured by vapour, hype and gas created by the "biggest" and "BEST" companies.
Now let the trolls ROCK!
How many do you need? (Score:5, Insightful)
One to move printers around as part of departmental turf wars (petty but happens).
One to move computers from desk to desk as people get reassigned as part of departmental turf wars.
One to do busy work for a department that is jealous that real work is being done for another department. In extreme cases the amount of billable time per department is expected to be equal so you might need a few more.
One to fill the photocopier with paper for the user that is screaming red faced about how IT is useless and nothing ever works.
One to run the scanner for the receptionist that is too lazy to do so and pretends they do not understand it. They will have full backing from somebody with the power to fire the head of the IT department.
One, named Sven, to visit the ugly bored gradmas that make up fake emergencies just to get attention.
One to check the spam trap for all the "check is in the mail" type emails that were never actually sent.
One to stand outside the server room door to keep out those that decide that because the computers are all down the IT staff have time to work on their home computer for free.
Even a small company that really only needs one IT person for technical work needs more people depending upon how disfunctional the organisation is. In practice you just have a lot of angry people and a few IT workers that have to determine priorities based on how likely it is that they will be fired.
That is how some places can have well run IT with very few people and others will need more even if it is exactly the same IT people.
Re:Depends on the company (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So let's flame on... (Score:5, Insightful)
Alas... nobody knows what it is.
I don't have a complete answer for you, but somewhere in there, there must be something about "use competent people that actually give a damn". Don't just bring in warm bodies so that all the chairs are filled.
All of the other stuff (documentation standards, design methodology, programming methodology, choice of tools, choice of reporting method, working environment, etc.) can be varied greatly without much impact on the overal result. But competent people is the one thing you cannot do without.
I realize this will not go down very well with managers that prefer to think of programmers as interchangeable units, but this is the truth. Prove me wrong if you can...
Re:Makes sense (Score:3, Insightful)
as the devil is in the details, and generally not in power point presentations.
That's the most salient point ever made on Slashdot...
Of course there are differences by industry... (Score:3, Insightful)
If you're in a software shop, you'll have a lot of IT people to support a large number of people whose job revolves around computers.
If it's a restaurant chain, probably not so many.
If you're running a retail web site, a stock exchange, a telephone company, or anything where you bleed money fast when the computers are unhappy, you'll probably have some extra IT guys around to tend to them.
If you're a law firm and you're using the computers for secretaries to type up memos, it's not as big a deal.
The ratio also turns more IT-heavy as a company gets larger, because the systems get more complicated. A company with ten employees just needs desktops. A company with a hundred needs a few servers. A company with ten thousand can have some incredibly sophisticated infrastructure.
What is reasonable? Take the number of computers you have, and multiply by the rate that you lose money if they aren't working. That'll let you estimate the scale pretty well, excluding management overhead as the company gets bigger.
will the real IT stand out. (Score:1, Insightful)
First you need to defined what "IT" is. It varies from company to company.
We have about 12000 employees and about 1000 people in what we call the IT department, so one would say 12:1 ratio, but when you break it down to real world. you have 12 system admins managing over 3000 servers spread out over a 5 state area, 50 admins with over 9000 desktops and 300 developers actually doing code. 6 people in the DBA group, 8 in the web/app server/MQ group, 10 or so in the monitoring group, Now dont forget the data/voice , architecture, planning, ,,audit, compliance, a few in risk management, secretary, , and way to many managers.
So what is the real radio of IT to employee's. Is it the 12:1 using the 1000 empoyee's or it is 40:1 using just the coders?
Also simple changes get more and more complex the larger the group. a simple database change could affect many groups/project down stream. A simple web page change could ripple down into an ORG.
Re:no set ratio (Score:2, Insightful)
Are you crazy?
I know it's a joke on the Java logo, but really, I wouldn't rely on a Java developer for anything critical.
And we know that the most critical task in any IT department is coffee.
Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
And then there is me who says they should ask up front if they don't have a clue. As in "Organizing my files with Windows Explorer is troublesome, can you recommend an alternative file manager?" instead of installing some random software from the internet.
Now I would not crucify someone for a one-time slip in that department, but a user who crashes his machine every two months needs to have his admin rights revoked.
Printing a certain font, however, can be a legitimate need. As in "you have already published stuff in that font and you want more of the same for consistency".
IT is a service organization - it exists to support the users of the technology.
That means helping fix problems - even if they are user generated.
IT should play a role in deciding what technology is used and what is deployed; but the users need to be the ones that say if it meets their needs.
IT shouldn't decide if you can use a font or not, OTOH limiting what can be installed makes sense from a reliability and license compliance standpoint.
The problem for IT shops that are viewed as a block rather than a helper is that they have no friends once outsourcing gets bought up. They are viewed strictly as a cost center; and cheaper generally wins the battle once that viewpoint takes hold.
Re:That's a lot o' IT (Score:4, Insightful)
Having worked at a couple banks, I'd say that the type of business doesn't really have much to do with it. The banks I were at had an IT to total staff ratio of about 1:30-50. There were a limited number of systems, and we knew all knew them inside out. At those banks, the total number of employees were in the low hundreds, so a handful of us could cover the issues well. I'm with a much larger organization now, and the ratio has fallen to about 1:20. With the increased size of the org, the variance in and complexity of systems is greatly increased, so higher levels of staffing are necessary. A lot of enterprise IT isn't cost effective until it's providing services for 1000+ people, so in small orgs, it doesn't exist. Manual processes are sufficient. I'd say as a general rule, the larger the org, the tighter the ratio.
It's Called "Lean Manufacturing" (Score:2, Insightful)
Cleaning up the electronic work forms (and reducing the data required to fill out forms - simple as having to put in both State _&_ Zip Code to complex like requiring filling out 15 data fields when only 2 ever get used by the database miners) saves the company lots of wasted time, effort, and cost. Also issues with a lack of error proofing feedback causes waste - users don't know what isn't right and why the system throws them an error.
Big companies have ability to absorb waste in work processes for quite a while, until the economy tips over and then they shed people by the thousands.
It's easy to fix - but the steps need to be taken.
John
Discretionary Thoughts [privateproductivity.com]
Re:That's a lot o' IT (Score:2, Insightful)
That's what turnaround companies do - and can be successful.
Such as: Often one or two key people can design up a robust process to get things done in a few days..while a team of ten will take months to define that same project.
Or: How many emails get logged between a group of 3 people vs a department of 300? Is the customer experience suddenly better?
As organizations get larger, there are "naturally" more "approval levels" and "communication" and "revisions" and "new requests" and so on. The beast feeds itself, and that is before politics get started and expand the workload yet more.
That's why Entrepreneurs and Small Companies actually get started and have a chance to thrive and allow turnaround companies to exist.
Discretionary Thoughts [privateproductivity.com]
Re:no set ratio (Score:5, Insightful)
the most critical task in any IT department is coffee
No, its not the sixties anymore. Its possible to run an IT staff for several hours durring a coffee supply disruption. It has been for at least two decades pull your head up and look around once in a while. Modern products like Mountain Dew and Jolt Cola, can be uesed as a temporary coffee substitue in most IT staff units. Some units with very strong stomacs and high metabolic rates can operate on them exclusively.
Re:So let's flame on... (Score:3, Insightful)
I can't tell you how much my knowledge of PERL and *nix has helped in managing our Exchange system... Errr...
I worked for a Fortune 100 company... (Score:2, Insightful)
For 7 years, I worked at IBM, which certainly has a high ratio of IT staff to "normal" staff :-). I specifically worked in ebusiness hosting as a Unix system administrator.
Yet she mentioned even simple changes to systems/software take over six months.
That surprised me at first when I worked at IBM. It didn't take six months, necessarily, but a lot of planning and team effort went into doing system changes. Even growing a filesystem could take weeks to get all the approvals, despite that being a non-impacting change. It sounds ridiculous to anyone who has worked for a small company, but realize that the margin for error is much smaller. If we caused a system outage for a customer, they might literally be losing thousands of dollars every minute the system is down, because many of the customers were other Fortune 100 (and 500) companies.
Contrast to my current employer where we support website operations for some small companies (less than 20 people total). If one of their servers is down for an hour, it might delay a code deployment and cost them *some* money, but not anywhere near the scale of the companies I supported at IBM.
Re:That's a lot o' IT (Score:3, Insightful)
How about shutting down some worthless programs?