Ask Slashdot: IT Spending In Engineering? 146
An anonymous reader writes "I work in the engineering division at a large organization, about 2000 people total and about 900 in the engineering division. As I'm sure many institutions have been faced with recently, we are dealing with reduced budgets. We have a new director who has determined that the engineering division spends too much on 'IT' and has given us a goal of reducing IT spending by 50%. We currently spend about 8% of the total engineering budget on IT related purchases. About 10% of that (i.e. 0.8% of the total budget) is spent on what I consider traditional IT such as email, office automation software, etc.. The rest goes towards engineering related IT such as clusters for large computations, workstations for processing, better networks to handle the large data sets generated, data collection systems for testing facilities, etc.. My gut says that 8% is low compared to other engineering institutions. What do other engineering organizations spend on IT (traditional and engineering)? What strategy would you use to convince your management that 8% spending on IT is already very efficient?"
Re:Welcome to reality (Score:5, Informative)
Four words (which should be printed in blold letters, etc.) come to mind about similar situations
- CompuServe
- Lucent Bell Labs
While these were not IT spending per-say, in both cases, upper level management had their own inept vision of reality and agendas. The lower levels tried to get management to understand, management refused to listen, and the rest as they say is history. Sadly, folks at the upper levels of both of these were not entirely a bunch of idiots with sales, marketing, MBA or accounting folks. In the case of CompuServe, we were clearly tech heavy all the way to the top at the time. We just had management who had their own vision/plans, and could not be convinced of the fact that was was being done was wrong. In the other case, I don't remember how many of the upper level folks came from the more technical backgrounds, and how many were from backgrounds which were more in tune with the typical "business suit" mentality. But communications became more unidirectional, incorrect decisions were made, and these companies were gobbled up while many tech folks either left between the mind set in the work environment, or were later tossed overboard in management's attempts to lighten the load to keep from sinking (you don't throw those who are working on bailing out the ship overboard while you are sinking and expect to not sink).
At this point, the best course of action is to attempt to work your way up the ladder, convincing them with how your IT costs relate directly to making your company money. You don't say what sort of engineering firm, but tying those costs to directly to modeling stress/loads in an architecture engineering firm, the SQA of a software firm, etc... and then looking at options such continuing to use 3yr old (or what ever the figure is) computational systems, and tying the costs of doing so to what your firm does, listing all the pros/cons, and then presenting it up the ladder while addressing the issues raised at each level... While it does not guarantee success, but this is the way you win a battle like this. Lots of details, hard numbers, pros/cons, and facts. Periodically, each of you will be faced with making your own personal evaluations of stay/leave, but such is life. If you are lucky, you will either make it through the storm, or have a way off the ship which keeps you from swimming unexpectedly. If not, you just hope you can swim to shore or to be able to catch hold of a rope dangling off another ship. But regardless, such is life... not all ships can avoid the heavy weather, and you just hope that the ones you are on do not go down with you stuck onboard (and that those at the wheel are smart enough to take the advice of folks like you when you spot a storm off in the distance, or notice that the wind is coming at you from the wrong direction).
Good luck and may you never be faced with being on a ship where the captain refuses to point the bow off course as required by the weather you are in, and instead only listens to a navigator who continues to point you towards your next port (or worse, having to report through said navigator).
Re:Welcome to reality (Score:5, Informative)
I'd suggest polishing up your resume.
Totally agreed about the rest of your post, and I think this line is the most important part of all. This company is doomed.