@black3dynamite said in What Are You Watching Now:

The Banker
Youtube Video

This looks great

@hubtechagain said in Need a Nextcloud Guru:

this is a paying gig.

@JaredBusch

@jt1001001 said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

Anyoen else have Spectrum issues? 2 out of 3 offices on Spectrum cable modems having intermittent connection/browsing issues. The offices on fiber are OK so far

I have issues with Spectrum generally speaking. Worst ISP I have worked with in my career

@DustinB3403 said in Difficult co-worker:

@wirestyle22 said in Difficult co-worker:

@flaxking said in Difficult co-worker:

@flaxking said in Difficult co-worker:

@Kelly said in Difficult co-worker:

Without more experience or information it is difficult to draw an exact conclusion, but have you considered that he is on the autism spectrum? Some of the things that you're listing could be indicators of that. There are significant differences to how you will work with someone on the spectrum vs someone who just has control issues.

This sounds a lot like my co-worker, who I am pretty sure is on the spectrum. He is amazing technically, reading comprehension of technical documentation that is out of this world. But he can't think in terms of business needs and what is practical. He will also assume he knows what you're saying without listen so you really have to watch for cues that the didn't actually understand what you said. Also can be a lot of work to convince him he is wrong, you need to have definitive proof ready.

Or he will have no memory of where he got information from, so he will explain something to you that was actually something you told him

I didn't realize we worked together. Chalk that up to my bad memory

Or mini-strokes. . . (not joking at all)

That would explain a lot actually

@flaxking said in Difficult co-worker:

@flaxking said in Difficult co-worker:

@Kelly said in Difficult co-worker:

Without more experience or information it is difficult to draw an exact conclusion, but have you considered that he is on the autism spectrum? Some of the things that you're listing could be indicators of that. There are significant differences to how you will work with someone on the spectrum vs someone who just has control issues.

This sounds a lot like my co-worker, who I am pretty sure is on the spectrum. He is amazing technically, reading comprehension of technical documentation that is out of this world. But he can't think in terms of business needs and what is practical. He will also assume he knows what you're saying without listen so you really have to watch for cues that the didn't actually understand what you said. Also can be a lot of work to convince him he is wrong, you need to have definitive proof ready.

Or he will have no memory of where he got information from, so he will explain something to you that was actually something you told him

I didn't realize we worked together. Chalk that up to my bad memory

@Obsolesce i think we've all seen napoleon dynamite

@RandyBlevins Is the difficulty only the fact that he argues or is there more at play here?

My D&D group finished Waterdeep Dragonheist and we are moving to Tomb of Annihilation in two weeks. Looking forward to it. I've heard it's challenging

@Dashrender said in How do you get your departments to quantify what they actually need for their jobs:

@wirestyle22 said in How do you get your departments to quantify what they actually need for their jobs:

@Dashrender said in How do you get your departments to quantify what they actually need for their jobs:

@wirestyle22 said in How do you get your departments to quantify what they actually need for their jobs:

@scottalanmiller said in How do you get your departments to quantify what they actually need for their jobs:

@DustinB3403 said in How do you get your departments to quantify what they actually need for their jobs:

@scottalanmiller said in How do you get your departments to quantify what they actually need for their jobs:

@DustinB3403 said in How do you get your departments to quantify what they actually need for their jobs:

Looking for some general advice on how you might address this so you can formulate a real business plan

Bill backs.... if a department pays for what they request, you don't care if they use it or not.

How do you bill back a department who doesn't have a budget? (honestly asking)

By not billing based on projects, base on orders.

Example:

Dept A demands 100TB of storage. IT has a TB cost for storage (maybe by performance tier.) Let's say 1TB of storage costs $1/mo. So if a department orders 100TB of storage, they have to pay $100/mo whether they use it or not.

THis is a standard model that pushes real costs to departments, and puts the onus on the departments to justify their expenditures. It also provides the CFO a look into profits and losses that they lack otherwise.

How does this work with the ultra conservative managers? I'd imagine it would translate into overhead for IT. Reverse the scenario.

Say in a 3 year period you calculate the need for 750 TB worth of expansion. The manger is unwilling to purchase 750 TB and instead purchases 250 TB because they don't want to pay the full amount until they will use it. Now you have three installs instead of one. I'd imagine this would be a problem with bigger companies.

I'm pretty sure Scott is going to tell you that you don't buy for the future, because you really don't know what tomorrow brings. So likely you're going to do just that - buy 250 TB as needed, you might need if faster, you might need it slower. Sure it's possibly more work for IT, three installs - but theses are storage growths, you shouldn't require nearly as much work as the initial setup - design the system for growth, so IT has less using performing that growth.

So if you're buying new servers you don't try to account for growth? You just buy exactly what you had?

Why would you ever buy exactly what you had? The reality here is that you're replacing for one of two reasons - aged out equipment or growth. Obviously in the case of growth, you're not buying the same thing - you clearly need more. But aged out equipment - do you really need more? heck your equipment aged out, meaning it's at least 5 years old, and could easily be 8+. Any server you buy today will crush that 5+ year old server and if necessary, should have plenty of room for expansion (in RAM and CPU) assuming you built it somewhere near the performance level of the old one.

As for storage - you might start with all internal storage - then you might move to DAS for additional storage, don't need another server (necessarily)

They were widely viewed as successful but that is only because they stopped analyzing after implementation

@Dashrender said in How do you get your departments to quantify what they actually need for their jobs:

@wirestyle22 said in How do you get your departments to quantify what they actually need for their jobs:

@Dashrender said in How do you get your departments to quantify what they actually need for their jobs:

@wirestyle22 said in How do you get your departments to quantify what they actually need for their jobs:

@scottalanmiller said in How do you get your departments to quantify what they actually need for their jobs:

@DustinB3403 said in How do you get your departments to quantify what they actually need for their jobs:

@scottalanmiller said in How do you get your departments to quantify what they actually need for their jobs:

@DustinB3403 said in How do you get your departments to quantify what they actually need for their jobs:

Looking for some general advice on how you might address this so you can formulate a real business plan

Bill backs.... if a department pays for what they request, you don't care if they use it or not.

How do you bill back a department who doesn't have a budget? (honestly asking)

By not billing based on projects, base on orders.

Example:

Dept A demands 100TB of storage. IT has a TB cost for storage (maybe by performance tier.) Let's say 1TB of storage costs $1/mo. So if a department orders 100TB of storage, they have to pay $100/mo whether they use it or not.

THis is a standard model that pushes real costs to departments, and puts the onus on the departments to justify their expenditures. It also provides the CFO a look into profits and losses that they lack otherwise.

How does this work with the ultra conservative managers? I'd imagine it would translate into overhead for IT. Reverse the scenario.

Say in a 3 year period you calculate the need for 750 TB worth of expansion. The manger is unwilling to purchase 750 TB and instead purchases 250 TB because they don't want to pay the full amount until they will use it. Now you have three installs instead of one. I'd imagine this would be a problem with bigger companies.

I'm pretty sure Scott is going to tell you that you don't buy for the future, because you really don't know what tomorrow brings. So likely you're going to do just that - buy 250 TB as needed, you might need if faster, you might need it slower. Sure it's possibly more work for IT, three installs - but theses are storage growths, you shouldn't require nearly as much work as the initial setup - design the system for growth, so IT has less using performing that growth.

So if you're buying new servers you don't try to account for growth?

you can, but you don't have to spend all the money today.

example - you buy a server, you buy a dual socket machine, but only populate 1 socket (assuming the job can get done with that) and you populate the second when it's actually needed, same goes for storage and RAM.

What I've seen is overbuying specifically for the calculated expansion needed for whatever the refresh plan is but yeah, I guess that is too much of an upfront investment.