Re: That sounds like the story of a madhouse
with very few exceptions[1] IT is seen a net loss in financial terms
I worked in local radio in the 1990s as an "engineer". I ended up "doing IT" because almost nobody else knew where the "on" buttons were, but bear in mind that when I started the entire IT assets of this 35-ish employee company consisted of one '286 running DOS and WordPerfect, connected to a Laserjet, one '386DX with Windows 3.0 for the boss's secretary (and her Laserjet) a '386SX that my boss managed to budget for himself, and a multi-user minicomputer thingy running half a dozen VT52 terminals for booking.
Anwyay, besides the point. Just before I started that job my boss and my predecessor had (apparently) taken part in a company-wide transition to a "cost centre" format. Each department cross-charged each other department.
The way my boss told it, the only department in the entire company that made a profit was engineering, and the experiment was quietly dropped :-)
M.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
