It's not really a cheap or dumb thing, it's a money thing.
Business execs want everything broken down in "how much will this make me" and "how much will this cost me". The problem IT faces is that sort of impact isn't easy (or is impossible) to articulate. We can easily speak to how much the fix will cost, but not to how much it will save or bring in.
This is why orgs are terrible at security. How much will fixing the log4j issue save? Who knows, maybe nothing, maybe the entire business.
The budgetary control management system that companies like this use isn't primarily designed to limit spending to the minimum necessary. Its primary purpose is to prevent any political power being built away from the management office, by constraining access to the critical resource.
I mean this literally and historically. Budgets being used for management control dates from when the CEO of General Motors couldn't control the sprawling divisions they'd bought, so he (well, his CFO) brought in budgetary controls invented by McKinsey (the man, not the company) so they couldn't move without his say-so. And of course because it worked for GM, it must be good for everyone.
My fellow autists in the IT industry have a hard time coming to terms with the fact that the answer to the question "how much will this cost me" in other departments is mostly made up bullshit, so you have to learn to say made up bullshit too.
I call this software literacy - we would not hire an illiterate CEO and we are in the middle of a transition from software eating the world to the world is software.
If you don't understand how to write software it's like not understanding how to run a newsroom for a newspaper - you simply won't make the right decision often enough no matter how clever you are
You don't need to understand how a fuel pump works to manage a fleet of vehicles. But you need to trust that when your mechanics are telling you that a particular model has a lot of fuel pump problems, they know what they are talking about. If you, the fleet manager, are approached with a plan to replace all the fuel pumps in a particular model with an in-house design, you still don't need to know the particulars of the in-house design. You do need to have some sense of whether you really have the in-house ability to competently design, manufacture, and sustain such a device.
It may seem like a ridiculous idea for a floral delivery service. But if you know your people enough to trust them or not trust them, you don't have to be an expert in everything to make the right decisions.
This is what I thought off about the original story. Yes, the team got things done and was able to provision needed hardware by managing the pain signal. However, upper management was still isolated and didn’t trust or respect the IT team.
I fundamentally disagree - it's like "all you need is an MBA and you can run anything"
If we think of management as "coach / therapist" (ie the eight rules of google management" then yeah, the goal of management is to take a team of high performers and help them not to implode. But I don't see that as "management"
This post is an example of IT making it clear as day what the problem will be before it happens, it's amazing communication when the very obvious "trust what the actual experts are telling you" advice isn't being followed.
The suits are cheap or dumb or it’s their fault they can’t speak tech. But often there’s just a lack of communication skills.