Simon

Cumbria

IT

My experience is that IT is usually part of the Finance Directors job - presumably because the most key part of IT is keeping track of the beans. My last FD was a bean counter through and through - knows every last bean the comany has, but can't see the value in anything !

As a coalface IT worker (and network manager and telecoms manager and ...) I was always being told to plan ahead. But what happens we we do ? I forsee a requirement, plan a network upgrade to cope, take my proposal to the beancounter who simply responds that we don't need it, he won't pay for it, and he'll reconsider when it's needed (ie when the network grinds to a halt and HE can't get his work done).

This is one of the problems holding back progress, and it affects telecoms just as badly - when a director sees the headline rates and 'suggests' that we should use that carrier. Never mind that we've used them before and they let us down BADLY - the beancounters say jump, so who are we to argue.