Mulbreastasking discriminates Mouse and Keyboard how to fix it 5097

Captain Dondo

I remember a coupla decades ago, I worked for a large regulated monopoly that pretty much does not exist anymore. While originally well managed, it was taken over by bean counters.

We were running a farm of PDP-11-45 and a few PDP-11-70 running the UNIX OS. We had a coupla dozen developpers on each machine, so performance was often unacceptably poor (e.g., when recompiling an entire embedded application for an electronic PBX). People would sit on their hands, talk about their social lives, go to the candy machines, etc., while waiting for a program to compile.

We calculated that buying just one more machine would cut the time wasted by the employees by a huge amount (loading the machines by more than about 70% caused extreme disk thrashing), and that it would pay for itself in a few months (far less than a year). But the bean counters in purchasing and the bean counters in payroll did not talk to one another. The argument went that they had to pay our salaries anyway (unavoidable cost) but they did not have to pay for an additional machine (avoidable cost). The fact that they were paying us for doing nothing did not seem to matter.

That company is no longer a large regulated monopoly. In fact, it barely exists anymore, having been bought out by a former subsidiary. What in irony! You could point this out to your accountants, but they probably would not understand you. And your company, too, could follow mine.

-- .~. Jean-David Beyer Registered Linux User 85642. V PGP-Key: 9A2FC99A Registered Machine 241939. ^^-^^ 09:10:00 up 4 days, 7:31, 3 users, load average: 4.35, 4.38, 4.30