False dilemma fallacy

quarky

We are working on a project at work to provide an IT environment for new contacts. Some of the team are claiming that our existing platform is unsuitable (despite it having capacity, being easily expandable, and still being under warranty) and came up with a platform costing millions, to support bids that might make 10's, or maybe 100's of thousands in profit. Not surprisingly the CEO told the project team to go away and come up with something sensible, and so they are now talking about proposing 1 server, 1 switch as a solution.

Why do some people have to throw out their toys because they can't get what they want? Why can't they accept that there must be a middle ground which satisfies the requirements of a project without so much that it is uneconomical?

Just a vent, but it really annoyed me today, because I will now need to put together a realistic solution, without their backing, so they will be pissed at me.

PolarityMan

Why on earth would you build this stuff yourself these days? I'd be looking at something like salesforce.

quarky

Yep, that is a really good point. Believe it or not, there are people in our IT department who thing that 80% of workloads will remain on premise. Personally, I want to it in a system that will allow us to create/manage/migrate regardless of being on premise or in the cloud. It is a tough battle to get them to see the writing on the wall though.

I like these guys, but some of them are luddites. Well paid luddites.

monquixote

quarky said:

Yep, that is a really good point. Believe it or not, there are people in our IT department who thing that 80% of workloads will remain on premise. Personally, I want to it in a system that will allow us to create/manage/migrate regardless of being on premise or in the cloud. It is a tough battle to get them to see the writing on the wall though.

I like these guys, but some of them are luddites. Well paid luddites.

I imagine they will end up jobless luddites as will probably 50% of internal IT folks before very long, especially if they don't learn about cloud services.

Emp_Fab

Because an awful lot of IT folk are lacking in emotional maturity and social skills and behave like spoiled kids.  I immediately recognised the type from your description.  I've got a similar situation going on in work.  We have designed a network setup that does exactly what is needed, however, the 'other team' have spent the past six months doing their best to trash our proposal and come up with a shitty alternative that doesn't do what ours does, uses cheap crap hardware and needs so many extra bits adding to it to get it to meet the spec that it comes in more expensive than ours.  Why ?  Because they didn't have a hand in designing our setup and, like spoiled children, they are doing all they can to 'win' - at any cost (to the customer or the company), because of nothing more than petty jealousy.

sinbaadi

It's not just in IT.  Loads of people would rather watch the better idea fail than help it succeed, if their own idea was rejected.  Lots of people looking for the "I told you so" points as some kind of measure of their worth.

The problems really start when people who otherwise would not be like that are dragged down to that level because they know what others are like, it just goes on and on.  

quarky

Tried talking to one of them again today, and he actually said "I don't know why you focus on the cloud and automation so much. We have no need for it and won't ever use it." Jesus wept. And I am not talking about actually putting anything in the cloud at the moment (although we obviously have shadow IT in there already because IT can't provide what the users want), just trying to steer us in a direction where we can consume and manage cloud services (along side on premise) easily. And this guy holds an IT management position in a billion dollar (revenue, not profit) company. Time to side-step him I think.

Evilmags

Now you know why IT guys never get taken for drinksm posh meals and strip clubs

Sambostar

iain.reverb

PolarityMan said:

Why on earth would you build this stuff yourself these days? I'd be looking at something like salesforce.

Ive changed systems with the new company I'm working for to a cloud based out the box system and I cant believe how much my old company would have saved by going to a cloud based system. Instead of signing yearly licensing and support contracts in the tens of thousands they could have set up a direct debit for £25 a month and got 99% of the functionality.