[embedding-shape]

I think the general idea/flow of things is "numbers go up, until $bubble explodes, and we built up smaller things from the ground up, making numbers go up, bloating go up, until $bubble explodes..." and then repeat that forever. Seems to be the end result of capitalism.

If you wanna kill corporate IT, you have to kill capitalism first.

[mananaysiempre]

I’d say there’s nothing inherently capitalist about large and stupid bureaucracies (but I repeat myself) spending money in stupid ways. Military bureaucracies in capitalist countries do it. Military bureaucracies in socialist countries did it. Everything else in end-stage socialist countries did it too. I’m sorry, it’s not the capitalism—things’d be much easier if it were.

[queenkjuul]

Maybe military people are just uniquely stupid

[mananaysiempre]

Not at all, no. I gave that example because, first, even in a profoundly capitalist country (whatever that means) the military itself is not particularly motivated by profit; and second, because it’s one of the few bureaucratic organizations that will not (be allowed to) collapse under the weight of its own inefficiencies and so easily grows much larger than is othetwise typical.

[gspr]

I don't believe that. I don't necessarily love capitalism (though I can't say I see very many realistic better alternatives either), but if HN is full of people who could do corporate IT better (read: sanely), then the conclusion is just that corporate IT is run by morons. Maybe that's because the corporate owners like morons, but nothing about capitalism inherently makes it so.

[dylan604]

> corporate IT is run by morons

playing devil's advocate for a second, but corpIT is also working with morons as employees. most draconian rules used by corpIT have a basis in at least one real world example. whether that example happened directly by one of the morons they manage or passed along from corpIT lore, people have done some dumb ass things on corp networks.

[mananaysiempre]

Yes, and the problem in that picture is the belief (whichever level of the management hierarchy it comes from) that you can introduce technical impediments against every instance of stupidity one by one until morons are no longer able to stupid. Morons will always find a way to stupid, and most organizations push the impediments well past the point of diminishing returns.

[KPGv2]

> the problem in that picture is the belief (whichever level of the management hierarchy it comes from) that you can introduce technical impediments against every instance of stupidity one by one until morons are no longer able to stupid

I would say the problem in the picture is your belief that corporate IT is introducing technical impediments against every instance of stupidity. I bet there's loads of stupidity they don't introduce technical impediments against. It would just not meet the cost-benefit analysis to spend thousands of tech man-hours introducing a new impediment that didn't cost the company much if any money.

[KPGv2]

It's because corporate IT has to service non-tech people, and non-tech people get pwned by tech savvy nogoodniks. So the only sane behavior of corporate IT is to lock everything down and then whitelist things rarely.

[layer8]

Apparently capitalism doesn’t pay enough for corporate IT admin jobs.