On Thu, 15 Dec 2011, Edward Ned Harvey wrote:
You're in a social situation - at a party or something - You're talking with some CFO or otherwise interesting financial person about work, and Dilbert cartoons, and the wastefulness and inefficiencies of typical corporations or typical organizations, etc. Somebody uses a term like "overhead" or "secondary" referring to support roles. But you're an IT person - You're a support role, and depending on what is your core business, most likely you're overhead. With only a moment's thought, and only a few words, how do you describe the value that your role adds to the organization? How do you justify your own existence, casually, when talking to a CFO or somebody in a social situation?
The CFO is overhead too. Overhead means that an expense isn't directly allocatable to a particular item sold. It isn't a accounting-speak for "non-productive". Is system administration helping the firm reduce costs and/or raise output, or is it part of the "Department of Information Prevention"? Whether its support or empire-building, it is overhead either way.
Daniel Feenberg
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