About twenty years ago, while I was pursuing YA degree (some people collect charms for charm bracelets, I collect graduate degrees), I was working both at the university's computing center, as well as working as a computer cruncher for the dept of Ag Econ. Ag Econ had received a chunk of money and was looking for a new computer. The university computing center found out and one of the upper managers cornered me on my next shift.
He: "I hear that Ag Econ is looking at getting their own computer."
Me: "Yup, I'm pushing for a Vax 780."
He: "Why aren't you telling them to transfer their funds to the Computing Center, and we'll buy a computer and give them time on it?"
Me: "..and what would you offer to them?"
He: " Well, we would buy a 780, and they could get time on it..."
Me: " But not between 5-9AM , since you do backups, and PM, and not from 5PM on Saturday to noon on Sunday, because you don't staff then, and also not from midnight on Sunday until 9AM on Monday ?"
He: "Well, of course..."
Me: "...and they would have to share the system with others?"
He: "Of couse, and they would have to pay us for usage."
Me: "So, instead of having their own computer, which they could have all to themselves, and since they have their own ops staff, can take care of themselves, you want them to hand you their money, so you can charge them to use their own equipment when you feel like letting them?"
He: "Well, they'd have to hand over their ops staff and funding for them to us."
Me: "You know, I just don't think they're going to buy that...."
(The career-limiting response would be: "HOW STUPID ARE YOU!!!!")
Postscript: The Ag Econ dept bought a Prime (stupid, and that will be discussed later), the Computing Center kept losing business to anyone who had enough funding or know-how to get their own computer and put it on the engineering schools' network, and within a couple of years after I took off, were relegated to a backwater operation. Oh, they're still there, and amazingly enough, a bunch of the same upper management are still there as well, but that's more of a testament to the difficulty of doing something about an entrenched dept at a public university.
Posted by lsefton at September 20, 2003 07:21 PM