Well golly, there's so much going on today. Molly Ivins has another humorous column in today's Atlanta Urinal and Constipation that is just begging for another fisking, but I have to adhere to my Only Fisk Molly Once a Month Rule. Don't want brain rot to set in. George Loony is spouting off in Europe and that just begs for another Rachel Lucas interview, but she's taking some time off. Arrrgghhh! And the French are going to submit a resolution to the Security Council that will probably say that they're surrendering to Iraq. Speaking of France, the following comment was posted on my French Bashing post yesterday:
My father (who spent most of WW2 either in the N. Atlantic or the Mediterranean, aboard "U.S.S. Frankford") used to say that -- should the Europeans decide to indulge in yet another great land war during the Twentieth Century -- he hoped that the other side would get the French as allies. Just to spread the pain around a bit.
Love it!
Nope. Not gonna write about any of that. Sandy, commented yesterday asking about how our German project was going. I think this is the second time she asked and I've been holding off until we had a final decision, but, it's starting to get interesting.
For those of you who came in late, I work for TCIDNN (The Company I Dare Not Name) which is a multinational corporation. I am a mainframe systems programmer, and, no, the mainframe is not dead, it's now called a high end server. The division I work for used to outsource our hardware to another division of TCIDNN but do our own programming. We found out we could cut our I/T costs by getting our own hardware, which we did five years ago.
Our counterparts in Europe, who are represented by Hans and Fritz, outsource both their hardware and their programming support to the German branch of the division we used to use. About three months ago, that division announced that they were gonna raise their I/T support bill from $2.7 million to $2.9 million. Hans hit the ceiling and started sending out notes to the whole world about this.
So, someone suggested that maybe they should think about seeing what we would charge for their business. For more details about all the fun I've had with the Germans, Go here.
Keep in mind that this is all internal money, which I call white beans. Different parts of TCIDNN are BBU's (Battlin' Business Units) that sell goods and services to each other. We're just fixin' to take some white beans away from the division in Germany. And to make this even more like the Axis of Weasels, the final decision as to who is gonna get the white beans rests with a Belgian!
Anyway, after looking at what it would cost to upgrade our stuff and add the additional hardware and peopleware, and after many meetings, and even more meetings, and even more meetings after that (If you went back to my original post you'd understand this) we came up with a cost of $1.9 million per year.
We sent off a proposed SLA (Service Level Agreement) to Hans and Fritz last week. I've been saying all along that Hans and Fritz were just using us as a bargaining chip to get the German outsourcer to cut their price. Well, it was successful. They matched our offer. About now, if I were Hans, I would be asking the outsourcer, "Mein Gott! If you can match this price, why have you been raping me for all these years and how about a hefty rebate, Scheisskopf?"
Over the last two months, my manager has been walking around with this big ol' boner and a huge smile on his face (That is when his head has been out from up his bosses ass.). If we can pull this off, we'll be supporting most of the world out of our data center and he'll have this huge empire. So, when the Germans matched our offer it was like the Viagra had worn off.
Last Friday, my team lead and I were sitting in our office fat, dumb and happy when our manager came in and told us that the Germans had matched our offer and his boss wanted us to cut $800 thousand from our proposal. What? "No problem", said our boss, whose hair was getting curly and pointed as he spoke, "we'll just cut headcount". What?
My team lead tried to explain to him that we would have to port their entire environment over and keep it as it was. They do not do things as efficiently as we do (They have a staff of 16 people supporting it, We were gonna do it with 9), and until we could start implementing some of our automation and other efficiencies this was the minimum staff required.
He then floored us with this statement: "They told me I couldn't cut my staff 50% and still provide support, but I did it." This asshole was bragging about firing half of his people! I have never seen my team lead mad before. He hid it well, but I could tell he was biting his tongue. Fortunately, I was on the phone so I didn't say what I was thinking.
So, today, we had a meeting with the project manager who is driving this project to see what we could cut. I was trying to figger out how to get out of it as choking one's manager is probably grounds for dismissal. Fortunately, he was not in the meeting. We're having still another meeting tomorrow to continue finding things to cut.
About now, I don't really give a crap whether we get this business or not. We're having a meeting with Hans, Fritz, and the Belgian on Wednesday
and giving them our next offer.
Fuck it! Let's just bomb Iraq!