Helping IT Save Money ... and Jobs?

An anonymous reader asks: "I work in a small, overworked and understaffed IT department at a profitable business. We recently got the news that we needed to cut costs. While every penny counts, simply turning off the computers at night and saving pennies on processor cycles isn't exactly a noticeable savings. I'm curious what measures other Slashdot readers have taken to save money within their IT departments."

Comments

Where do you spend it?

[Barondude]

Saving money is directly tied to where you spend it.

I got a better idea

[Orion Blastar]

downsize the IT managers who cannot say "No", as they are the ones that force IT departments to overwork themselves.

"Here are the projects I want you to work on."

"But these projects are commercially available for less money than our development costs to make them."

"I don't care, I made promises to other departments that we will do them."

"But it will take a staff of 200 to do these projects in 3 months. We only have 30. We will need more time."

"We don't have the budget for that, so everyone will be forced to work 80 hours a week with no overtime pay."

"In some cases we already have some of these software projects. Like Microsoft Outlook for scheduling and contact management, and Microsoft Project for Project Management."

"I want custom versions of those programs, because I promised them to the other departments."

"Well at least can we have a raise to compensate for all the overtime we will put into these projects?"

"No, in fact, I have to cut everyone's salary in order to help budget more money for marketing and executive pay raises."

Then the IT department has a 90% turnover rate for four years of this, and each IT employee that is fired or leaves ends up costing 150% of the annual salary for that position to replace, which adds more to the IT budget.

Then after being over-stressed, over-worked, and suriving 4 and a half years of this, I get really sick and end up being fired and replaced with someone willing to work for half of my salary.

Re:Every Penny Does Count

[General Fault]

We just cut our IT department. I would not recomend this as it makes our development staff our IT department. Paying a programmer to do IT stuff is like paying your contractor (as in home building contractor) to clean your house. Not only is it going to cost you $200 per hour to have a clean house but it is really going to piss off your contractor.

Re:Every Penny Does Count

[Jaysyn]

Or you could do what I do, get a couple of overpaid, underworked management types fired. You'd be surprised how much overhead that can clear up. Usually doesn't take much more than a quick trip to their browser cache either.

Jaysyn