Well sure, and I would like to think (probably mistakenly) that just no one important enough (to the money people) made the money people that these other things are *REQUIRED* to make the deal work.
Obviously, people lower on the ladder say it all of the time, but the important enough money people probably don't consider those people important enough to listen to.
Not quite.
It's more of what Mark said:
" I blame this on the success of how well we have built the Internet with whatever box and tool we have, as network engineers."
I have worked time and time again with absolute miracle workers in the networking field.
They say over and over again "to make this work, we need $X M to get the right hardware", even directly to the CFO.
They get handed a roll of duct tape, some baling wire, a used access point and a $25 gift card from Office Depot, and they turn it into a functional BGP-speaking backbone, because that's what they're good at.
The CFO and the rest of the executives that said "no" to the request for $X M to make the integration work properly pat themselves on the back, saying "see, we knew they didn't really NEED that money to make it work."
A year down the line, customers are posting to NANOG wondering why things are going to hell in a handbasket at ISP A, as the BGP-speaking access point with some duct tape, baling wire, and SFPs purchased from Office Depot that ties the two networks together starts failing.
As network engineers, we collectively set ourselves up for this by being so damn good at pulling miracles out of our backside to keep things running.
We've effectively been training our executives that if they habitually turn down our requests for resources, we'll still find some way of making things work.
We pride ourselves on being able to keep a dozen spinning plates going like a circus performer, without letting any of them crash to the floor.
It's a hard thing to do, but one lesson I've taught junior network engineers of all ages is that sometimes, you have to step back, and watch a plate smash into the floor, *even if you could have rescued it*, if it seems like that's the only way your executive team will understand that if requests for necessary resources are denied, there will be operational impacts.
Now, it's not something you should do lightly, and not something to do without first working with the executives to understand why the resource request is being denied.
If you are working at a startup, and the money is running out, and the company is one step ahead of the creditors, probably not the time to put the foot down and intentionally let things crash and burn.
But if the company is doing well, has the money, and the executives just want the numbers to look good for wall street analysts, then it's time to pause the miracle working, and help them understand that they cannot simply expect you to pull a miracle out of your backside every time, just so they can look good.
If we continue to pull off miracles after telling executives that additional resources are required, it's no wonder they don't take the requests as seriously as they should. ^_^;
Matt
From: "Mark Tinka" <mark@tinka.africa>
To: nanog@nanog.orgSent: Tuesday, September 19, 2023 10:28:26 AM
Subject: Re: Zayo woes
On 9/19/23 16:48, Mike Hammett wrote:
As
someone that has been planning to be in the acquiring seat for a
while (but yet to do one), I've consistently passed to the money
people that there's the purchase price and then there's the % on
top of that for equipment, contractors, etc. to integrate,
improve, optimize future cashflow, etc. those acquisitions with
the rest of what we have.
I blame this on the success of how well we have built the Internet
with whatever box and tool we have, as network engineers.
The money people assume that all routers are the same, all vendors
are the same, all software is the same, and all features are easily
deployable. And that all that is possible if you can simply do a
better job finding the cheapest box compared to your competition.
In general, I don't fancy nuance when designing for the majority.
But with acquisition and integration, nuance is critical, and nuance
quickly shows that the acquisition was either underestimated, or not
worth doing at all.
Mark.