[Discuss] Justify your existence

[richb at pioneer.ci.net (Rich Braun)]

You wrote:
> Justify your existence

Over the years, I've learned that the answer to this question is:  you can't.

If someone asks it in those words or similar, then if they had their druthers
they'd call Amazon EC2 or some place in Bangalore and say, "I'll have two of
those, how much do they cost?" just before shutting you and everyone you care
about down.

Even if the answer from India is "more than you thought you'd have to pay",
they'd still rather send the money outside the firm.  Because that way they
have someone else to blame when things go awry.

I've tried but never succeeded with principled arguments about how a 3-fold
reduction in costs, plus a 10-fold improvement in reliability, and/or all the
other cerebral ways of demonstrating that a cost center succeeds in its
mission by making the company more successful and more competitive versus
those who rely on third parties.  In the end, they'll keep you if they trust
you, and they ditch you if they don't.

So rather than coming up with a fancy spreadsheet about your department's
cost-saving and performance-boosting successes, strive to make yourself the
one they trust to fix whatever ails them:  usually it'll boil down to some
silly office desktop app on a 4-year-old Mac, or the like, and not some
million-dollar initiative that kept the company out of insolvency.

-rich