The Secret to ITS

Let me tell you the secret to ITS.

Back in 1974, someone at your company bought a computer, a MOSCo-2929 to run some sort of databasing or organizational function for your office. At the time, it was very expensive. The computer itself is the size of a small house, and requires a full time staff of 3 just to maintain. Their job not only includes entering and retrieving information from this computer, but also includes periodically dumping buckets of water on it, putting out fires, starting other fires, patching wiring with chewing gum and paperclips, fabricating new computer parts out of human despair and even older computer parts, not sleeping, and lying about how hard their job is. (See below.)



In 1985, when your company expanded, a new computer system, the VarSLOe-2210, was added to take over more of the organizational needs of your growing firm. This computer was also large and expensive. It also required a staff of 3. However, the VarSLOe-2210 staff has no idea how to run the MOSCo-2929, and vice versa. Further, the VarSLOe-2210 needs to access the MOSCo-2929, and vice versa. Therefore, 2 more people were hired to figure out how to integrate the two. Their job requires making another computer system from scratch, a long and expensive process, simply to integrate these other two antiquated systems. That system looks like this:



Why do such a thing, you ask? Why not simply upgrade the entire system? A few reasons.

The systems, as they stand, still work. The fact that they are hulking pieces of shit that require as much prayer as they do maintenance, the fact that living hamsters constitute the majority of their power sources, and the fact that all the original manuals are written in now forgotten dialects of Russian all take second seat to the fact that, by and large, these computers still work. To replace them costs money!

Yes, it is true that it might cost less money, over time, to simply upgrade the entire system and only have half the workers to maintain the new system and not have to constantly work to integrate new computers into old systems, but here is THE secret of ITS:

Your job is to lie to your boss. Constantly. At every single possible turn. Make your work seem infinitely more complicated than it is. Jerry rig everything possible. Emphasize just how much prayer your work really requires, how finicky the computer systems are, and basically make the entire process so distasteful that your boss will be happy simply to go a single day without having to see you, hear from you, or better yet, think of you.

You run the 'magic interweb'!! In other words, make your work look tough, do such a poor job of it that only you know how to turn the goddamned computer on or off, and all of a sudden, you are essential personnel! They can't replace you, because you are the only one who has any idea how the system works! Excellent! It doesn't matter that you run with about 3% efficiency, that the ITS department spouts money faster than the Niagara, and that you offer no real service or support for the rest of the company: You're on the interweb!

I hate computers.