We Don't Have the Money, So We Have to Think
By Paul Epps
We don't have the money, so we have to think.
Ernest Rutherford was an illustrious scientist — the 1908 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, and the father of nuclear physics.
His humble upbringing as the fourth in a family of 12 children in rural New Zealand influenced his approach to science, as summarized in the above quote.
A recruiter called me today about a job managing an $80 million IT project.
How in the world can you spend $80 million on an IT project?! I could put the company logo on Mars for $80 million.
Most of the big, expensive IT projects that I’m familiar with . . . there really was no reason for them to take so long or cost so much. A lot of time and money could have been saved with some upfront thinking.
I get a lot of this now . . . recruiters asking me if I have experience managing multi-year, multi-million dollar projects, as if there’s some competitive advantage to be had from spending huge sums of money over long periods of time.
I have managed projects that delivered multi-million dollar ROIs, although with a very small upfront investment of resources.
That — if I may say so — is hard. A lot of people can't figure out how to do it.
Presiding over the disbursement of $80 million dollars? That’s easy.
A modern variation on Rutherford’s famous saying might be:
“We’ve got 80 million dollars! Why should we have to think?!”
Thus spoke The Programmer.
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