Slow machines - Productivity? Who cares !!!

This is a story from one of my previous organization. Almost all engineers were frustrated by the machines they were working on. The common problems that everyone faced:

  • Extremely slow boot up (Minimum 20-30 minutes just for booting up)
  • Unable to run multiple applications e.g. cannot open two instances of an IDE
  • Machines freezing during certain hours of the day (when the security scan starts)
  • Builds taking light years
  • Unplanned and forced updates
  • The dreaded blue screen
  • Extremely heavy laptops
If I calculate the loss only due to boot up time. 
30 minutes per day * 4000 engineers = 2000 hours lost per day. I have not even calculated the loss due to machines freezing, longer builds, unplanned updates, blue screens.

Imagine how agitated the engineers might have felt. They lost precious hours of the day, having a severe impact on productivity. What would have it felt like ? when someone got into a flow e.g. coding / testing / debugging and then he / she was unable to proceed, they were forced to break the flow ? 
!!! Extreme frustration !!!

People feared to test a small change as they worried about the long build times. Some skipped running the build and then we had broken builds. They did not dare to open another instance of an IDE. They feared that they would freeze during a customer call and at times have to arrange the call again at a later time. Imagine having an extremely important presentation and prior to that you see a message "your machine is about to restart".
Emotion ? !!! Extreme frustration !!!

Why were the machines so heavy ? - To probably crush everything that you plan to accomplish.

Most of them stayed up late to compensate for the loss of productivity. Those working from home, turned on their machines 30 minutes before they actually started working. No one, absolutely no one dared to restart their machine during the day. When the security scan started in the background, people took teams calls from their personal mobile devices. Some switched to other activities such as documentation during this time while some just gave up and did not work. Some cursed, some laughed hysterically. 
Emotion ? !!! Extreme frustration !!!

When someone complained they were asked to raise an IT ticket. The support person never accepted the root cause that the hardware is outdated (were they instructed to do so?). They stopped a few services, restarted the machine multiple times. Some unfortunate engineers had their machines formatted and they lost multiple days in the process. A request to replace HDD with SSD was outright rejected, with the reason "Oh that does not have much of an impact". A request to increase the RAM had to go through multiple managerial approvals, who asked for a business justification and evidences (CPU usage, memory usage etc.) to prove that the upgrade is really required. A request to replace the machine ??? Ah!!! I don't think anyone was allowed to reach that level until unless the machine actually stopped working altogether.
What do you think the emotion must have been ? You guessed it right !!! Extreme frustration !!!

Shhh! There was a black market though. If you were a senior leader you could manage a high end laptop (lightweight, having an SSD and boot up time within seconds) with the right contacts. Not fair.

What could have been the possible reasons for the apathy of those concerned?:

  • KPI - Probably their KPI might have been to show a lower IT cost ?
  • Perks - Were some perks tied to a lower IT spend ?
  • Sense of control - Enjoying that everyone has to come begging to them ?
  • Fear - No guts to accept their mistakes ?
Alas, some of the smart engineers realized:
"Grant me the the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference".
And with this wisdom they quit.

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