Ad agency boss owned two Ferraris but wouldn't buy a real server

https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/15/on_call/

by CHB0403085482 • 2 years ago

60 60 2 years ago

hcks• 2 years ago

I mean the purpose of the agency WAS to buy its owner Ferraris and not servers for IT

Yes, the purpose of a private business is to turn a profit for its owners, but it's implied that operational incompetency of the owners put the business at risk. Which is laughably short sighted since they used the business to apparently buy a nice car.

Lets not turn this forum into Reddit quips.

superbman2• 2 years ago

Yeah, sounds like the IT situation was working within reasonable parameters for the company.

As a developer, I often see other developers/Adkins propose "huge improvements" only for it to cost much more than expected and deliver less. Maybe Ferrari guy was right to ignore this suggestion.

kyahwill• 2 years ago

I still don't understand how some companies dont realize that investing internally could lead to marginally bigger profits.

whstl• 2 years ago

It is easier to be inefficient and cheap on salaries.

superbman2• 2 years ago

It /could/ do, sure. There's uncertainty. Companies deal with uncertainty all the time.

Perhaps they didnt believe that internal investment could actually bring profits.

Perhaps it could bring profits, but the opportunity cost wasn't worth it.

Businesses can do all sorts of investments, beyond upgrading their file serving setup to meet the ideals of IT workers.

speedgoose• 2 years ago

3 hours of downtime doesn’t sound too bad for such a cheap setup. Perhaps they didn’t need something better.

I’m a bit surprised about the need to have macOS versions in sync though. That sounds unusual.

duggan2• 2 years ago

Agreed on all fronts.

I’m curious about their share server setup; my solution would probably be a Debian server exposing AppleTalk.

I’ve used that to transfers files between a G3 iMac and an M2 MacBook :)

However, this sounds like maybe one of those all in one IT services shops of overworked, underpaid technicians where everything is duct tape and requests go from “my icons have moved how do I send emails now” to this sharing files on Macs thing.

Getting out is the only good move.

walteweiss2• 2 years ago

Wikipedia says AppleTalk is discontinued. Is there some open source implementation? I would love to make a system that will easily connect my macs with my Linux machines at home.

whywhywhywhy• 2 years ago

None of that sounds normal and makes me think there is more to the story.

3 hours downtime seems fine for an ad agency, not sure what “drivers” they were reinstalling on MacOS feels like a windows technician approach and makes me wonder if there was some other weirdness they were doing to fit a square peg into a round hole.

suddenclarity• 2 years ago

None of that sounds normal and makes me think there is more to the story.

It's a reader-contributed column. I give that as much credibility as the fiction on AITA and similar subreddits.

notjulianjaynes• 2 years ago

The gist I got from reading this was the Mac Mini was serving files to employees at the ad agency, yeah? It doesn't seem that unreasonable to me either that this would be sufficient for the task (depending on the size of the agency).

What's missing from this article is what the service provider wanted to charge the ad agency for a new server. An M2 Mac Mini is like $600 USD. I just Google>Shopping searched "2u file server" and the prices for new equipment seemed to start at around $4,000. Is that close to what an IT company like the one from the article would charge or would there be some significant markup?

bigp3t3• 2 years ago

4-10 yeah, easily. Most of the markup is on senior engineer and architect time to setup a solution, which I guess is being measured against the hourly rate of a 1st/2nd line engineer in this story...

rwmj• 2 years ago

Someone who drives two Ferraris but is probably deeply in debt because of them.

imacomputer3• 2 years ago

This does not sound like a real business. It sounds more like some wealthy entrepreneur's pet project... or at worst a front for something illegal.

darkr• 2 years ago

Sounds like an ad agency to me!

averageRoyalty3• 2 years ago

As someone who has worked at MSPs in Australia, this absolutely sounds like a real ad/marketing business, unfortunately.

psnehanshu3• 2 years ago

SharePoint choked on those files, and users wanted faster access. So the agency built a file server to host that in-demand data.

How can SharePoint be choked? And if it is really choked, how can they dream of doing it better than Microsoft?

nguyenkien• 2 years ago

I assume they self host on mac mini with external hard drive to store files. Not hosted by Microsoft.

psnehanshu3• 2 years ago

Didn't know SharePoint can be self hosted.

callamdelaney• 2 years ago

I think because it's microsoft is the answer to both of your questions.

onetimeuse923042• 2 years ago

Was he doing something illegal/immoral?

Maybe he had two Ferraris because he was frugal with his business?

Why does everybody think it is absolute must to maximise the profits? Maybe he was ok with his profits and just didn't care to optimise his business as long as he has comfortable life? Is there something wrong with it.

Over the years I have worked as an advisor with many owners and CEOs of various sized companies (up to couple thousand employees). I had many situations when those CEOs would confide in me how disappointed they were in some of the decisions their employees made when it comes to finances. Especially high level leaders, who should know better. As a rather typical example, situation when an ex-Microsoft director hired as new IT director would sign a contract with Snowflake to commit 300k USD over 3 years for a 10% discount. The issue is I calculated if we did not commit, we would actually pay about 500 USD/year. Yes, not 500 thousand, just 500 USD. After that we have instituted a near total ban on commitments as a recognition of the fact that we just can't predict the future.

Or people that would start some expensive stuff on AWS and then would just "forget" to turn them off. Or a guy who thought it is ok to pay almost $100k for a marketing stunt where they would livestream with a single webcam a bunch of grazing cows for a week.

Yeah, it is kind of easy to waste money when it is not your money.

averageRoyalty3• 2 years ago

Yes. There is something wrong with cheaping out on a critical element of your business them attacking the people who warned you the cheaping out would cause issues when it causes issues.

Whilst there's nothing wrong with frugality, there's definitely something wrong with abusing those who try and show you the cause of the problem you're unhappy with.

I'm unsure if maybe you misunderstood the article, or if I'm being too narrow lensed here?

andrewflnr• 2 years ago

There's also something wrong with not paying for the server you eventually do buy.

RecycledEle2• 2 years ago

Some bosses think if it is possible to do something, that they can hire anyone who is competent and yell at them to get it done. They are not sapient enough to calculate the labor cost vs. parts savings.

throw0101b• 2 years ago

Maybe he had two Ferraris because he was frugal with his business?

There are differences between efficient, frugal, and cheap.

Article:

The Ferrari-owning boss got wind of this mess and would berate Aaron and his crew whenever the server became unavailable, citing the enormous cost of outages.

"Enormous cost".

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_economy

onetimeuse923042• 2 years ago

It is hard to know the difference between efficient, frugal and cheap. Your employees will always want to spend more money, you always want to save it. You may not be expert on the topic of servers but you also know you can't completely trust your employees.

It is a difficult situation for owners and sometimes they do mistakes.

dukeyukey2• 2 years ago

Executives who own a business cannot be surprised when employees with no equity don't treat company money as their own, because it isn't. It's a different relationship. If they want people to care, give them a real stake in things. Not a no-vote, no liquidation preference exit-only share class either - real, genuine equity. Pay dividends too, even if they're small. Show employees the value of working at a financially responsible business.

criley2• 2 years ago

That sounds like how you build a really strong business, not how you become a really rich executive.

I imagine society would be nearing utopia if your average upper management cared about building good businesses instead of getting unreasonably wealthy.

nine_zeros• 2 years ago

There is nothing wrong with the two Ferraris - as long as the boss accepts that they ate resources from the company. They need to be willing to accept the consequences which could range from poor implementation of business ideas, poor maintenance, loss of customers and employees.

If the boss comes down on the actual workers for activities that could have been solved by steering the Ferrari money into making the work easier, then there absolutely is something wrong.

CuriousCosmic• 2 years ago

Yes he very clearly was. The article tries to make it as clear as possible that this guy is a massive scumbag who was fucking others over to save a dime at each opportunity. The clearest example is:

A couple of months later, the ad agency agreed to buy a new file server. A real one. Aaron built the box with a glad heart.
But the agency never paid for it.

So he had his company agree to pay for a replacement server but after they procured it he just refused to pay for it and forced the MSP to eat the cost instead.

Why does everybody think it is absolute must to maximise the profits? Maybe he was ok with his profits and just didn't care to optimise his business as long as he has comfortable life? Is there something wrong with it.

This clearly isn't the case as the article says quote:

The Ferrari-owning boss got wind of this mess and would berate Aaron and his crew whenever the server became unavailable, citing the enormous cost of outages.

So he was penny pinching and refused to do things that would allow the company to save money while harassing the MSP each time his self inflicted problem occurred.

This is a trend with a lot of these types where they will not spend a dime to fix a problem in a perceived cost center but then each the problem predictably occurs, they subject said "cost center" with abuse for not fixing the problem despite actively being the reason the problem is unresolved.

kkfx• 2 years ago

Was he doing something illegal/immoral?

Maybe he had two Ferraris because he was frugal with his business?

Maybe he have little comprehension of his own business so he is unable to evaluate the tool of the trade his business need and as a result he made bad choices...

It's not a matter of profit but a matter of understanding that administrative CAN'T BE just "managers" meaning with an economy CV, they must know what the company they manage do, not at the level of understatement of any single technicians but enough to know and make wise decisions helped by their technicians of any fields.

Years ago the founder and CEO of a historic mass distribution company was used to visit potential new warehouses with the senior head warehouseman alongside others just as an example of how things works in the recent past. A step at a time when the detachment between the management and the material activity happened China have started to gain ground and we in Europe have started to loose. I imaging the same happen in USA and other countries.

smoldesu• 2 years ago

Maybe he had two Ferraris because he was frugal with his business?

That's almost as wild as suggesting someone hosts their software on a Mac Mini because they're a penny-pincher. Nobody owns two Ferraris as a product of life-long frugality, let alone one.

walteweiss2• 2 years ago

I don’t get the idea. There’s no real need to have a real server, just buy a cheap ducking pc, connect sata drives there, set some shared folder or whatever you want there and that’s it.

I assume the owner is all-in Apple fanboi. I worked with a similar 50-60 y.o. business owner, he was (and still is) under the impression that Apple is not just the best, but the competitors are shit. Funnily enough, everyone else at the company has Windows laptops (not very cheap ones, though).

They have an old (also about 50, maybe 45 to 55) IT admin guy, who doesn’t get the Mac thing, like at all. And me, I was their website contractor, who also (was) all-in Apple at the time. The boss kept asking me time and again whether the Apple is the best, to which I always replied positively. Over time, I started mentioning that for most cases Apple is very good, but not for each one. So he won’t be under the impression that non-Apple means bad. I hope that helped their tech guy. Also, when I visit them now (very infrequently), I am on Android and Linux, to which boss doesn’t understand. I keep telling him that in some cases Apple is very limiting and that for my web work it’s easier to do my work that way. Which is truth, for me at least.

Also, I remembered something. The boss has a full-blown iPad Pro 12.9 with keyboard case. He never takes it with him, so it’s his office computer. He uses it for email and browser. His illusions that iPad is the future keep him from buying at least an iMac, which would be better from any angle. Even the battery thing, as they have powerful generators on site, in case of power outages. Since he travels with his luxury car, I think he doesn’t really need an iPad on the go anyway (could use his latest iPhone). So this iPad-but-not-an-iMac thing is the perfect illustration for me. Not to say he could use a second-hand £10 used PC with Linux installed. Which I use on one of my work locations (so I won’t need to bring my MacBook) with a couple of cheap second hand displays. My setup is like under 50 bucks, and is much better than his from every angle. Maybe just the screen quality is worse due to me taking the cheap displays, but I don’t need too much of a good screen there anyway. But the screen real estate is like 3 to 4 times more.

TacticalCoder• 2 years ago

Depending on the kind of Ferrari he had it may not have been a bad thing for the owner. For example a 250 GT Lusso from the mid sixties was going for $300K not that long ago. It's now a $1.5m car.

Collectible cars are an asset class that has been doing extremely well in the face of endless money printing.

arbuge• 2 years ago

Moral of the story: Fire bad clients.

olivierduval• 2 years ago

Actually, the contractor's boss surely did the math:

* this client is giving me xxxx $

* it costs me yyyy $ for salary team... so there's so gains... so let's no lose the client (even if it means dumb work for the team)

Moreover: it's easier to justify the contract's cost (we have to monitor closely your infra to get your IT business running... here are the numbers of tickets that we processed) than having to explain: "OK, we did nothing this month BUT you pay us because MAYBE SOMEDAY something bad may happens"... because the client might either think that he doesn't need the support contract or that he doesn't need to pay that much...

All in all: it's not a bad thing for the team to leave that kind of bullshit job

sdflhasjd• 2 years ago

At an agency I worked for, one of the reasons firing shitty clients took so fucking long is because "xxxx $" always seems to include prospective figures from future sales that were perpetually just one signature away. It seemed that the personalities that made them act like cunts when anything went wrong were the same kind that would change their mind at the last minute and we'd waste even more time on proposals.

Tabular-Iceberg• 2 years ago

Sounds like they could have solved the problem for free with the hardware they had by just setting a folder to share over AFP and putting their files there. Sounds like a perfectly reasonable solution for a small office.

If they want an all-Apple environment, what the hell are they doing messing with SharePoint and SMB? I'm so sick and tired of this industry taking simple problems and applying the most convoluted solution they can come up with.

alberth• 2 years ago

Most CEOs are focused on top-line (revenue) growth, instead of bottom-line (COGS) savings.

Reason being, you have unlimited potential to growth your revenue.

The max you can save, is 100% (fire everyone).

zaphirplane• 2 years ago

The great wave of layoffs begs to differ

zarzavat2• 2 years ago

This reads like a slightly clueless IT worker who has a problem they don’t know how to fix reaching for the most expensive solution (purchasing a “real server”) instead of diagnosing and fixing the problem in front of them.

If the Mac mini is slow and not able to keep up then fair enough, that’s a good reason to invest in new hardware. But monitoring your emails for software updates makes zero sense, and is clearly just an excuse for something else that IT is doing wrong.

Buttons8402• 2 years ago

No. The workers said "if we don't upgrade the server, X will happen", then X happened, and the boss was upset with the workers (according to the story). Doesn't matter how smart or clueless the workers may be, if you're angry at workers over things they warned you would happen then you're the asshole. If the boss wants to fire the workers in a professional manner, so be it, but that's not what happened.

zarzavat2• 2 years ago

No bears around therefore the bear patrol must be working.

If you’re out of your depth admining a machine and then the server has a failure in software, that’s not proof that you were right all along that new hardware was necessary.

New hardware may solve the problem incidentally by gifting you a software environment that you’re more familiar with. Given that the author was doing some very strange things with this Mac mini we can’t rule out a misconfiguration.

Moreover, almost any hardware can fail so unless you buy two new servers you’re not going to get many more 9s out of only one “real” server compared to just buying redundant drives for the mini.

It depends on how close they were to the maximum capacity of the mini. Their biggest grievance seemed to be configuration related, they don’t say that the mini is on its knees trying to keep up.

RecycledEle2• 2 years ago

I saw a private school demand the head of IT (who had more then 30 IT certs and had a salary history making $500k/year) upgrade PCs with $10 eBay processors that were 10% faster than the old processors. There were $30 eBay processors that were 100% faster than the existing processors, but they wanted to see if $10 would fix it. Then they made him ripple down the old processors into other machines, and then move those used processors into yet other machines.

The head of IT was volunteering there, and finally got so fed up that he quit. Everyone in IT left at the same time and now the new head of IT can not build a PC, because a math teacher is the only person who will take the job.

Seriously.

randysalami• 2 years ago

School admin has to be thrifty so they can justify an increase to their salaries. “Look how good our administration is, we reduced IT costs by a whole 1000 dollars! What do you mean our short-sighted and demeaning solution has bitten us in the ass? Well no IT director means more salary on the board for us.” (I imagine it doesn’t actually happen like this)

wruza2• 2 years ago

I don’t buy the story, neither the need for a “server”. If mac mini software was their problem, they could just buy a dirt cheap pc for debian os and connect the drives to it. And another one for hotswap. The amount wouldn’t probably even be collegial.

Heck, if I was Aaron, I’d just go to the storage room and dig out parts or a whole pc out of it. There’s always some electronic residue. Worst case buying it at my expense.

Also, I remember integrating a realty company that needed client accounting (among other things). My app was pretty light and cheap and could run on a simple pc. Then their serious IT guys came to the meeting and added virtualization, firewall services, SQL server, numerous licenses, a beefy rack server, etc. Even their assistant director had her eyes widened when they announced the estimates. Later I told her my thoughts on it in private, so she could make her own decision. So keep in mind that TFA is only one side of the story.

bluefirebrand• 2 years ago

Worst case buying it at my expense

Please don't ever spend your own money on stuff for a business you have no ownership of

This is absolutely not a behavior we should encourage or normalize

wruza2• 2 years ago

I think I'll pass on this and will do what's reasonable. Nothing wrong with doing something to benefit yourself. I even wrote software for a non-software company I worked at a couple decades ago, cause it meant sitting most of the day reading programming books instead of sweaty running between shelves without a clue (storage job). Buying a PC as an infra unit is a bit different and may have implications, but depends on a situation.

adrianmsmith• 2 years ago

Also, as a business, don't allow an employee to buy something at their own expense and use it for your business.

One place I worked an employee bought a domain for a particular marketing promotion. Promotion was successful, and the site grew into a life of its own, and was even promoted from the main product. The domain showed up on Google search results, etc.

The company had lots of users but wasn't too successful financially, and a few employees including that one were laid off. Six months later the domain suddenly pointed to the new product that person created after leaving the company.

We removed the links from our product to that site, but other than that there wasn't a great deal we could do.

eftychis• 2 years ago

The line that stands out, down the line, that I think people miss in the comments:

"But the agency never paid for it [the server]."

nunez• 2 years ago

that's the same kind of vibe as demanding rich folks at restaurants who refuse to tip out of "principle."

more for me, nothing for thee.

Ad agency boss owned two Ferraris but wouldn't buy a real server

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