Oooo the illusions of power! As a manager who used to be a DBA I can tell you that life is not any greener on the other side.

Our business colleagues generate far more ideas than IT is resourced to service but their reach exceeds their grasp. When it comes to a game of "my Dad's bigger than your Dad" IT always loses.

The net result is that IT managers desperately juggle resources doing the impossible for the ungrateful with over committed staff and a woeful budget. Maybe a couple of project managers are playing swapsies. "I'll lend you my DBA this week if you can give me some dev resource the week after". Unfortunately this careful co-ordination is blown out of the water when something takes longer than anticipated so resource swapping can no-longer take place.

I hate tech debt with a passion. It grows and grows like a benign tumour until it eventually metastasises into something that kills the system. Unfortunately I face the dreadful algebra of necessity. For every battle I win I'll probably lose more.

As a manager I've come to realise that my role is not to chose the best option, it is to choose the least crap. Being British choosing the least crap is a way of life enshrined in our democratic system.