June 3, 2026 at 12:00 am
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Over or Under Provisioned
June 3, 2026 at 1:43 pm
I've found that as long as things cost what they are expected to cost, within a given tolerance, the powers that be don't care.
The cost savings have to be substantial in absolute terms. Shaving 90% off not-very-much won't cut it. Shaving 1% off a massive figure, as long as it exceeds the cost of doing so, might get a flicker of interest, but don't expect excitement. If there is a cost to saving money, then over what period will a return on investment appear?
The sums of money that companies regard as large can be orders of magnitude greater than those that we as individuals would regard as large.
I understand the logic and the reality, but as an ex-DBA, this still doesn't sit well with me. We used to care about every millisecond a query took to run because, on a shared DB server, every millisecond spent on one query was a resource unavailable for another.
The dynamics of working for a consultancy are different from those of other companies. In a consultancy, it is all about utilisation figures and revenue-generating activity. The internal workings of non-consultancy companies have more leeway to smuggle in improvements.
June 3, 2026 at 2:25 pm
I feel the same way. I aim to be efficient. I think if I do enough things well, those savings add up, especially over time. I might not save on this VM, but I might handle a bigger workload, or I might have less of an upgrade in the future (or I can consolidate).
June 7, 2026 at 2:14 pm
Great article and topic. Optimizing code is something I love to do, because I love to make my code better, more tolerant of unexpected situations, etc. But I see the same thing that the two of you have discussed, that the pressures of other things/projects tend to push optimizing code to the side, to get onto the next thing. I'm very close to finishing up an application I've written using a technology called Blazor. I knew a little of Blazor before I started this project but had to just jump in and learn as I went along. Towards the end of the project, I learned how Blazor uses a way of reporting to the user about some problem, rather than doing it the way I've always done it in the past. I would very much love to implement it, as I think it would be better for the app and easier for future maintainers to follow. But I suspect that I'll not be given the chance to do that as other projects are pressing to be worked on. The best I can do is create a GitHub Issue in the repo, detailing how I'd like to improve error reporting, and just hope that someday I'll get the chance. But I doubt I will be able to.
Kindest Regards, Rod Connect with me on LinkedIn.
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