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From: bzs@ENCORE.COM (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures
Subject: Downsizing
Message-ID: <8811300409.AA13002@multimax.encore.com>
Date: 30 Nov 88 04:09:53 GMT
Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
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There's an interesting article in this week's Computerworld about
"Downsizing" and how it seems to be the doom of MIS types who wear
expensive suits.

Downsizing means replacing your impressive-looking, power-sucking
mainframe clunker with a bunch of PC's because the latter actually get
the work done faster/better/cheaper. The problem they allude to (and
has been approved by FUD, Inc) is now that you are in charge of a
bunch of dumb ole PC's who wants to pay you six digits anymore to help
folks change floppies and fight christmas tree virii? So they replace
you with the boss's pimply 17-year old kid and productivity really
goes up (for everyone but you.)

Does anyone want to guess at the number of mainframes in this world
which could be replaced with a few PC's or workstations or even (ahem)
$300K 100MIPS parallel minis*? How about five years from now? I mean
really, how much juice do you need to keep track of payroll for 5,000
employees anyhow? But be sure to hide the joysticks when the auditors
show up!

	-Barry Shein, ||Encore||

* A mainframe is any machine which costs $5M or more and no one dares
ask why.