A coworker recently told me a story about a previous project he was on. Quite typical of any Big Company.

I had a project manager that had some money in her project budget that needed to be spent…it’s around October time so she’s really starting to look for ways…the project is delayed because we can’t get content from the providers (we were converting from their format to ours). She says “I’ve got money in our project that we could use for contractors to help with development.” I said we don’t need developers, we need content. She says “well, we’ve got the money so why not hire some contractors?” I replied that I don’t have anything for contractors to do. she then asks “well, let’s say we get a contractor or 2…what would you have them do?” I’m sitting there looking at this woman thinking she’s either f-ed in the head or deaf and say “I’d buy them airline tickets to Australia and have them go get us the content”…the meeting ended shortly thereafter