Lets go racin’
There are two types of car mechanics.
There’s the neighborhood mechanic (and this includes the dealer mechanics as well) who will fix your car when it’s broken. They will advertise, “We only use manufacturer certified parts!” They will fix the funny noise, replace the broken part. No more, no less.
Then there are race mechanics. Oh they’ll replace the part that blew up on the track, but they’ll also listen, watch and fix what you didn’t even know was broken. And you want them to. They’ll suggest changes, “Hey, you need a little more camber in the front suspension…” They’ll spend huge sums of money on the “race” version of parts because the .0001 second gained for 10x the price will matter. Winning matters.
It’s been my experience that most newspaper IT shops (actually most corporate IT shops in general) are like the neighborhood mechanic, fixing what’s broken and offering only vendor certified parts - no more, no less. And you know what? Historically, that’s been fine. Historically newspapers have been operating in the automotive equivalent roll of dropping the kids off at soccer practice so the IT’s roll of neighborhood mechanic has been just fine.
Except we’re in a race now.
Mark my words, if your IT shop isn’t providing you with expensive racing parts and tweaking the camber on your front suspension, you are going to lose.
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