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Define: "Throwing compute at it" in Business
Fiscal Threat Level
SEVERE
Catastrophic fiscal burn
CWO Pro-Tip
"Let them pay the AWS bill. Not your code, not your problem."
What HR thinks it means:
Increasing hardware resources to resolve performance bottlenecks.
What does "Throwing compute at it" actually mean?
"Refusing to optimize terrible code and instead just spending an extra $5,000 a month on AWS to keep the application from crashing."
How HR uses it:
"We will scale up the instances to ensure stability."
How you actually use it:
"The developers couldn't fix the memory leak, so management is just throwing compute at it until the budget runs out."
By The Chief Waste Officer
18 years in the corporate trenches quantifying waste so you don't have to.
Published: 2026-04-23
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Tired of hearing this?
Next time someone says "Throwing compute at it" in a meeting, track exactly how much company money they just wasted. Play Buzzword Bingo, generate a waste invoice, and stop the bleeding.
