At my last shop, we had similar problems. We got around it by including extra equipment we wanted in our server orders. Accounting never bothered asking why we needed nice keyboards and big monitors for rackmount servers. But god forbid you try to buy those directly. At one point management started to get wise, so we just had the vendor include the extra equipment in the same line item as the servers instead of broken out, just increasing the per-server cost to account for it.

Shenanigans like that shouldn't be necessary just to get the stuff you need, but big corporations are so dysfunctional sometimes.

Just expense them on the corporate card. They should have a budget for office stuff anyways.

Do accounting not get a record of everything you purchase on the corporate card and require an explanation (or else repayment)?

Yeah. Keyboards, headphones, mice, monitors, desk chairs purchased for software engineers... Pretty self explanatory.

Here's how that'd go in the last two companies I worked for: Purchase declined. Not valid under T&E policy. Please follow IT acquisition policy for computer equipment and real estate acquisition policy for furniture. Card payment is due by xx/xx to reimburse for invalid expense.

That sounds a little too... bureaucratic?

Anyways, final approver should be somewhere between you and the CTO.

This sort of dynamic happens in smaller companies, too. And it isn't entirely on the company. I've been through similar sort of situations, for example consider some sort of SaaS service that costs $5k/year. I have to:

- Fill out some form to get one of their salespeople to contact me.

- Find a time to meet with them that works for both of us - may be a week or more out.

- Talk to the salesperson for half an hour.

- Get a quote emailed to me a day or two later.

- Talk it over with my boss. This is fairly low overhead, but he's a busy guy so it may take a few days. He'll want to know the basics, if I've considered any alternatives, what we'll use it for, etc.

- Sign the document - hopefully my boss/finance don't request any significant changes.

- Start using the service once they get the contract and provision stuff for us.

Usually we are looking at a few weeks lag time, and maybe half a day of my time taking care of all of this. If it is something available on AWS, here is what I have to do:

- Click a button, maybe fill out a form to configure it.

- Start using the service a few minutes later.

Even if it costs 2x the other service, it is unlikely that anyone is going to notice or care about the small increase in our AWS bill, and if they do saying "oh yeah, I added xyz service" is not going to raise any objections.

It is kind of funny to think about the difference, but it comes down to the fact that it is genuinely less friction in the AWS case, coupled with a bit of psychology on our end I guess.

I purchased a large desktop monitor and had it shipped to my contract company address delivery dock -- wow, you should have seen the number of alarmed accountant types I had to talk to .. but six-figure Ora licenses ? many in operation

Did you print out the invoice to show for dramatic effect?

This does not surprise me; culture and processes in large corporations are usually entirely dysfunctional.

We should band together and start laundering AWS resources for physical goods. Similar to how mining Bitcoin can lead to eventually obtaining physical goods.