Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Canada to Scrap IBM Payroll Plan Gone Awry Costing $1B

itprotoday.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 333 posts

Re: Canada to Scrap IBM Payroll Plan Gone Awry Costing $1B

#121

Post by dade_ »

tboyd47 wrote: post #102

> The project was meant to save costs by firing 1,200 employees handling payroll at various departments around the country and replacing them with about 500 people in a centralized location using Phoenix to handle most of the government’s payroll needs. > The government will spend C$431 million to keep the program running in the near term, on top of C$460 million already spent to put Phoenix in place and fix the prob…

There is some missing math. They likely have 30 or 40 payroll systems all up for renewal/replacement. The old systems are probably loaded with features and forgotten requirements that would have been discovered during deployment.

Re: Canada to Scrap IBM Payroll Plan Gone Awry Costing $1B

#122

Post by AndyNemmity »

jorblumesea wrote: post #75
Demoneeri wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are mistaken, I work for one of these. I have 12 years experience and I have only one failure to deliver and it was stopped in the design phase because it was too complex and the client wasn't ready.

I worked for one too and I can't say the same thing. Entire projects were poorly thought out, designed and improperly executed. The people working for the company were incompetent and their "hiring bar" was if you had a pulse. And this was a big well known firm.

You're both right, I've seen both sides.

The reality is, in all of them there are teams of amazing, insanely talented people, and teams of complete train wrecks.

It's just life. In any large company, there's a massive variance in ability.

Re: Canada to Scrap IBM Payroll Plan Gone Awry Costing $1B

#123

Post by nkassis »

tboyd47 wrote: post #102

> The project was meant to save costs by firing 1,200 employees handling payroll at various departments around the country and replacing them with about 500 people in a centralized location using Phoenix to handle most of the government’s payroll needs. > The government will spend C$431 million to keep the program running in the near term, on top of C$460 million already spent to put Phoenix in place and fix the prob…

"Turns out, software takes a lot of time and money to build. Who knew? I guess IBM didn't. Or maybe they didn't care?"

Well they do make a lot of money while building said software, large expensive projects are the kinds IBM gravitates towards. Most likely because it's easier to extract large amounts of money from them and it's hard to rein in the costs with oversight.

Re: Canada to Scrap IBM Payroll Plan Gone Awry Costing $1B

#124

Post by dozzie »

alxlaz wrote: post #100
didgeoridoo wrote: post #3

The name is just too perfect: https://www.amazon.com/Phoenix-Project-DevOps-Helping-Busine... To that point, I’m wondering if all IT initiatives codenamed “Phoenix” are doomed from the start, given that the implication is “let’s burn down everything we have that works, and rise anew from the ashes”...

> To that point, I’m wondering if all IT initiatives codenamed “Phoenix” are doomed from the start Firefox seems to be doing pretty well :-).

Yeah, but only after two name changes.

Re: Canada to Scrap IBM Payroll Plan Gone Awry Costing $1B

#125

Post by AndyNemmity »

52-6F-62 wrote: post #107
j45 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's actually a few at that size, Ceridian is one, ADP is another... Most have their pros and cons but ultimately can handle complex union type payrolls. Payroll, also is ripe for disruption.

>Payroll, also is ripe for disruption. From everything I hear about working with those companies—new and suitable replacements would be welcomed wholeheartedly. That is, if they can maintain the same level of professionalism and ability to handle situations like you mentioned. Reliability is of immense importance, so it's not as easy to just hack away at it and sell people an MVP and iterate.

Ripe for disruption, except that when you look at the laundry list of requirements, the thing that needs disrupting is the need for a billion different custom requirements, not a different payroll system.

Re: Canada to Scrap IBM Payroll Plan Gone Awry Costing $1B

#127

Post by verdverm »

I have payroll issues with IBM still. They overpaid me when I left, then they got my end date incorrect and wanted more back than they deserve. This has been ongoing for 7 months, they can't seem to figure it out... just check the email logs, if they had any... They sent it to collections some time ago, now trying to get them to negotiate a payoff rather than dealing with IBM Employee "services"

Re: Canada to Scrap IBM Payroll Plan Gone Awry Costing $1B

#128

Post by da02 »

kabdib wrote: post #28

Was not surprised to see Oracle and PeopleSoft involved. I hope they get the crap sued out of them. That stuff is toxic, and I pity any organization that Oracle got its claws into using that junk.

Back in 1999, I was in the elevator and I heard the admin. staff say PeopleSoft (the software) doesn't do anything. This was @ Polytechnic Uni. in Brooklyn. This conflicted with the school's public message where (officially) adopting PeopleSoft was a big step in the right direction. I always wondered if PeopleSoft improved since. I guess not?

Re: Canada to Scrap IBM Payroll Plan Gone Awry Costing $1B

#129

Post by diggernet »

x0x0 wrote: post #60
dragonwriter wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So, what makes a payroll system at this scale so difficult? Complex pre-existing business rules of a large, sui generis employer (governments, especially sovereign ones rather than localities, often are because the laws that apply to other employees don't apply to them, and the rules that do apply often aren't coherent across-the-board policies determined by a central org focussed on HR, but often are set in specia…

It seems like lots of the payroll was being carried out by humans in local units. Humans are very good at holding lots of exceptions in our heads and, in the absence of clear rules, doing reasonable things. Computers are shit at both of the above. So things like Bob negotiated with his boss to leave early on Thursday to cover childcare and, in exchange, is coming in early on Tuesdays... but got asked to come in Satur…

> Humans are very good at holding lots of exceptions in our heads and, in the absence of clear rules, doing reasonable things. Computers are shit at both of the above.

Which is a remarkably concise summary of my thoughts regarding self driving cars.

Re: Canada to Scrap IBM Payroll Plan Gone Awry Costing $1B

#130

Post by happyopossum »

goodroot wrote: post #77

As a Canadian who has worked at IBM, I'm not surprised that this didn't find success. In IBMs defense, I don't believe our public sector has the experience or aptitude required to act as a supporting interface for a job of this scale. With that being said, IBM isn't a successful technology company with a proven record building good software products. They were an unwise choice from the get-go. IBM is a successful fin…

> IBM isn't a successful technology company with a proven record building good products.

Whoa, what? Sure, some of their achievements are in their past, but that claim really overlooks a ton of history.

Post reply on HN