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

281–290 of 333 posts

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

#281

Post by canada_dry »

watertom wrote: post #258

I was the CTO for a large, Fortune 100 company. When I first took over the position I would regularly get requirements documents for internal projects that were 3 or 400 hundred pages. The project team would dutifully carry out the requirements gathering process, everything was meticulously documented, with data flows, and process maps, etc. Everything was a requirement, everything was mandatory, and everything had t…

I've participated on several >$10M Canadian Gov't IT projects over the years and you nailed it.

Business groups will fight tooth-and-nail to keep their existing processes - partly to maintain status-quo, but also because the folks who represent the business know little about system's analysis/design, so they just simply aren't in a mindset to re-engineer.

Combine this with the vendor's (not so hidden) agenda of milking the gov't and it's a recipe for disaster... every damn time.

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

#282

Post by white-flame »

dpweb wrote: post #210
dctoedt wrote: post #38

Reminiscent of the state of Indiana's lawsuit against IBM for allegedly botching a project to automate the state's welfare system — lots of finger-pointing on both sides; the trial court's 65-page decision started out with the words, "Neither party deserves to win this case" [0]. The case has been up to the Indiana Supreme Court already [1]; on remand last summer, the trial court found that IBM is liable for USD $128…

Sales and Engineering - very different competencies. Companies like IBM are NOT technology companies. They are sales-culture oriented, and their product HAPPENS TO BE technology. In fact you could argue, the only way to win big enterprise contracts in the first place, is to be a sales-culture company. But after selling the deal, their workers have to solve a difficult engineering and organizational management problem…

The project sizes are fine. The team sizes are too large.

There's too much empire building and career-minded politicking going on in companies of this size, which gets in the way of actually working on the product. Managers increase scope to increase their budget, then do busy make-work to justify the budget so they can get more next round. The engineers need to look busy even though things aren't defined, and optimize to internal-facing metrics as opposed to product-oriented productivity. Anybody who steps back and mentions that progress isn't being made towards actually getting the customer a working product is reprimanded as undermining the unquestionably accepted established processes (which usually aren't working anyway).

The actual deliverable gets lost in the shuffle, as the lumbering hulk of the company and career paths within it overshadow the customer.

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

#283

Post by godzillabrennus »

dpweb wrote: post #210
dctoedt wrote: post #38

Reminiscent of the state of Indiana's lawsuit against IBM for allegedly botching a project to automate the state's welfare system — lots of finger-pointing on both sides; the trial court's 65-page decision started out with the words, "Neither party deserves to win this case" [0]. The case has been up to the Indiana Supreme Court already [1]; on remand last summer, the trial court found that IBM is liable for USD $128…

Sales and Engineering - very different competencies. Companies like IBM are NOT technology companies. They are sales-culture oriented, and their product HAPPENS TO BE technology. In fact you could argue, the only way to win big enterprise contracts in the first place, is to be a sales-culture company. But after selling the deal, their workers have to solve a difficult engineering and organizational management problem…

A friend of mine has had an illustrious career in I.T. with many successes in the last decade. Right before he struck out on his own to build his brand he was unhappy with his then job and decided to work with a recruiter to find a new role.

The recruiter got him a job with a large bank going through a transition from a major platform from a third party that had been long neglected. The platform was on what we will call version 5 of the software while everyone else was running what we will call version 9 of the software.

My friend was hired as a technical project manager. He worked there for less than a month before he struck out on his own and got to realize his full potential.

In that brief period of time he learned the following:

* The bank had not started to put together the requirements for the new software to be integrated. * The software vendor had no upgrade path from the very old version to the new version. * The bank needed the migration done in under ninety days or they would start getting fined millions of dollars by regulators. * The project had already committed to spending $3M / month on a five year commitment with a hosting partner but they didn't have any developers working with them yet.

What I took away is that when big companies do stupid things they are big stupid things. I'm not surprised that government being as big as it is would also do stupid things on a larger scale.

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

#284

Post by godzillabrennus »

Arnt wrote: post #279
tobtoh wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The sales guys are at the top. They are generally competent. Proof = they sold a massive deal. Seems very flawed logic. Anyone can make a sale if you promise everything, charge a low price (that can't sustain your organisation/solution), and have no responsibility for actually being able to deliver within the timeframe they promised. I fail to see how that shows the sales person is competent.

Pretend you're a customer. Would you buy from someone who promises everything at a price that cannot sustain his organisation and accepts no responsibility?

Have you met your local politician who is trying to make decisions on things they don't understand?

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

#285

Post by patio11 »

Cross-posting a comment I made from 7 years ago when NYC's payroll project blew up: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2716319 which I last cross-posted to the thread about Phoenix's payroll project blowing up: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15303555

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

#286

Post by nitwit005 »

xienze wrote: post #144
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.

> That stuff is toxic, and I pity any organization that Oracle got its claws into using that junk. In my experience, no one is really duped by these big companies. The people writing the checks generally start their search with magic quadrant leaders and then further narrow it down to the biggest players because "we can't trust our business to some no-name." It's really a situation that companies willingly put themse…

My father was accused of being "anti-Microsoft" sometime in the early 90s, because he kept pushing for cheaper alternatives. He was writing Windows books at the time, so he ended up bringing in a book to show them.

A lot of this purchasing is purely "cover your ass" thinking. Going with IBM, Microsoft or Oracle won't get you fired.

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

#287

Post by harry8 »

Ibm global services, Accenture, computer associates, Oracle. See a company sign a big contact with them or their ilk, short that co. Their whole raison d'etre is to rip off old assholes in the c suite who can't find the on switch of the company or government money they're meant to be protecting.

Hiring these consulting firms should get you fired every single time. It's a wonderful indicator of total incompetence. Notice how they're all deep into Washington? Yeah. Makes me sick these companies exist.

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

#288

Post by raarts »

tobtoh wrote: post #273
dpweb wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sales and Engineering - very different competencies. Companies like IBM are NOT technology companies. They are sales-culture oriented, and their product HAPPENS TO BE technology. In fact you could argue, the only way to win big enterprise contracts in the first place, is to be a sales-culture company. But after selling the deal, their workers have to solve a difficult engineering and organizational management problem…

> The sales guys are at the top. They are generally competent. Proof = they sold a massive deal. Seems very flawed logic. Anyone can make a sale if you promise everything, charge a low price (that can't sustain your organisation/solution), and have no responsibility for actually being able to deliver within the timeframe they promised. I fail to see how that shows the sales person is competent.

Still, I can confirm from personal experience this is how the world works for many people. Been in multiple companies that went bankrupt because the sales people showed this behavior.

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

#289

Post by mrbill »

harry8 wrote: post #287

Ibm global services, Accenture, computer associates, Oracle. See a company sign a big contact with them or their ilk, short that co. Their whole raison d'etre is to rip off old assholes in the c suite who can't find the on switch of the company or government money they're meant to be protecting. Hiring these consulting firms should get you fired every single time. It's a wonderful indicator of total incompetence. Not…

Two common factors in a lot of these stories are "IBM GS" and "Oracle"...

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

#290

Post by Arnt »

godzillabrennus wrote: post #284
Arnt wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretend you're a customer. Would you buy from someone who promises everything at a price that cannot sustain his organisation and accepts no responsibility?

Have you met your local politician who is trying to make decisions on things they don't understand?

I'm an expat. My politicians aren't local.

The two I've spoken to were also both knowledgeable and intelligent, so your rhetoric is glib but a little lacking in factual accuracy.

Post reply on HN