Live data from Hacker News

A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

foliovision.com

51–60 of 200 posts

Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

#51

Is there any proof that the technical work for IBM is sent out to Indian boiler rooms with very high turnover? Or is this just based on some belief that any software in India must automatically be shitty?

I worked for a firm that sold IBM products. We had a horde of developers in India. Is that the proof you want? Some teams there was particularly great. Other's not so much. Turnover though was EXTREMELY high.

Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

#52
post #41
post #36

There's a dimension left out here on the Phoenix disaster: It wasn't really IBM's fault at all. The Canadian public service is really complex. There are multiple unions with multiple overlapping collective bargaining agreements, where the public service is allocated to different classes. These classes are paid specific rates, with retroactive pay being common for changing classes. The majority of the problems with Ph…

At some level, isn't IBM supposed to point out that training and transition are important for a large project and shouldn't be left out?

Sure, if they don't want to be the winning (read: lowest) bidder. Shit constraints --> shit results.

Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

#54
Global American consultancies are paying 25-40k USD annually in post-Communist EU countries. The teams are run as little dictatures by the "directors" who are facing the outside world. What are you expecting to extract from such arrangement? BTW There is no place for IBM in Germany, they have their own three-letter named IT moloch.

Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

#55
It's not just IBM: any of the larger enterprise consultancies should, at best, be regarded with suspicion. I well remember the EDS/UK Inland Revenue fiasco of the late nineties/early noughties, and there are plenty of other examples involving other big players.

Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

#56
There are very similar stories from Australia, with IBM being sued for being late on major (billion dollar) government projects and releasing products that just don't work.

IBM produced a $1.2 billion payroll project for Queensland heath that just never worked.

Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

#57
post #4

Does anyone else remember the days when "No one ever got fired for buying IBM" was true? You might pay a little extra, but it was never a total fail to use IBM products. I'm not sure when that changed, but I feel like these days, IBM is closer to Oracle than AWS.

I worked there in the late 1990's. I was in research division (writing Notes applications) and they were doing better after the downturn in the early 90s. They spent billions on research (some hardware research like chips/ some software research). The little nub that think pads use was invented in that building. Global Services (the consulting arm) was the rising division. The talk inside was the new CEO (Gerstner[1]…

Really good book about Gerstner's turnaround of IBM in the 90's:

https://www.amazon.com/IBM-Redux-Gerstner-Business-Turnaroun...

Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

#58
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who works in same space, I can say this is happening because unrealistic expectations of customers are not challenged by bidding Vendors because they fear losing the project. This in turns happens because customer tries to outsmart vendors by pressing them for reducing the timelines to absolute impossible. If any vendor tries to play by the rules, they are thrown out. Smart vendors respond by crafting the…

Yup, this kind of contracts game is what really needs modern innovation. I think the space is kind of living in an extensions of 70's assumptions with many decades of beauracratic rules added on to try to fix up fundamental problem. For another factor, it would be lower risk to allocate into many smaller projects and sign contracts in phases and sub-systems - but then the funding of the total project becomes more at…

They are barely able to state the outcome of project so expecting them to do the necessary legwork to break projects into logical subprojects is too much to ask.

No disrespect but we have come to a point where IT have started appearing magical to pointy hairy bosses who think juse because it's software everything is infinitely malleable with no impact on quality, cost, or time.

Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

#59
This is an interesting narrative. However it cannot be the only one. Let us explore some alternatives and side notes.

Who was responsible for picking IBM? Are they still working for the CA gov? Have they passed the hot potato to someone else? How were their technical skills and soft skills evaluated? Did they receive any donations for the contract? Where are the safety clauses in the contract? Is IBM the only benefactor of this contract? Any political implications?

Remember that Gov. point person also bears a lot of the responsibility for shopping for IT services in a magazine or trough their business network.

If IBM has been so ineffective at delivering services there would be more cases like this and it would ultimately hurt their bottom line. If this was wide spread practice across their business units. Maybe their business as a whole is insulated by the other better performing parts of it's corporation.

It seems to me that these "Governments" should investigate anyone who touched these contracts.

To the widespread corruption present in Eastern Europe. It does exist. However this article goes to show that corruption is present at a larger scale in some of the "most" developed nations on earth.

Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

#60

This is an interesting narrative. However it cannot be the only one. Let us explore some alternatives and side notes. Who was responsible for picking IBM? Are they still working for the CA gov? Have they passed the hot potato to someone else? How were their technical skills and soft skills evaluated? Did they receive any donations for the contract? Where are the safety clauses in the contract? Is IBM the only benefac…

Because government contracts have to be transparent, the award process tends to be overly bureaucratic and algorithmic. There's no real mechanism with which the Canadian government could bar IBM from bidding, and they're obliged to take the best bid. Usually this is lowest cost per rated point, scored against a large matrix of must-haves and nice-to-haves that are assigned weights.
Post reply on HN