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

A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

foliovision.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 200 posts

Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

#121

Post by danso »

Mizza wrote: post #120
alexk wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for calling this out. I think we should do more of it on HN (and everywhere else). People should try harder to decouple their biases from facts especially in their public writing.

I'll play devil's advocate here: I actually greatly prefer when people expose their biases early on rather than try to hide them through weaselly or bland language. I think immediate total aversion to nationally biased language is a specifically American trait (and left-coast American at that) - as the result of contemporary cultural conditioning and general lack of exposure to international identities. Europeans are…

If Europeans are more exposed than Americans to folks of different nationalities, wouldn't they be less inclined to broadly generalize them?

No one would accuse the author of meaning to judge "every single individual Slovakian person". It's ironic that you state your dislike of "weaselly or bland language", and then go on to describe the author as having a "perception of the traits of their culture as a whole". Most people would describe that as simply having stereotypes.

Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

#122

Post by jimjimjim »

If you've never worked for a team responding to RFPs/RFIs for large projects then it's difficult to know what's mismanagement and what's "normal".

Generally you respond with a proposal that on the surface ticks ALL the boxes. Later you show the proposed product and state that all the missing parts will be implemented or altered during implementation.

You get a bunch of senior people or architects to estimate the work +/- 1000% (mostly for the time estimates). The difference between what is charged to the customer and the actual cost of the work is swallowed by the bidder with the idea that it will be gouged back during additional work that wasn't in the initial scope.

Then you present your proposal and if you win the bid you then try everything to make it profitable from that point on.

ps. None of this is compatible with agile.

Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

#123

Post by mgkimsal »

rgbrenner wrote: post #100
mgkimsal wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you're both right, but you're a bit more right. IBM should have been pointing out that losing the institutional knowledge may cause problems. they possibly assumed some of their milestones and deliverables would be while working with existing staff. if the existing staff is let go, many of the assumptions in the original estimate are just wrong at that point.

The managers needed IBM to tell them about the concept of institutional knowledge? They need to be told that people with experience have learned their jobs? That new employees need training? This is like Management 101. Just how incompetent are these managers?

Haven't read the docs, so I don't know what the contracts and proposals states, but regardless of how obvious some things are, putting that in writing is a bit of a CYA.

"We're estimating based on having access and participation from your senior/experiences payroll employees. Substantial changes in personnel will impact the viability of the project."

Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

#124

Post by philwelch »

danso wrote: post #121
Mizza wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll play devil's advocate here: I actually greatly prefer when people expose their biases early on rather than try to hide them through weaselly or bland language. I think immediate total aversion to nationally biased language is a specifically American trait (and left-coast American at that) - as the result of contemporary cultural conditioning and general lack of exposure to international identities. Europeans are…

If Europeans are more exposed than Americans to folks of different nationalities, wouldn't they be less inclined to broadly generalize them? No one would accuse the author of meaning to judge "every single individual Slovakian person". It's ironic that you state your dislike of "weaselly or bland language", and then go on to describe the author as having a "perception of the traits of their culture as a whole" . Most…

> If Europeans are more exposed than Americans to folks of different nationalities, wouldn't they be less inclined to broadly generalize them?

This is the exact opposite of what I would expect.

Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

#125

Post by beachy »

Spooky23 wrote: post #118
danmaz74 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's a dimension left out here on the Phoenix disaster: It wasn't really IBM's fault at all. I respectfully disagree. IBM management either knew what they were contracting was a recipe for disaster, or they were incompetent. In both cases, as they were supposed to be the billion-dollar expert on the matter, they bear great responsibility for this failure. And at an industry level, companies that promise the impo…

Payroll projects are always disasters. Any vendor will do exactly what is asked, no matter what. IBM, Dell, Accenture, Deloitte, McKinsey, etc. There is no reason why a customer should allow a contractor like this to run roughshod over them -- thats incompetence and bad governance. I've run big projects with vendors like this. You write good RFPs and hold feet to the fire and they will deliver.

> You write good RFPs and hold feet to the fire and they will deliver.

That's the key bit though. Its not easy to write good RFPs. Unless done to an excruciating level of precision (which they very seldom are), you leave wiggle room which the vendor will naturally take advantage of when things get tough.

Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

#126

Post by Mizza »

danso wrote: post #121
Mizza wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll play devil's advocate here: I actually greatly prefer when people expose their biases early on rather than try to hide them through weaselly or bland language. I think immediate total aversion to nationally biased language is a specifically American trait (and left-coast American at that) - as the result of contemporary cultural conditioning and general lack of exposure to international identities. Europeans are…

If Europeans are more exposed than Americans to folks of different nationalities, wouldn't they be less inclined to broadly generalize them? No one would accuse the author of meaning to judge "every single individual Slovakian person". It's ironic that you state your dislike of "weaselly or bland language", and then go on to describe the author as having a "perception of the traits of their culture as a whole" . Most…

> If Europeans are more exposed than Americans to folks of different nationalities, wouldn't they be less inclined to broadly generalize them?

Why would it? It's just more data to pattern-match on, and that can mean confirming bias and prejudice as well. It might also shock you to find out that people who work in retail or food service also develop prejudices as well. It's not a good thing but it happens.

I'm not saying that stereotypes are good (or I suppose, that they are always bad), I'm just saying I don't need to clutch my pearls about it every time I see it. I can just read it and think "Okay, this guy is obviously using stereotypes about other countries here" and then keep reading without it necessarily immediately invalidating else that's been written. This is particularly so when Europeans talk about other European countries, as in this particular case. It is, I think, actually a form of comradery. (We might hate the Germans, but they're _our_ Germans, and we won't have any yanks slagging them off!)

I am sharing my perspective here as a European who immigrated to the United States who has observed the response to this in both cultures.

Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

#127

Post by SyneRyder »

sundvor wrote: post #112

Oh, but the con-census is that they did such a brilliant job in Australia! http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-11-25/ibm-to-pay-over-$30m-i... http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-25/turning-router-off-and...

Indeed, some Australian states actually have a ban on government agencies contracting out to IBM:

https://www.itnews.com.au/news/queenslands-ibm-ban-lives-on-...

The quote from Queensland's Premier at the time of the ban:

“I don’t want companies that have this sort of culture doing work for the people of this state.”

Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

#128

Post by henry_flower »

danso wrote: post #30
frostburg wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The footer about Slovakia / France / Germany is a lot more disturbing. Low-rent Indian coding shops being bad isn't news or racist.

Yeah, I don't know much about Slovakia but the author's broad, unsupported generalizations of the country ( Slovaks are very talented at mid-level service jobs: responsible and polite if not particularly fast-moving... Slovaks, particularly in the service industry, are astonishingly honest ) don't inspire a lot of confidence. I was also surprised to see the author's use of " the Ukraine ". I still remember someone at…

> the author's broad, unsupported generalizations

> surprised to see the author's use of "the Ukraine"

heh

just look up his linkedin; apparently he has spent his prime years working in Russia as some kind of tv producer there.

Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

#129

Post by Mizza »

insom wrote: post #114
tptacek wrote: post #76

Historically Slovakia gets lumped with Eastern Europe in popular perception - Slovakia is nothing like Romania, the Ukraine, Albania or even Poland in turning out petty criminals or promiscuous online fraudsters. Not to forget Western Europe, France has a far more unhealthy work culture and fraud at work and as a way of living is far more acceptable than in Slovakia. Germany and Austria tend to value probity far more…

Glad to see someone already posted this. I don't know how anyone writes something like "this is what Slovaks are like" and doesn't stop to think about their biases. I originally thought maybe he was from Slovakia (I have occasionally made jokes or generalisations about Irish people, as I am one) -- but then the footnotes make it clear it's not self deprecation. It's just prejudice.

He is obviously from Slovakia. It says on their about page that their homebase is in Bratislava.

Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

#130

Post by SyneRyder »

empath75 wrote: post #88
throw7 wrote: post #66

I'm hesitant to just blame IBM and call it the day. What about the U.S. healthcare.gov website? Do we also blame CGI Federal and Accenture? There's probably blame on both sides, but it seems nowadays that "it needs to be a roaring dumpster fire until we do things the right way". Unfortunately, either no one _in_ government seems competent to know that right way or be empowered enough to fight for it (maybe they've al…

All things considered, healthcare.gov wasn’t that bad. Having to scale to the size of the entire country on day one is a hard-to-impossible task and the managed to recover impressively quickly.

Didn't they recover by hiring a completely different team to rebuild the entire site from scratch?

"Here is the tl;dr version of their story: Marketplace Lite, or “MPL” as they came to be known, devoted months to rewriting Healthcare.gov functions in full, working as a startup within the government and replacing contractor-made apps with ones costing one-fiftieth of the price."

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/07/the-s...

Post reply on HN