A billion reasons never to buy IBM services • Hacker News Board

Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

#141

Post by drieddust » Fri, Mar 16, 2018, 1:30 AM UTC

dv_dt wrote: post #95

drieddust wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you don't have an organization that can break it down to a smaller projects then there is a question if doing it as one large project has a higher or lower chance of failure.

Shouldn't that depend upon complexity of change but who cares. CIO have a short tenure so collecting the bonuses and leaving before house of card collapses works.

It's all about managing the personal bonus and career, who cares for the success 9f project?

Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

#142

Post by Mizza » Fri, Mar 16, 2018, 1:34 AM UTC

danso wrote: post #136

Mizza wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 say…

OK I won't get into an argument of whether stereotypes or prejudices are good/bad and I'm sorry if I implied that. I can't speak for the GP (u/alexk), but I interpreted his assertion of "People should try harder to decouple their biases from facts especially in their public writing" as saying that using stereotypes as factual evidence leads to weak writing. For example, this graf: > Yet if these people or their frien…

> The author apparently thinks IBM's off-shoring would be fine (indeed, "no issues at all") if the work outsourced to Slovakia stayed in Slovakia (rather than be outsourced to India)

Yeah. It's a blog post from a Slovakian offshoring company. Of course he does.

I don't expect that this Slovakian blog post about why Slovakian offerings are better than Indian offerings will be free of bias, and in fact I think it's unreasonable to ask for that.

Mostly, I find it a bit annoying that people (almost always Californians - stereotype!) are tripping over themselves trying to point out - "Hey! This guy might be biased! Let me tell everybody, and congratulate everybody else on that awesome 'call out!' We need more of that here!" - with total contextual and cultural blindness.

I think, no, we need more critical thinking, more benefit of the doubt and less US-centrism.

Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

#143

Post by drieddust » Fri, Mar 16, 2018, 1:40 AM UTC

danmaz74 wrote: post #92

Naga wrote: 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…

> 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…

IMHO most of the times such concerns are completely ignored by management.

Customer even gets angry and asking for removal of such risks. Vendors comply by sneeking it in the contract in clever words.

Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

#144

Post by marcosdumay » Fri, Mar 16, 2018, 1:47 AM UTC

user5994461 wrote: post #108

blueside wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a general rule, if a work task lands on your desk that involves working with a IBM/Oracle/SAP product, preemptively apologize to those regularly around you for your miserable attitude in the near future.

I'm not sure why Oracle is in the list. The databases are very expensive but they work well.

When The Daily WTF was still maintained it reserved an entire section of the site for Oracle Database. It may rarely have catastrophic failures (although it's the second one I've seen most catastrophic failures, just after MySQL), but it is composed of one unreasonable choice after the other.

Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

#145

Post by Bertio » Fri, Mar 16, 2018, 1:52 AM UTC

beachy wrote: post #125

Spooky23 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not to mention government procurement processes do everything in their power to make it difficult to write a good RFP and the major players are highly skilled at responding to RFPs for the purpose of winning the bid, not necessarily to deliver on the RFP's requirements.

Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

#146

Post by Lazare » Fri, Mar 16, 2018, 1:58 AM UTC

> IBM instead sold the Canadian government someone else's software (Oracle's Peoplesoft) on a sweetheart contract which did not require delivery of a working solution.

Okay, so Canada signed a bad contract and didn't make IBM promise to delivery the goods.

> In cases like this in the past, the Canadian Government would just be able to tell IBM to deliver the goods as promised or IBM would be banned from doing business in Canada - effectively frozen.

But you just got done telling us that IBM didn't promise to deliver the goods.

> Under NAFTA and similar trade pacts, governments have lost all leverage and these sweetheart deals continue to be pushed through.

NAFTA and similar trade agreements neither require governments to sign contracts that don't require delivery of working solutions, not require governments to not sue to enforce contract terms once signed. If IBM broke the contract terms, Canada can sue. But if Canada signed a really dumb contract, there's a number of remedies here, but violating the contract terms and just demanding other parties do things they have no obligation to do to make up for your mistake doesn't seem like a good choice. You know, "rule of law" and all that?

> Why should the Canadian taxpayer foot the bills for corrupt contracts with devious suppliers? The

They shouldn't. But, well, was it corrupt? Prove it in court, and the contract can be voided. NAFTA won't stop that either. If you can't prove it in court, they maybe it was just dumb (and not bribery), in which case yes, the taxpayers should foot the bill. If they don't like it, they can vote in a better government. That's democracy.

Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

#147

Post by will4274 » Fri, Mar 16, 2018, 2:06 AM UTC

forgotmypw wrote: post #139

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…

>the Ukraine Referring to Ukraine as "the Ukraine" has been inappropriate since the end of 1991. Just this detail paints the author as being out of touch.

> out of touch

Or maybe just not perfect? Google trends show that "the Ukraine" is about 1/3 as popular as "Ukraine" in common usage. It's more like calling the FSB the KGB - wrong, for sure, but was correct for decades, so not at all surprising that people still say it. http://www.businessinsider.com/why-ukraine-isnt-the-ukraine-...

Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

#148

Post by Bertio » Fri, Mar 16, 2018, 2:08 AM UTC

drieddust wrote: post #40

Naga wrote: 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…

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…

Customers love to be lied to; in a recent set of presentations I was favoring the vendor who was presenting reality but the winner chosen by the business evaluators was the vendor who brought in the glossiest presentation and glossed over the complexities and the frightening part expressed a comfort with ever changing requirements. They were put off by the vendors who boasted about zero change requests and making their timelines but liked the vendor who proposed a fantasy timeline with no promises.

Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

#149

Post by forgotmypw » Fri, Mar 16, 2018, 2:15 AM UTC

will4274 wrote: post #147

forgotmypw wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the Ukraine Referring to Ukraine as "the Ukraine" has been inappropriate since the end of 1991. Just this detail paints the author as being out of touch.

> out of touch Or maybe just not perfect? Google trends show that "the Ukraine" is about 1/3 as popular as "Ukraine" in common usage. It's more like calling the FSB the KGB - wrong, for sure, but was correct for decades, so not at all surprising that people still say it. http://www.businessinsider.com/why-ukraine-isnt-the-ukraine-...

Can you please link the Google Trends? I am curious how to do one of these searches that compares using it with "the" and without.

Re: A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

#150

Post by YeGoblynQueenne » Fri, Mar 16, 2018, 2:19 AM UTC

Mizza wrote: post #126

danso wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 say…

>> 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.

The author's whole point in this article seems to be "IBM offshored its work to Bratislava and India and that's bad". I don't know how you can decouple the stereotyping from an article when it's the main line of reasoning of the article.