Ask HN: Do you have a software consultant or outsourcing horror story? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Do you have a software consultant or outsourcing horror story?

#41

Post by fred_is_fred » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 4:04 PM UTC

rhacker wrote: post #22

I am taking over a codebase that was written by an outsourced team in Pakistan. The code is in a total chaotic copy-pasta state. I swear the main thing you'll find in outsourced code is the inability to refactor or re-use code for similar features. One recent thing I just found is a view that has about 8 source HTML files, all of which is quite complicated angular1 code. Then when the team was asked to have a slightl…

> I swear the main thing you'll find in outsourced code is the inability to refactor or re-use code for similar features.

This is my experience too. Teams using modern OO languages, but not redoing common methods in every class. Thereby leading to the same bug needing to be fixed in 5 or 6 places.

Re: Ask HN: Do you have a software consultant or outsourcing horror story?

#42

Post by lainga » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 4:06 PM UTC

arethuza wrote: post #15

clavalle wrote: post #13

I've had a some outsourcing successes and failures. In the first one, I got what I deserved. I underpaid developers from a poorer country who ended up being 'yes' men who continually checked in catastrophic, unmaintainable code for simple problems. It burned me over and over again but the rates were just so good it was hard to get off the sauce. We ended up paying for those savings many times over. Another time I had…

Many years ago the startup I had co-founded outsourced a chunk of development work because an investor wanted us to - what was produced was pretty much "catastrophic, unmaintainable" code that took a few developers on our side to rework (probably rather more than it would have taken to write the code from scratch ). What we did like about the code was that each developer in the offshore team had created an exception…

What! Why would an investor tell you to outsource development work? Cost?

Re: Ask HN: Do you have a software consultant or outsourcing horror story?

#43

Post by Thriptic » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 4:08 PM UTC

I have one in the context of an academic lab. I was in the process of refactoring a project a coworker had left behind which was basically spaghetti code. Our lab had a collaboration with another lab, and that lab offered to extend the functionality of our code base for mutual gain. They assigned this project to a Ph.D. student who picked it up as part of their Ph.D. thesis. I hooked this researcher up on our Github and asked them to send me anything they had about their project (requirements, design, issues, desired interface blah blah) so I could understand their plan and prepare for the integration.

Fast forward 6 months and I still had not received anything. They also had not committed any code to the repo I had set them up with. I contacted them and said that it would be difficult for me to insure that our programs would interface correctly if I had no idea what the interface was supposed to look like or what their program was supposed to accomplish. She said she "was working on it". After several more months of not hearing anything and being under time pressure myself, I contacted her and demanded she upload her code to Github immediately. She refused, stating that this code was her personal property and that she was concerned I would "steal her IP". I lost it and sent her an email, CCing her adviser and my adviser, informing her that all her work was the property of her employer, and that if she didn't upload it I would contact our university's legal department and inform them that she intended to steal IP that was university property.

At this point her adviser called me and quietly informed me that the reason she hadn't uploaded anything was that she had nothing to upload. She had been struggling for over a year and had made 0 substantive progress on her project, lacked the programming and scientific knowledge to do what she wanted to do, and was faring very poorly as a researcher. She was subsequently rushed through their program and graduated in 3 years from a program that typically takes at least 6 years to complete.

The project never got finished.

Re: Ask HN: Do you have a software consultant or outsourcing horror story?

#44

Post by fred_is_fred » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 4:09 PM UTC

whistlerbrk wrote: post #9

I understand that most major purchases have guidelines and ways to protect consumers but I just can't imagine spending 80k on something and not consistently demanding to see progress toward an end goal. When I was consulting I had a build pipeline to production up as my #1 task. Doing this kept me honest and prevented a month of "go to production" issues at the tail end of the project from surfacing but far more impo…

> not consistently demanding to see progress toward an end goal.

This should be true for any project of any kind for any amount of money. Building a house, writing code, digging a hole in the ground.

Re: Ask HN: Do you have a software consultant or outsourcing horror story?

#45

Post by nameless912 » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 4:14 PM UTC

brianwawok wrote: post #27

nameless912 wrote: post #25

Boy oh boy oh boy do I. I was transitioning between teams and needed something to do in the meantime, so I got put on a testing and validation team for an internal product. I was to collaborate with our overseas IT team and figure out why their tests weren't catching bugs in production. After two weeks of wrangling, hand wringing, and bad vibes, I finally got them to send me their test automation code and a link to t…

That is a new record. I can kinda understand incompetence "ok we hired too many people, some were not very good and we haven't fired them yet"... annoying but it makes sense. But this is outright fraud. This is the literal definition of negative value. Paying someone money to test, then those testers failing "random tests" wasting actual developer time on non-bugs. (With that said, this is very weird an offshore team…

Trust me, I know. Having someone else write your tests just screams incompetence to me, but this project was like 4 years in at this point. I wasn't going to convince them to change that.

Re: Ask HN: Do you have a software consultant or outsourcing horror story?

#46

Post by lainga » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 4:17 PM UTC

Thriptic wrote: post #43

I have one in the context of an academic lab. I was in the process of refactoring a project a coworker had left behind which was basically spaghetti code. Our lab had a collaboration with another lab, and that lab offered to extend the functionality of our code base for mutual gain. They assigned this project to a Ph.D. student who picked it up as part of their Ph.D. thesis. I hooked this researcher up on our Github…

She was faring poorly, so she was rushed through and graduated early? That doesn't seem very good, is it common in academia?!

Re: Ask HN: Do you have a software consultant or outsourcing horror story?

#47

Post by hkmurakami » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 4:21 PM UTC

roel_v wrote: post #28

Not my ass on the line and not a major burn, but still: I got an email many years ago from a guy who said essentially 'I got your email address from , are you interested in picking up some side work and if so, can we meet'. I say okay and when we meet, he explains that they had this SaaS idea (an industry-specific collaboration/data sharing tool essentially; this company did other work in this industry, they weren't…

This is some truly perverse kind of land and expand.

Re: Ask HN: Do you have a software consultant or outsourcing horror story?

#48

Post by Thriptic » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 4:22 PM UTC

lainga wrote: post #46

Thriptic wrote: post #43

I have one in the context of an academic lab. I was in the process of refactoring a project a coworker had left behind which was basically spaghetti code. Our lab had a collaboration with another lab, and that lab offered to extend the functionality of our code base for mutual gain. They assigned this project to a Ph.D. student who picked it up as part of their Ph.D. thesis. I hooked this researcher up on our Github…

She was faring poorly, so she was rushed through and graduated early? That doesn't seem very good, is it common in academia?!

Done to save face. Dropping her would reflect poorly on the lab as it's basically admitting failure to properly vet candidates and/or mentor. She also had industry political connections which made booting her difficult for economic blow back reasons.

Re: Ask HN: Do you have a software consultant or outsourcing horror story?

#49

Post by lainga » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 4:25 PM UTC

Thriptic wrote: post #48

lainga wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She was faring poorly, so she was rushed through and graduated early? That doesn't seem very good, is it common in academia?!

Done to save face. Dropping her would reflect poorly on the lab as it's basically admitting failure to properly vet candidates and/or mentor. She also had industry political connections which made booting her difficult for economic blow back reasons.

Nuts. Where do you live, roughly? I'm just an undergrad but I don't think political or industry (well -- maybe industry) connections do much at Canadian universities.

Re: Ask HN: Do you have a software consultant or outsourcing horror story?

#50

Post by hkmurakami » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 4:25 PM UTC

lainga wrote: post #46

Thriptic wrote: post #43

I have one in the context of an academic lab. I was in the process of refactoring a project a coworker had left behind which was basically spaghetti code. Our lab had a collaboration with another lab, and that lab offered to extend the functionality of our code base for mutual gain. They assigned this project to a Ph.D. student who picked it up as part of their Ph.D. thesis. I hooked this researcher up on our Github…

She was faring poorly, so she was rushed through and graduated early? That doesn't seem very good, is it common in academia?!

Yes, failing PhDs get "pity degrees" all the time. I frankly loathe the practice.