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Project from Hell (2008)

projectfailures.wordpress.com

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Re: Project from Hell (2008)

#141

Post by gaius »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #36
jmull wrote: post #25

I would guess the project was (is?) running pretty much just as the people in charge wanted it to run. 10 years in and they were still billing -- more than ever -- for a project that would have completed 7-8 years previously if things had been done according to plan. All the seemingly massively stupid and counter productive decisions made make sense if the goal is to confuse matters to make it seem like progress has…

But they are being fined at E1000's a day. In the UK we now have projects forced to go through regular if not frequent traffic light reviews - a panel of actual experts reviews the project - i think it was one such thing that killed the NHS network project (12 billion over spend). one panel, one review. saved money. i suspect the french gov will have put something similar in place, but i do agree with the final parag…

that killed the NHS network project (12 billion over spend)

No money to give nurses a pay rise but IT consultants laughing all the way to the bank. And the same consulting companies still have their noses in the trough.

Same story at the MoD.

Re: Project from Hell (2008)

#142

Post by ido »

duncan_bayne wrote: post #76
troels wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do people actually stay on with a company for six months, after giving notice? And what manager in their right mind would ever want that anyway?

Depends on the employer and employee. I've worked out a several month notice period; I wanted to leave, but didn't want to abandon a small team a couple of months before a hard deadline. Everyone involved was okay with that. But then I wasn't leaving because the place was a train wreck; I was still engaged, and liked the team I was on. Had that not been true, it would have been a bad move on everyone's part.

I have also seen that happen in multiple occasions (not me but coworkers of mine).

Re: Project from Hell (2008)

#143

Post by ptman »

andrewflnr wrote: post #115
dragonwriter wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Well, we do have the word "liberty" in English, too But no commonly-used adjective form of that noun.

True, "liberated software" doesn't have quite the right tone these days.

I've seen the acronym FLOSS used: Free, Libre and Open Source Software

Re: Project from Hell (2008)

#144

Post by makapuf »

astrodust wrote: post #91
commandlinefan wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> memorize every api and library Outside of work hours, of course. You're paid to program, not to learn.

Maybe at a hell company like this example, but in most that are sane you're encouraged to learn on the job. At the end of the day you're not paid to program, you're paid to solve problems, and typically that's easiest to achieve by producing code. Sometimes the problem is you don't know a particular language or toolkit even if it's the best fit for a problem domain...

Sure you are. But I dont pat consultants to learn on the job. Those people were consultants and while I'd rather fire someone who didn't learn anything during a year internally, I'm definitely not paying a consultant to learn what s/he has been sold by his firm to be an expert on.

Re: Project from Hell (2008)

#145

Post by 1ris »

brazzy wrote: post #58
1ris wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Germany it is hard to fire somebody. Almost nobody works as consultant, and consultants are not normal job positions.

Bullshit. I've worked as a consultant in Germany for 13 years, and pretty much every large project has consultants in it, often half the developers are consultants. IBM, T-Systems, Capgemini and accenture each have around 5000 people doing software consulting, and there'S hundreds if not thousands of smaller consultancies.

The thing is consultants are not "regular jobs". Developing with only consultants is very unusual, expensive, and consultants are the minority everywhere i have ever looked. Employers are not declaring employees to be consultants to safe money or to be able to fire them more easily. (At last on a large scale.)

Re: Project from Hell (2008)

#147

Post by trhway »

commandlinefan wrote: post #53

> “C++ for dummies” on many people’s desks. Surprised they didn't get fired for reading/learning at work when you're paid to be programming all the time. Although I've never been fired for reading at work, I've had it made clear on multiple occasions at different jobs that reading wouldn't be tolerated, and I was already down a couple of strikes.

> “C++ for dummies” on many people’s desks.

C++ as a language for an enterprise business logic software like a payment system in this case? You put together Stroustrup, Thompson, Pike and Torvalds and they still would probably fail to deliver a fully working project or at best it would be very past the delivery schedule (until of course they "cheat" and develop appropriate DSL and compiler/runtime for it first :)

Re: Project from Hell (2008)

#148

Post by astrodust »

makapuf wrote: post #144
astrodust wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe at a hell company like this example, but in most that are sane you're encouraged to learn on the job. At the end of the day you're not paid to program, you're paid to solve problems, and typically that's easiest to achieve by producing code. Sometimes the problem is you don't know a particular language or toolkit even if it's the best fit for a problem domain...

Sure you are. But I dont pat consultants to learn on the job. Those people were consultants and while I'd rather fire someone who didn't learn anything during a year internally, I'm definitely not paying a consultant to learn what s/he has been sold by his firm to be an expert on.

You pay a consultant to understand your problem and sometimes solve it. If you've hired them and they don't know your domain then you're going to need to give them time to learn.

It's on you for hiring someone that didn't already know everything. Don't expect them to put in free time to understand whatever infrastructure and code you have in place.

Re: Project from Hell (2008)

#149

Post by SomethingStars »

baud147258 wrote: post #10

Regarding this part: "they had to pay soon for Free Software. None of them ever mentions ‘Software Libre’, but they all know about ‘Software Gratuit’. " In French, we have two word for Free: Libre is for free as in free speech and gratuit is for free as in free beer.

In Polish there are different words for free as in free speech and for free as in free beer. But, interestingly, the words for "free" as in free speech and for "slow" are the same, so "wolne oprogramowanie" can mean both "free software" and "slow software" :-) If I remember correctly, the etymology for both words is "wola" which means "will" - if you were free, you could act on your own will, but you also could do things on your own pace. Slowly, that is. But I'm not completely certain if I remember the etymology right, so take it with a grain of salt:-)

Re: Project from Hell (2008)

#150

Post by collyw »

msla wrote: post #12
mpweiher wrote: post #4

And there are people who claim performance doesn't matter, only correctness does. Hmm.. Also: we chose C++, because it is fast.

> And there are people who claim performance doesn't matter, only correctness does. Hmm.. Performance is meaningless if the code is not correct. After all, I can make the code arbitrarily fast if I'm not going to be held to any standard of correctness: It always returns "FOOBAR". Done, and very, very fast. > Also: we chose C++, because it is fast. That is a bit naive. C++ is a standard, so how fast is a stack of pape…

To be fair if something works 99% of the time it isn't correct, but people will still use it. There are different degrees of correctness.
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