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Hertz paid Accenture $32M for a website that never went live (2019)

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Re: Hertz paid Accenture $32M for a website that never went live (2019)

#211

Post by Aeolun »

paranoidrobot wrote: post #172

As far as I can tell, this sort of over-promise, under-deliver, bill-huge thing is pretty normal for these massive consulting companies. Their big name experts come in, tell you how you're doing it all wrong and they have the best solution around for only $X million and they can deliver in 12 months. Management nods, gives the greenlight, tells you to cooperate fully with them. Their layers of consultants then tie up…

I’m pretty much convinced you can replace any consulting firm (of any size/developer count) with 4-6 competent in-house developers and have a better product at the end of the year.

Regardless of what your project is.

Re: Hertz paid Accenture $32M for a website that never went live (2019)

#212

Post by honkycat »

AEM is the biggest piece of shit software I have ever had the misfortune of using.

90% of the functionality they claimed to support did not work. It was way way harder to use than anything else I've seen.

--

Going into consulting: I will never go back. The problem is that all of the good devs leave once they realize the clients are assholes and are in complete control. Then you are left with people who are ambivalent to what they are making, or too bad at their job to make it anywhere else.

I've never experienced such micromanagement, rudeness, sabotage, and meanness in my entire life. And it doesn't even pay that well!

Re: Hertz paid Accenture $32M for a website that never went live (2019)

#213

Post by [deleted] »

vsareto wrote: post #109
orf wrote: post #38

> In its revised suit, Hertz states that Accenture represented that they had “the best talent in the world" > Hertz claims that they were far from experts in these technologies and that Accenture was deceptive in their marketing claims. Colour me surprised. > Accenture also failed to test the software, Hertz claims, and when it did do tests "they were seriously inadequate, to the point of being misleading." It didn't…

The more stories I hear about this, the more I'm inclined to be an executive-asleep-at-the-wheel because apparently they get paid a lot, do a terrible job, and nothing happens to them.

[deleted]

Re: Hertz paid Accenture $32M for a website that never went live (2019)

#214

Post by ok_dad »

Aeolun wrote: post #204
lowercased wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> bunch of executives asleep at the wheel who lacked even the most basic technical skills needed to see that it was a fantasy... At some point, someone with technical acumen took stock of the situation and said "this is garbage". Why does this step always come last? WTF. "They said they were the best, but they lied!" I bet you as Hertz had some competent technical folks who could have vetted them. You either have the…

> I bet you as Hertz had some competent technical folks who could have vetted them They very likely did (and negatively), but no excecutive ever wants to hear that, so they just barrel ahead anyway. Because what do those lowly peons know, right? Then there’s always the risk that the internal Hertz guys are just terrible and just trying to keep the contractors out to make sure they aren’t exposed. From the executive s…

> They very likely did (and negatively), but no excecutive ever wants to hear that, so they just barrel ahead anyway. Because what do those lowly peons know, right?

I was fired from a project because I told an executive the wrong thing about how shitty a product was that I was trying to save after a contractor fucked it up, thus revealing the ruse of my boss.

> Then there’s always the risk that the internal Hertz guys are just terrible and just trying to keep the contractors out to make sure they aren’t exposed.

This was why I was hired there in the first place, so basically I was hired as the fall guy and then my boss executed on that plan.

> From the executive side it’s hard too.

I'm sure it was stressful, lucky for my boss he was able to successfully pass the buck and still works there to this day. I've also heard from customers of my current company that the company that "recylced" me is not doing well in my former bosses department, so perhaps he will not survive forever?

Either way: fuck useless execs.

Re: Hertz paid Accenture $32M for a website that never went live (2019)

#215

Post by dustingetz »

hsbauauvhabzb wrote: post #151
Nextgrid wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there good money to be made though? If idiots are happy to pay more for shit than they do for quality work I'll happily deliver them shit.

If you deliver shit then they keep coming back to you to fix it. Pretty sure there are major consulting firms playing that game.

it’s not that they want to fail delivery; it’s that any new small agile firm of like 10 people who manages to qualify and deliver in some small project will instantly have so much demand that they will scale from 10 to 100 people in short order until they cannot effectively manage and turn into the the thing they hate. and contracting is low margin after bizdev costs, the economics really aren’t there so you make money by squeezing labor salaries. you can’t raise rates because moral hazard - you’d have immediate incentive to pocket the margin. behold the stable state.

Re: Hertz paid Accenture $32M for a website that never went live (2019)

#216

Post by Aeolun »

googlryas wrote: post #7
rich_sasha wrote: post #3

My main question is: who hires Accenture for this kind of job, for no less than $32m??? They would be my last point of call, literally after my mum, and maybe even after my dog. At least he's cheap.

Hertz hired a new CIO in 2015, and you can't just come in and keep the ship running in the same direction. You need new, big, flashy changes! Not just $32M, actually over $400M in changes, to prove the CIO knows what he's doing. Compare the article with the CIO's self provided description of his 3 years at Hertz(from his Linkedin): > I was hired by Hertz to integrate and optimize technology infrastructure following t…

I’m kind of surprised to see that the CV of a CIO like that is filled with the same meaningless drivel that mine is.

Like, I could write these exact same things, and they’d be true, except I’d have to scale the number of employees down to 15… and change a few instances of car.

Re: Hertz paid Accenture $32M for a website that never went live (2019)

#217

Post by solraph »

0xCAP wrote: post #103

I've never witnessed a single skilled professional working at Accenture in 10+ years of IT career. Period.

Agreed. At this point, I view anyone who worked for more than six months at any of the big IT consulting companies - and especially accounting firms pretending to be IT consulting companies - with deep suspicion.

I've literally witnessed teams where a single contractor out-performed a team of twenty people by a factor of 10 because they were reasonably competent. I guess this is where the myth of the 10x programmer comes from!

Re: Hertz paid Accenture $32M for a website that never went live (2019)

#219

Post by b0afc375b5 »

ctrager wrote: post #154
ctrager wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LOL and true to my experience. In the 80's was a United Airlines employee on a project where Arthur Anderson (aka Accenture) was the consultant. The project included approximately 75 entry level AA programmers that were brought to the office on two big buses. My job was to write specs for them. The specs had to be 100% detailed, every "if", every "loop", except that I had to follow the AA methodology and write the en…

Another golden memory of that project was when I was given the assignment to meet with users - accounting people - on screens for approving tax payments. It was kinda a big deal for me at that stage in my career, to even talk to users. So, I meet with these guys and I introduce the topic, and they go, "What are you talking about? What do you mean 'approving'? They are taxes. We HAVE to pay them"

I'm not sure I get what you're trying to say here. Yes, the company has to pay them but someone has to look at the numbers so that the company doesn't overpay or underpay.
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