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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)

#241

Post by InefficientRed »

sytelus wrote: post #114
pembrook wrote: post #44

It’s impossible to overstate how funny the shenanigans get when you combine a technologically incompetent legacy big Co. with one of these big professional services firms. The IT consulting firm will tell you they have experience with literally everything. They’ll dig up a case study from one of their 400 offices somewhere, claiming to be experts on whatever the topic is. Meanwhile, in actuality, your project will be…

The entire business idea of these "services" is to get cheap labor, pay them $30/hr and charge clients $300/hr. Why companies go for this? Because they can't build their own IT, they have failed all the times and their CTO loves golf.

Because they have no idea how to hire and manage teams that build software. It's a lot harder than it sounds if you have no personal experience delivering software (read: most legacy corp CTOs).

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

#242

Post by SoftTalker »

treis wrote: post #91
c3534l wrote: post #36

I don't understand why anyone would think $32 million is a reasonable price point for a car rental site to begin with.

It's not just a website. They were merging at least three different enterprise level backend plus deploying the front end to thousands of locations. That's a gigantic effort.

If the front-end is a website, deploying it to thousands of locations is as difficult as deploying it to one.

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

#243

Post by oneoff786 »

Aeolun wrote: post #211
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.

Good luck staffing a team of 4-6 competent in house developers

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

#244

Post by ethbr0 »

illuminati1911 wrote: post #233
dustingetz wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mon…

This is not really true at least everywhere. In Europe and especially North Europe smaller (less than 1000 ppl) consultancies are usually the most lax and best paid jobs with best benefits out there and the best ones definitely do raise their rates. It's just about what kind of clients you want to work with. If you pick any client that comes to your door and never say no then you'll end up in the race to the bottom w…

Picking a consultant is like picking a tradesperson -- the competent ones already have more business than they can service, so they'd be doing you a favor by taking you on, which usually means an introduction from an existing client is needed.

Oh, and also, if you suck as a client, they're going to drop you and never answer your calls again.

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

#245

Post by kumarvvr »

IT Companies, especially ones that outsource have had it coming for years.

I am an Indian (though I only worked for a year in IT before leaving for actual work), and let me tell you, we Indian IT developers are a complex bunch.

3 out of 100 know the actual work, actual technology, impact of choices, etc. 80 out of 100 just get by, as in, do the bare minimum required to get by the day and the task assigned to them. The remaining are bootlickers who get promoted to management.

And there are no qualms about ethics. Want to pass a test by commenting some code? "we will do it once to check first, then we will repeat it without commenting" (and the latter will never happen). I would not be surprised if they have a "test" set of code, solely to pass the specs and an internal "actual" code that will be delivered to the customer.

Also, after 20 years or so of outsourcing, I am sure most of my fellows in MNC IT companies have set up practices and navigation rules to deftly distribute the blame such that even senior management is clueless about whom to punish in case of a failure like this.

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

#246

Post by IncRnd »

bckr wrote: post #231
BurningFrog wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Say what you will about the Jira process, there is no climbing involved...

Perfect opportunity for a new corpspeak term. "Let's sync this week for the pre-sprint Jira climbing"

Waterfall is so last week. Properly scheduled climbing projects meet MVP more often!

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

#247

Post by kumarvvr »

88913527 wrote: post #17

You have to wonder what proportion of GDP is money sloshing around like this but not providing any real value. The consultants got their paychecks and spent their money in the real economy, but there seems to be a great deal of waste in the B2B space.

The jobless percentage of population would shoot up by double digit basis points if not for bullshit jobs that just move money around.

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

#248

Post by SMAAART »

pembrook wrote: post #44

It’s impossible to overstate how funny the shenanigans get when you combine a technologically incompetent legacy big Co. with one of these big professional services firms. The IT consulting firm will tell you they have experience with literally everything. They’ll dig up a case study from one of their 400 offices somewhere, claiming to be experts on whatever the topic is. Meanwhile, in actuality, your project will be…

> The IT consulting firm will tell you they have experience with literally everything. They’ll dig up a case study from one of their 400 offices somewhere, claiming to be experts on whatever the topic is. Meanwhile, in actuality, your project will be staffed with a team of 24 year old kids where this is their first assignment. And it doesn’t matter anyways, because the people who worked on the original case study are long gone and would never communicate with other offices even if still around.

#TRUESTORY

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

#249

Post by soulofmischief »

oneoff786 wrote: post #243
Aeolun wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Good luck staffing a team of 4-6 competent in house developers

Why do you think this is so difficult?

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

#250

Post by SoftTalker »

digitalsin wrote: post #206

I worked at a small company who bid on an RFP against Accenture back in 2000ish. We bid way lower than Accenture and we were already established at the state government agency with a great track record. I remember while the proposal evaluation process was happening, Accenture sent their proposed PM to the town where the agency was based and he literally bought a house there to show Accenture's commitment to the agenc…

Early .NET was basically Java, wasn't it? Java devs should have picked it up pretty easily.
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