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

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

#271

Post by InefficientRed » Fri, Jul 22, 2022, 2:26 AM UTC

CSMastermind wrote: post #264

InefficientRed wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

I've found myself wondering recently how much impact I could have at one of these large companies if given a modest budget and a mandate to build a high performing engineering org. I've spent my career at startups and growth companies building and scaling engineering orgs. So I take it as a given that I could get a highly capable team but wonder how much it would matter. Would we still be weighed down by internal bur…

This is why these large companies often form "innovation" units that are spun out as separate entities or at lest setup as separate orgs sheltered from internal politics by the C suite.

It's possible. But it's really hard work, very politically expensive, and extremely high risk. So, yeah, not surprising.

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

#272

Post by ianhawes » Fri, Jul 22, 2022, 2:28 AM UTC

skeeter2020 wrote: post #87

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've never worked for a big consulting shop it's hard to explain what it can be like. I BILLED 2,800 hours my first (and only) full year, and spent most weeks out of town. They love to take you out for dinner with your consulting coworkers while on engagement, but you quickly realize this is to (a) keep you onsight until 7 or 8pm, (b) prevent you from developing a life outside of the company, and (c) hey, maybe…

This is my experience with big accounting/finance firms as well.

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

#273

Post by hadleybelter » Fri, Jul 22, 2022, 2:29 AM UTC

zinekeller wrote: post #171

xcdzvyn wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the big 4 usually KPMG, EY, Deloitte, and PWC?

That's the big four accounting firms. They're referring to the big four consultancy firms (which arguably isn't just four, and EY happens to be in). Also, Accenture was the consulting division of Arthur Andersen (which is involved in the Enron scandal).

The big 4 accounting firms are also the big 4 consulting firms. Deloitte, PwC, EY, and KPMG all have both large accounting arms as well as massive consulting arms.

There's also the "Big 3" or "MBB" which refers to the big 3 prestigious strategy consulting firms, Mckinsey, Bain, and BCG.

And then on the other end of the spectrum there's "WITCH" which is the consulting firms generally known as "body shops" that hire for quantity over quality. That's companies like Wipro, Infosys, TCS, Cognizant.

Accenture usually isn't included in any of the acronyms, it's just kinda an outlier despite how big it is. It's very much the same as how technically Microsoft isn't part of "FAANG", but whenever someone does say "FAANG" they typically just mean "the big tech companies" and you subconsciously think of MS as included in that.

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

#274

Post by CydeWeys » Fri, Jul 22, 2022, 2:29 AM UTC

b0afc375b5 wrote: post #219

ctrager wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And it sounds like the users didn't understand that in some manner.

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

#275

Post by melbournegrad » Fri, Jul 22, 2022, 2:31 AM UTC

cratermoon wrote: post #239

patja wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure i was billed at 10x when I started at Andersen Consulting in 1990. My starting salary was 21.5k.

I don't doubt it, for one of the Big Names. I know 3x is common even in smaller shops. I don't doubt that places like Wipro, Infosys and the other big names that work the US H-1B market have much larger markups.

Can confirm, at a big 4, billed out at 8x

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

#276

Post by CydeWeys » Fri, Jul 22, 2022, 2:42 AM UTC

soulofmischief wrote: post #249

oneoff786 wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Why do you think this is so difficult?

You can't even get the budget to pay the salaries of good developers at these kinds of companies, for starters.

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

#277

Post by jillesvangurp » Fri, Jul 22, 2022, 2:43 AM UTC

Corporate stupidity and expensive consulting go hand in hand. It's easy to blame Accenture here but arguably, it's Hertz that messed up here. They should know better. Did people get fired over this? The CIO apparently left with a nice juicy big package. Probably that was no accident and the writing was on the wall around that time.

This level of spending and failure reeks of severe levels of incompetence, negligence, and stupidity. They probably have layers of management covering each other's asses. And now they are forking cash over to lawyers as well. Maybe the lawyers do better than the consultant, but either way, they'll get payed a lot. They'll squeeze them hard probably. Easier to point fingers at Accenture than to admit management and leadership was asleep at the wheel for years.

Of course, Accenture probably dropped the ball here as well. But what are they going to do when faced with a customer this dumb asking for all sorts of things and probably constantly moving the goal posts? Say no? Of course not.

So, they did the obvious thing: pick expensive enterprise solutions and dangle nice sounding buzzwords in front of the customer. Tell them what they want to hear basically. And then pick some boring/conservative technologies and go to work. Angular was still reasonably fashionable around the time and 25 year old "senior" Javascript "specialists" are a dime a dozen. So it's not surprising that that became a thing. And we're all so agile these days that you wouldn't believe it. Standard sales pitch and practice for the last 2 decades.

The reality is of course that Hertz signed up for classic waterfall complete with blueprints and everything and Accenture was smart enough to not go fixed rate here. Better still, Accenture was smart enough to realize that IBM, Oracle, and others also were in on the action so they did not take responsibility for any of that; only for their part. Classic recipe for lots of scope creep and budget overruns. Which of course happened and was probably encouraged to happen.

That CIO looks like he knew what he was doing. Big spending, fat pay check, and be gone and take the package when the shit hits the fan.

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

#278

Post by logosmonkey » Fri, Jul 22, 2022, 2:49 AM UTC

The hospital I work for just outsourced the majority of IT to Accenture in what I am sure will become one of the worst mistakes they have ever made. The 10% if us they kept are now going to be just doing cat herding work with all our contractors. It's..... a whole thing.

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

#279

Post by leesalminen » Fri, Jul 22, 2022, 3:02 AM UTC

SoftTalker wrote: post #242

treis wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Large companies do pay software vendors to fly out and deploy new browser based software at their locations. Deploying means training staff, hardware integrations, etc. I’ve had several clients over the years request this. If you have someone willing to fly out to do it for a fat bonus check, why not?

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

#280

Post by distances » Fri, Jul 22, 2022, 3:02 AM UTC

dustingetz wrote: post #261

illuminati1911 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

raise rates to what? from $260 per hour (USA) to $300? there’s only so much a client can optically tolerate, the proposals are already fine tuned to the same maximum as everyone else. same problem in legal industry, you can’t get the partner bill rate up to $5k/hr (how rude) but you can bill 10 associates to “research” at $500

I don't know where the parent worked, but I expect the rates are 120€-180€ (company billing, not your salary). It's just that most other companies pay smaller salaries as there traditionally was very few tech companies with competitive pay. It's been slowly improving though.