Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

henricodolfing.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 422 posts

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

#321

Post by CommanderData »

illuminati1911 wrote: post #230
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.

They are not happy to pay for shit, but they are tricked into thinking that they can get same quality from India outsourcing as from actual professional devs/companies. Later they get angry and then they'll go to court. The order is following: 1) Sales people 2) Developer 3) Lawyers

I've seen it repeatedly, how they think you'll get the same quality product outsourced to the cheapest consultancy in India is beyond me.

The business never learn and if it wasn't for experienced DevOps managers intervening they'd still use sweatshop devs that barely speak English on their first gig.

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

#322

Post by NonNefarious »

_tik_ wrote: post #285
rozenmd wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

24 year olds? Since when are they sending the senior consultants out on engagements like this! I lasted not even 6 months working in professional services, really woke me up to what "prestigious careers" really are.

Andersen Consulting/Accenture is my first job. Accenture directly sends me to the client after finishing my orientation program and 2-3 days of training. On my first day arrived at the client side for some initial discussion. I saw everyone standing with anxious faces and suddenly everyone spontaneously laughing. On lunch time, the client told me this was their first time engaging a big consultant firm and they did n…

"Orientation program?" Did they not send you to CAPS in St. Charles?

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

#324

Post by NonNefarious »

Yep, and the U.S. government paid Deloitte way more for a vaccine-registration site that never went live: https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/01/30/1017086/cdc-44-m...

I worked for Andersen, Price Waterhouse, and a couple smaller firms after that. The stuff I saw induced anxiety in me on behalf of the client. If you actually showed initiative and did your job too thoroughly, they had no idea what to do with your work product.

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

#325

Post by oars »

rozenmd wrote: post #48
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…

24 year olds? Since when are they sending the senior consultants out on engagements like this! I lasted not even 6 months working in professional services, really woke me up to what "prestigious careers" really are.

LOL!

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

#326

Post by [deleted] »

listenallyall wrote: post #314
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…

Just curious, but in the 1980's, what viable alternatives did you have to pen and paper? Did Visio exist? Did any flowchart tools exist, for DOS? For Apple ][? If they did, could you navigate, or print, a hundreds-to-thousands page flowchart in one of those OS'es?

[deleted]

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

#327

Post by golergka »

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…

And that's why you shouldn't be that afraid of competing against them as a startup.

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

#328

Post by kimi »

NonNefarious wrote: post #322
_tik_ wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Andersen Consulting/Accenture is my first job. Accenture directly sends me to the client after finishing my orientation program and 2-3 days of training. On my first day arrived at the client side for some initial discussion. I saw everyone standing with anxious faces and suddenly everyone spontaneously laughing. On lunch time, the client told me this was their first time engaging a big consultant firm and they did n…

"Orientation program?" Did they not send you to CAPS in St. Charles?

St Charles. This brings back memories. I fly in at like 9pm and there is nothing open to eat, at all. Only one slice of leftover pizza at the "social centre", and it did taste like cardboard.

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

#329

Post by NonNefarious »

kimi wrote: post #328
NonNefarious wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Orientation program?" Did they not send you to CAPS in St. Charles?

St Charles. This brings back memories. I fly in at like 9pm and there is nothing open to eat, at all. Only one slice of leftover pizza at the "social centre", and it did taste like cardboard.

Ever go to Scotland Yard? The one bar in town. Some CLMs (career-limiting moves) took place there (not perpetrated by me).

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

#330

Post by scruple »

lowercased wrote: post #104
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…

> 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…

> Why does this step always come last?

Sometimes comes first but the outcome is the same regardless.

I was once brought in to sit on early discussions with a consulting group. I pointed out very real problems with their ideas about how to solve our problem. That was on the morning of day 1. I was explicitly uninvited before day 2 for "not being a team player."

3 years later we were in court suing this consulting group for millions.

Post reply on HN