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Deutsche Bank's “dysfunctional” IT division (2018)

efinancialcareers.co.uk

81–90 of 176 posts

Re: Deutsche Bank's “dysfunctional” IT division (2018)

#81

This is not surprising at all, and is not specific to Deutsche Bank or even banking in general. This is a property of large, bloated legacy companies in any field. IT is still seen as a cost center and a secondary concern rather than the enabler of their business. As a result, pay/resources and "political capital" (for the lack of a better word) are allocated accordingly. IT folks there aren't given the pay nor recog…

there are a whole array of "neobanks" in Australia, a few of which have been bought out by large incumbents and their IT platforms subsumed into the colossus or whatever.

I can hazard a guess why this hasn't happened in Germany but I don't want to make assumptions based on stereotypes, lol.

Re: Deutsche Bank's “dysfunctional” IT division (2018)

#83
Deutsche Bank was one of the first places I worked at, closer to its heyday, I absolutely loved it. But it has been in decline for years, and has a lot of management issues, and fiefdoms.

One of my favorite stories to retell is my wife had a job there also and she had a medical issue from a car wreck. Her boss said the bank couldn’t function if she was doing physical therapy two hours a week, basically fired her, all the paperwork was drawn up, sent to a manager in London to sign. The manager in London was “too important” to sign things so he just leaves it for someone else to rubber stamp in his name the next day. Meanwhile my wife goes across the street (literally), gets a doctor to sign her disability paperwork, walks it into HR - and instead of doing physical therapy two hours a week she was on paid medical leave for almost a year. Her termination paperwork did get signed eventually but because she was on a protected leave they had to throw it out.

Re: Deutsche Bank's “dysfunctional” IT division (2018)

#84
post #38

Yeh you notice it as a customer. I can't choose a password for my account; instead they assigned me a 6-digit PIN (Not kidding. A PIN). When I registered my account at a local branch I gave them my dutch phone number. Their website's transaction page wouldn't load due to a JavaScript parsing error over the dutch phone number format. I called customer support and they basically reacted as if water was burning. They wo…

That just sounds like a normal day of interacting with basic German IT infrastructure. It's all the same.

To be honest, average American IT infrastructure is the same; the larger the business, the worse it seems to be. Large tech companies like Google are outliers.

Re: Deutsche Bank's “dysfunctional” IT division (2018)

#86
post #74
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a UK bank with a Lithuanian subsidiary. Which is fine, but means you don't have a German account number, nor an easy way to sue/contact if legal problems arise. The latter is rather unlikely to be a concern, but the former might be a pain to deal with, depending on your customers. A lot of companies have rules which require double-checking every transfer to non-German accounts. Suddenly, your payments take a few…

N26 is German fwiw similar to Revolut

N26 is not for corporations (GmbH, UG) so cannot be used for most startups. they have poor ratings.

I tried Finom, but the experience was abysmal. They behave like some sort of shady porn subscription, not a place I would want to entrust my money with.

I’m not sure about giving money to these Neobanks. They’re not really cheaper, and have so many downsides.

Re: Deutsche Bank's “dysfunctional” IT division (2018)

#87
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most likely it's a lack of talent, and lack of political will to actually take IT seriously.

>Most likely it's a lack of talent Lack of talent is not a national issue in Germany. German unis and schools produces great devs, along with the slef-taught "hackers" and tinkerers which are quite numerous there. The whole "talent shortage" in Germany is propaganda from shitty companies engaging in wage suppression, and actually a shortage of pay that keeps decent devs away from such companies. It's more the lack of…

Developer hoping for management to use Jira? Now I've seen it all.

Just kidding, nightmarish as it is, beats emails and excel for sure.

Re: Deutsche Bank's “dysfunctional” IT division (2018)

#88

As a firstborn American nerd with 100% German ancestors, it’s basically been frustrating my entire life to watch Germany whiff on basically any computer- or Internet-related technology. I can't even attribute it to the language barrier since they're all taught English at an early age. Perhaps it's that old German pride/hubris/NIH? “Stolz”… They’re a very smart people, not sure what gives. Perhaps a lack of respect fo…

One thing to consider: Germany has a rapidly aging population so it naturally gets more unlikely to fund and get success with new technology. Imagine trying to develop some shiny new app in a country where over a quarter of the population is 60+ and most people refuse to pay cashless let alone accept any other new tech.

Re: Deutsche Bank's “dysfunctional” IT division (2018)

#89
post #25

They acquired Postbank (where I have an account) some years ago. Postbank had a reputation for good IT. Now they are consolidating their online banking system... Of course, on the bad system of Deutsche Bank. It's a huge mess. I need to log into two different systems for credit card and bank account things. They mailed me account statements for the timeframe of one day once and for a few days another time. I never ge…

Uh oh, I was considering opening an account with them… actually they couldnt in July, because of their IT transition. Maybe I‘ll pick a different one. Any recommendations for a good Business Account in Germany?

I use Volksbank and I’m really happy.

Re: Deutsche Bank's “dysfunctional” IT division (2018)

#90
post #16

Even though this is from 2018, it was and still is completely applicable to every other investment bank out there. Investment banking organizational structures are set up such that bureaucracy encourages 'silos' where teams can deliver quicker if they don't depend on other teams, and performance related pay dominates the managers (managing directors) thinking. Having worked at Megabank, it ran at least one system on…

DB was running LotusNotes instead of Outlook well into the 2010s.

So did McKinsey ;)
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