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

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

efinancialcareers.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 176 posts

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

#131

Post by konschubert »

V__ wrote: post #46
konschubert wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Revolut?

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…

I’d say that’s an issue with those companies but of course that doesn’t help the situation

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

#132

Post by nvm0n1 »

pmarreck wrote: post #45

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…

It's not that Germany is uniquely bad at software. It's that the USA is uniquely good.

A culture in which software people are considered to be really low status is pretty much the global default and is still common today, even in the US. I worked for American finance types before. They couldn't understand why programmers earned so much and why their software team couldn't be completely outsourced to India. They took perverse pride in having absolutely no idea what their own software stack actually did. Last time I checked they had got rid of the only people who were any good and then outsourced the rest (to India, of course), and apparently lost the ability to ship new versions of their software in the process. Even in the US many investment banks have totally dysfunctional IT, with the possible exception of Goldman which is famous for actually being good at it (although from reading the comments in this thread maybe that has changed?).

Why is there such a thing as a "tech" firm when all firms use tech? It's because tech firm is really meaning a firm created and run by programmers, as that's the only environment in which they can get respect and a productive setup. If it weren't the case companies like Amazon could never have existed because they'd have just been crushed by other better established retailers doing the internet well.

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

#133

Post by drooopy »

rft wrote: post #111
drooopy wrote: post #68

Perfectly sums up my experience dealing with the mess that is the IT of major German company in the automotive industry that I work for. Tons of mini-fiefdoms, each with its own strong-minded lord who has held that position for literal decades and who wants to expand their influence on other fiefdoms, an infrastructure where every single one of its components is incompatible and was never designed to work with anythi…

Yepp, we once spent about 1.5 hours in a meeting walking the org chart of such a company to figure out which 4 emails to 4 people (plus copious amounts of CCs just to add to the "urgency" and inbox bloat) I had to write to unblock the project after 2 or 3 unproductive weekly meetings. And I did that as an external supplier, I would have thought it was in their best interested to just collect what we need and get the…

If you guys had 3 different town halls in the past couple of years where 3 completely different strategies and visions for IT were discussed, then we are probably colleagues lol

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

#134

Post by mardifoufs »

zeisss wrote: post #67
kwant_kiddo wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I almost wrote a non-US company. In general I must say that working for tech in European firms vs US firms is night and day, but that is another discussion :)

Willing to elaborate a bit on this?

Not the person you asked but in my limited experience, tech is actually valued in the US. Sure, there is also a culture of MBAs and business types taking decisions, but they at least understand that tech is essential (regardless of the reason).

In Europe, tech is seen as "just IT" especially in non tech corporations. It's much less important than in the US.

It's a pretty minor thing but personally I think just the fact that I rarely see the distinction between "software engineering/development" and "IT" in Europe is pretty telling.

The salaries are also another indicator.

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

#135

Post by dacryn »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #116
drewda wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last I heard, Google staff use Concur to handle travel... there's no escaping SAP (and similarly frustrating enterprise software) in large corporations, even FAANG ones.

>Google staff use Concur to handle travel I mean what else should they use?

Zoho? Airbase? Rydoo?

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

#136

Post by FirmwareBurner »

febed wrote: post #49
pmarreck wrote: post #45

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…

Personal opinion as an outsider: Germany seems to be a very risk averse society. They love to plan everything a year in advance and hate surprises. Their lives are so ordered and predictable that they have an unconscious resistance to change, compared to other cultures.

> They love to plan everything a year in advance

Apart from energy independence and defense.

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

#137

Post by [deleted] »

Ingaz wrote: post #58
LaurensBER wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

German speaking financial institutions are a special kind of IT hell. Perhaps it's a cultural love for rules in combination with compliance that evolves in a hellish bureaucracy, perhaps it's something in the local beer. We can only speculate but I've never worked in an environment as dysfunctional as the ones I've seen at big German companies. To give a few examples: - Running all services under a single Linux accou…

I worked for a Swiss firm and never noticed anything strange. Both founders are German speaking. Good guys. Although that was a small firm not a giant

[deleted]

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

#139

Post by monetus »

LaurensBER wrote: post #52
arianvanp wrote: post #34

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…

German speaking financial institutions are a special kind of IT hell. Perhaps it's a cultural love for rules in combination with compliance that evolves in a hellish bureaucracy, perhaps it's something in the local beer. We can only speculate but I've never worked in an environment as dysfunctional as the ones I've seen at big German companies. To give a few examples: - Running all services under a single Linux accou…

For some reason, I think forcing the use of a word document in a PR is the funniest part of these anecdotes. Thanks for sharing.

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

#140

Post by Tommstein »

I was working for another bank a few years ago, and a recruiter for Deutsche hit me up about a role that sounded interesting, something pretty hardcore whose details I forget other than it involved C++. We finally get to the part about what they're looking to pay. Massive pay cut over what I was already making. The recruiter assured me they'd see if they could maybe possibly get me a slightly less massive pay cut. Never heard back. I assume they either never filled that role, or eventually found someone to take it who couldn't get a job anywhere else and was about to be homeless. Hearing that they're a shitshow internally does not surprise. Sometimes you get what you pay for.
Post reply on HN