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Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?

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Re: Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?

#741

Post by whstl »

doctor_eval wrote: post #707
whstl wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite. I never worked in those ERP companies, but a few times I've been on the receiving end, working at companies undergoing a large migration. It is very often stuff that doesn't really matter, is highly inefficient, and requires small changes everywhere in the system. Death by thousand papercuts. There is no incentive from both sides to change: the company wants to keep modifying to get $$$, employees don't wa…

Right. I’ve spent weeks creating automations in a business I knew very well, that would most likely save a few minutes per month for a low salary employee. But the RFP said I had to do it, and the customer insisted that I follow the letter of the RFP, rather than hit the high value parts of the project. The two problems with this are that the cost of automation far exceeded the possible future cost of the manual proc…

That’s a great point. Very often the cost of automating something in those large systems is larger than the cost of a minimum wage person spending a couple hours a day clicking stuff…

Re: Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?

#742

Post by Aerbil313 »

lloydatkinson wrote: post #708
rossant wrote: post #670

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, there are lawyers who have become experts on these cases and whose tireless work have helped hundreds of people. But that doesn't scale, there are tens of thousands of cases. The real solution will come when doctors fully update their knowledge, which may still take a decade or two.

Is is possible they don't want to update on that? It seems this is all some sadistic plot to make people guilty of invented crimes, I can't see what else it could be at this scale.

It’s just societal inertia, really. Average adult human being rarely changes his mind on anything.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?

#743

Post by talldatethrow »

morpheos137 wrote: post #685
talldatethrow wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a top 0.1% salesperson nationwide in car sales. I read a bunch of lean startup stuff, learned to make a minimum viable product, and then started selling to companies with 20-80 employees. I'm likable and good at selling, so I got 34 companies using this garbage I made. It's the worst nightmare ever to keep people motivated to use it, keep fixing things I made as a rookie developer, keep adding or saying no to f…

This is hilarious. Can you describe the product or what it does? Is it something to do with payroll, benefits, or HR?

Construction project management for a certain segment.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?

#744

Post by isakkeyten »

LaserDiscMan wrote: post #124

I once worked on an in-house ERP system which had been developed over about 15 years by various developers. It was the engine of the entire company, everything passed through it. The CFO and some senior leadership erroneously blamed it for their shortcomings/used it as a scapegoat. When new management took charge, an initiative was started to replace the system with an industry standard solution. Both myself and the…

I've been on the other side of this. Big company was under the impression they could ultimately save money by switching from an enterprise ERP solution that costed them hundres of thousands of dollars in licences with an inhouse one. The only problem was the ERP was carrying 90% of the company on it's shoulders and this would've been a horribly large task. I worked on it for 2 years with incompentent managers and slow progress. After I left the company they continued for another 2 and then quit that endevour. Wasting a shitload of money (think 10 devs + managers for 4 years...).

Re: Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?

#745

Post by seabass-labrax »

Biganon wrote: post #702
seabass-labrax wrote: post #676

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great blistering barnacles! That's quite a story. Would you mind posting the link to your site here? I'm very curious to see it.

Sure, it's https://www.ectoplasme.com/ (It's in French, should have mentioned that)

That's really impressive! I don't know enough French yet to really be able to use it, but the 'quiz without words' should still be relevant :)

Maybe consider posting your site as a 'Show HN' at some point?

Re: Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?

#746

Post by perryizgr8 »

rossant wrote: post #224

Well, this has nothing to do with programming and goes way beyond being merely "useless"; yet it might offer some perspective on your question and perhaps help you relativise things. There's a global industry involving thousands of healthcare professionals, lawyers, judges, police officers, and child protection workers who have spent 50 years prosecuting tens of thousands of parents and caregivers for allegedly shaki…

I firmly believe that there is no reason to take away a baby from its parents. You can jail the parents if they're convicted of a crime. But without doing that, you can't just separate the child from them.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?

#747

Post by thewileyone »

Had to deploy systems to 5 new remote destinations that the airline I worked at was going to start flying to. I was given 30 days to rollout, which is tight because we were starting from scratch with no infrastructure or equipment on hand. So had to rush order everything, paying premium prices, and had to sign contracts for internet access, etc. Because these 5 airports were not currently in service, had to ship equipment and implementation teams to deploy. Now, when I said remote, I mean they are not large locations so there were no local contractors available or available at extremely high costs.

Anyway, got everything and started up. The airline started operating to 2 airports and then after a month realized that it wasn't cost efficient to operate at any of these 5 airports. The cost to just cancel and remove the equipment was USD100,000, not including the cost of setting up in the first place. Total cost blown as USD250,000. Colossal waste of time.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?

#748

Post by throwway120385 »

sfpotter wrote: post #107
throwway120385 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only reason to give a damn about what you're working on is to make sure you're accumulating good bullet points for your resume.

There are actually companies to work for where you can get involved and develop ownership over things, and where how well you do relates to the success of the business. If you have a good relationship with your coworkers, you may even want to do a good job to try to maximize the likelihood that not just you keep putting bread on the table but they do, too! Crazier things have happened.

I've been in that situation before, but I'm starting to get to a point in my career where I've basically plateaued. And before you tell me that I just need to buckle down and re-engage, the company I'm currently at gives across the board 2-3% raises every year to their top performers and my team has delivered some really key strategic projects, so there's not really any point to doing anything else at this company. It doesn't meaningfully change my compensation.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?

#749

Post by meter »

datadrivenangel wrote: post #625
Cyberdog wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a web developer of 17 years, I'm dumbstruck at the idea that you're making three times as much doing this as you did at a damned defense contractor. They must have been totally chumping you.

If you're a skilled webdev at FANG, ~250k+ is trivial. Lots of defense contractors will try and pay their fresh meat 80k so they can make more money. Government gets really touchy about hourly rates per person, but has no problem with 'fair' hourly rates for many more people to do the job one person could and should do.

Your instinct is spot on.

I made 76k at the defense contractor.

I made 255k this year (6 years later).

Re: Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?

#750

Post by RoyalHenOil »

bpshaver wrote: post #732
baw-bag wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh my god, it isn't the same product but I was the user of a similar thing at an old job I had for 2 years only it was a slider from 1-10. I always chose 1 no matter how productive, happy or driven I felt. I remember that HR called me in because of this and in a round-about way said I can't just keep doing that as it was bringing the whole purpose of the system down. If I didn't want to interact with the system then…

So you refused to participate in the data collection effort and then you question what value it is supposed to provide? I understand if the data is not used or is used to falsely claim high employee satisfaction, but nothing you've said suggested these systems didn't start out as good faith efforts on the part of the company to track and improve employee job satisfaction. I don't see how your behavior isn't just chil…

Every employee answering that would have been lying and faking their numbers, most of them to try not to get into trouble or get a black mark on their name. This person just made it clear that their answers were fake and called attention to how unreliable the whole thing was. That is admirable; bad metrics SHOULD to have attention called to them.
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