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

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

#201

Post by nazka »

ctrager wrote: post #152
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.

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…

I’m not even sure insane match what you just described at that point.

Now I know someone that do that for the software for subparts of nuclear reactors and it’s exactly all the same. The specs, the time to review, the politics of hierarchy, the time to fix a simple bug (can take 2 weeks for a simple if)… But at least the specs are in a software.

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

#202

Post by dustingetz »

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.

did time contracting in medicaid, heard legends of $1100/hr java dev billing codes on big 5 contracts staffed by college hires (never saw first hand); also heard of big 5 contracts pass through 4 wrap layers of subsidiary (each raking 30% of whatever passed through) and end up staffed in india

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

#203

Post by buscoquadnary »

CommanderData wrote: post #193
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…

London has some of the biggest consultancy firms and I can confirm LinkedIn networks with these firms are majority newly grads. Nothing against them as we all started somewhere. I respect the ambition but part of me feels a newly grad that has recently done a CKA, Az-400, Az-104 just isn't going to know the real world or compete with someone who has been around pre-cloud and witnessed the transition, or have enough h…

Their purpose isn't to understand the cloud. It's to fill buzzword bingo and look good when some bloated company hires some mercenaries for their internal power politics.

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

#204

Post by Aeolun »

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…

> I bet you as Hertz had some competent technical folks who could have vetted them

They very likely did (and negatively), but no excecutive ever wants to hear that, so they just barrel ahead anyway. Because what do those lowly peons know, right?

Then there’s always the risk that the internal Hertz guys are just terrible and just trying to keep the contractors out to make sure they aren’t exposed.

From the executive side it’s hard too.

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

#206

Post by digitalsin »

I worked at a small company who bid on an RFP against Accenture back in 2000ish. We bid way lower than Accenture and we were already established at the state government agency with a great track record.

I remember while the proposal evaluation process was happening, Accenture sent their proposed PM to the town where the agency was based and he literally bought a house there to show Accenture's commitment to the agency. Of course he sold it after the project was awarded.

Accenture was awarded the contract, who then came to us and hired our company as a subcontractor to actually do most of the development work with the exception of the project management and two other devs. So the agency paid millions of dollars to get Accenture but in the end still got us essentially. Nice use of taxpayer dollars there.

On the plus side, since Accenture was so tight with Microsoft at the time, Microsoft got Accenture to agree to use .NET for that project which wasn't even publicly available yet..let alone complete. It would look good for Microsoft to show that a state agency had adopted .NET and they had planned to do a case study on the project. So we got to use .NET before many other developers. There was 0 documentation, so that was fun, but we got access to the actual MS devs working on the nuts and bolts of .NET. Fun times.

Accenture sucks.

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

#207

Post by javier2 »

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…

Worked for someone almost as cynical as this. We always had mixed in more senior people to keep things under control, but lots of newly grads. Tbf though, the client will also ok these people on the project, but they often have no clue about IT qualifications and only see the cheaper price tag compared to the more experienced. My company also tried to avoid such projects, but sometimes the money was too good or a strategic partner comes along.

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

#208

Post by Aeolun »

gumby wrote: post #127
DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Educate me: What does AEM do that a tweaked WordPress or Drupal (or even SharePoint Site Template) doesn't?

The modern version of "Nobody got fired for buying IBM" is "nobody got fired by using a brand name the boss recognizes". That is what AEM does that Drupal does not. The boss doesn't know what content management even is, but they have heard of Photoshop and Acrobat so AEM must be good.

Also, they’re paying millions a year just for the license. Nobody would do that if the product wasn’t best in class right?

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

#209

Post by gumby »

Aeolun wrote: post #208
gumby wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The modern version of "Nobody got fired for buying IBM" is "nobody got fired by using a brand name the boss recognizes". That is what AEM does that Drupal does not. The boss doesn't know what content management even is, but they have heard of Photoshop and Acrobat so AEM must be good.

Also, they’re paying millions a year just for the license. Nobody would do that if the product wasn’t best in class right?

Sadly, there’s a lot of truth in that!

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

#210

Post by jrvarela56 »

vsareto wrote: post #109
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…

The more stories I hear about this, the more I'm inclined to be an executive-asleep-at-the-wheel because apparently they get paid a lot, do a terrible job, and nothing happens to them.

It's nice if you only consider the end state. Since it's such a good deal, a lot of employees want it. The price execs paid to get there was to play corporate politics for 20 years.

I'll take an uncertain payoff as an entrepreneur or job as a developer over that - thanks for reminding me.

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