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Deloitte to refund the Australian government after using AI in $440k report

theguardian.com

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Re: Deloitte to refund the Australian government after using AI in $440k report

#81

Post by xmcqdpt2 »

Gigachad wrote: post #71
DrScientist wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To balance that with a positive comment - one of the reasons for going with a consultant/outsourcing is if you have a big one/off type project that you can't resource internally with perms. So the choice is trying to hire a bunch of individual contractors and forge them into a team, or hire a pre-built team for a period of time [1] [1] Sometimes it's sold as a re-built team - but in reality it might be hired in exact…

I just don’t see how this happens for government work though. Surely they have enough year round work to hire people in house for it.

In Canada the problem has mainly been that the government aren’t allowed or willing to pay software engineers enough to compete with industry, but they are allowed to spend seemingly arbitrary amounts of money on services provided by external firms.

To give an idea, we have a big scandal right now related to IBM and other contractors charging the Quebec government a lot of money for defective software for the car licensing and insurance website (SAAQClic). The final cost of the SAP based product was 1.1B CAD$. Meanwhile, they hired a new head of digital services at SAAQ, a job that would involve potentially dealing with future fallout from that fiasco, in addition to new projects etc. The posted salary range was 140k - 180k CAD$. I know many engineers in Quebec working on eg standard web applications etc making more money than that! They aren’t leading 1B$ product development!

Re: Deloitte to refund the Australian government after using AI in $440k report

#82

Post by gred »

fragmede wrote: post #38
rwaksmunski wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, when you have a bad idea you want to implement but don't want to take responsibility for it, you keep on hiring consultants until you hear what you want to hear. Quality of the consulting is irrelevant and interns or AI will do just fine. When the project inevitably implodes, you blame the consultant. Your own employees will give you advice on what's best for the company, not necessary what's best for you so yo…

it's a trope at this point. I'm the CEO and I don't really like it when the annoying guy down the hall tells me what to do, so I'm gonna spend $50,000 and have a team come in and interview everybody and then they'll tell me the same thing the annoying guy said, for years, but because they're outside consultants, I'll listen to them when they say it.

> they'll tell me the same thing the annoying guy said, for years, but because they're outside consultants, I'll listen to them when they say it

A tale as old as time:

> Jesus left there and went to his hometown, accompanied by his disciples. [...] Jesus said to them, "A prophet is not without honor except in his own town, among his relatives and in his own home." He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them. He was amazed at their lack of faith. (Mark 6:1-6)

Re: Deloitte to refund the Australian government after using AI in $440k report

#83

Post by AznHisoka »

rwaksmunski wrote: post #17
oytis wrote: post #3

Can someone explain to me how and why consulting works? If a man had no real skills except giving advice left and right, he would be considered a loser. Now make it a company, and corporations and governments queue up for their advice. Wouldn't your own employees be in a better position to give you advice than people who know nothing of your business and who's only skills are googling and making presentations?

Well, when you have a bad idea you want to implement but don't want to take responsibility for it, you keep on hiring consultants until you hear what you want to hear. Quality of the consulting is irrelevant and interns or AI will do just fine. When the project inevitably implodes, you blame the consultant. Your own employees will give you advice on what's best for the company, not necessary what's best for you so yo…

>> you keep on hiring consultants until you hear what you want to hear.

Sounds like a job that AI easily replaces

Re: Deloitte to refund the Australian government after using AI in $440k report

#84

Post by rcxdude »

DrScientist wrote: post #62
DrScientist wrote: post #59

While we are on the topic of listing problems with consultants/outsourcing - another potential problem is the A team/ B team switch. During initial engagement you are often talking to somebody who appears to actually know their stuff - you hire them and find that this knowledgable person has moved on to the next big sales, and you've got the B or C team.

To balance that with a positive comment - one of the reasons for going with a consultant/outsourcing is if you have a big one/off type project that you can't resource internally with perms. So the choice is trying to hire a bunch of individual contractors and forge them into a team, or hire a pre-built team for a period of time [1] [1] Sometimes it's sold as a re-built team - but in reality it might be hired in exact…

When I did engineering consultancy, the team was usually thrown together from whoever was available. Usually they knew each other at least a little but it wasn't exactly the same team on each project. But yeah, the team involved in the sale and the team involved in the execution often had very little overlap (though, sometimes it was the B-team selling something unachievable to the customer and then handing it over to the A-team, which has more or less the same effect as far as the client's concerned. The swapping isn't necessarily a deliberate act of subterfuge but more a consequence of how people's time was managed: clients would generally take some time to actually commit and it's not feasible to keep a team on standby for every sales lead).

Re: Deloitte to refund the Australian government after using AI in $440k report

#85

Post by rhetocj23 »

decimalenough wrote: post #64
DrScientist wrote: post #59

While we are on the topic of listing problems with consultants/outsourcing - another potential problem is the A team/ B team switch. During initial engagement you are often talking to somebody who appears to actually know their stuff - you hire them and find that this knowledgable person has moved on to the next big sales, and you've got the B or C team.

From my experience with using a $WITCH for a large support engagement, the A team woos you, the B team is what you get initially, and as soon as they think you've got your eye off the ball, they swap in the Z team. This was for a contract where we made it very clear that quality/skill was paramount and we would happily pay above market rates forever if they could maintain it. Of course they got greedy and lost the de…

That’s exactly how it works.

Re: Deloitte to refund the Australian government after using AI in $440k report

#86

Post by belter »

DrScientist wrote: post #59

While we are on the topic of listing problems with consultants/outsourcing - another potential problem is the A team/ B team switch. During initial engagement you are often talking to somebody who appears to actually know their stuff - you hire them and find that this knowledgable person has moved on to the next big sales, and you've got the B or C team.

I have heard this before, but my experience when working as Consultant, is that Customers will do a lot of diligence before accepting a substitute. Maybe these are Contractors and not Consultants? ;-)

Re: Deloitte to refund the Australian government after using AI in $440k report

#87

Post by malfist »

Intermernet wrote: post #61
protocolture wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would be surprised how many companies dont have the expertise in house. And of that set, you would be surprised how many make financial and technical decisions based on no expertise and get themselves into all sorts of trouble. You may also be surprised how many companies have 1 guy in house who pretends to be an expert and does his damned best to prevent people getting hired who might out them. Good consultants…

The thing is, the original problem is one that "the free market" would say should fail. That company, without the expertise required to do the job, should fail. Having consultants do anything in this situation is antithetical to the ideal of a company. The company should fail, OR, the consultants should advise that the company should either fail or gain the expertise to no longer require consultants. Obviously this i…

In no environment is hiring outside help mean your not qualified to exist.

Should a homeowner know how to replace a roof before they can own a house? Repair HVAC appliances, upgrade a switch label?

If I don't know how to make a CPU should I not be allowed to buy a laptop?

Hiring help from outside is how the free market works. Goods and _services_

Re: Deloitte to refund the Australian government after using AI in $440k report

#88

Post by jacquesm »

DrScientist wrote: post #59

While we are on the topic of listing problems with consultants/outsourcing - another potential problem is the A team/ B team switch. During initial engagement you are often talking to somebody who appears to actually know their stuff - you hire them and find that this knowledgable person has moved on to the next big sales, and you've got the B or C team.

That's the whole game. Meet the partner, get the juniors, pay for the partner. And if you're really unlucky you can spend your time educating the juniors.

Re: Deloitte to refund the Australian government after using AI in $440k report

#89

Post by cherrycherry98 »

oytis wrote: post #3

Can someone explain to me how and why consulting works? If a man had no real skills except giving advice left and right, he would be considered a loser. Now make it a company, and corporations and governments queue up for their advice. Wouldn't your own employees be in a better position to give you advice than people who know nothing of your business and who's only skills are googling and making presentations?

I've seen it where a project needs to get done but the company can't hire anyone for it due to firm wide hiring freezes. So in come the consultants to bang out a sloppy version 1. In the meantime you wait it out until you can hire a real team and gradually transition them in to rewrite what the consultants did. At least the company will have learned something from the consultants trying to implement the project. When your domain is complicated and has many dependencies there's some value in having anyone trying to figure that stuff out.

Of course, when the project is inevitably a late, half functioning, buggy mess you get to blame the consultants.

Re: Deloitte to refund the Australian government after using AI in $440k report

#90

Post by jacquesm »

Intermernet wrote: post #61
protocolture wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would be surprised how many companies dont have the expertise in house. And of that set, you would be surprised how many make financial and technical decisions based on no expertise and get themselves into all sorts of trouble. You may also be surprised how many companies have 1 guy in house who pretends to be an expert and does his damned best to prevent people getting hired who might out them. Good consultants…

The thing is, the original problem is one that "the free market" would say should fail. That company, without the expertise required to do the job, should fail. Having consultants do anything in this situation is antithetical to the ideal of a company. The company should fail, OR, the consultants should advise that the company should either fail or gain the expertise to no longer require consultants. Obviously this i…

There are so many different kinds of expertise, you can't have everything in house. The problem is that now you are going to have to hire someone for something that you are not qualified to do yourself, which almost automatically implies that you are not qualified to make that hire either. So everybody plays it safe and they hire the 'big names' because those have social proof, no matter how crap the actual interaction.
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