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I was the entire IT staff for Linescape (linescape.com) for its first 4 years. I was somewhat flabbergasted at the level of IT the industry was at in 2008 - 199
by dfraser992 11y ago
I was the entire IT staff for Linescape (linescape.com) for its first 4 years. I was somewhat flabbergasted at the level of IT the industry was at in 2008 - 1990s at best. The industry was still trying to decide if XML was useful vs EDIFACT (straight from the 1970s) for transmitting shipping schedules. It was interesting work though, I had some very good insights into where the industry could go / was going to go and we could had made some bleeding edge improvements in terms of IT (e.g. the use of graph databases to model shipping routes and calculating various things) We could have been the first to market with a SaaS / API for dealing with shipping schedules, but management fiddled around and Maersk beat us to the punch.
Unfortunately the founders of Linescape have absolutely zero ethics and ripping off customers (and those working for the company) was more important than anything else. I only later found out about the criminal record of one of them which explains the reluctance to go find investment money. It was a classic cautionary tale about the startup ecosystem (vet the people you're doing business with / working for very carefully) and the lack of business ethics so prevalent (aka Uber et al) The CEO and his now ex-wife are now fighting over the company...
The thing was, none of the drama was necessary! We could have really made something of the company. But capitalism these days...