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I've worked with Venda (for two separate companies) and met Dan Wagner and their platform is truly an awful piece of software, and the man himself isn't much be

by unfunco 11y ago

I've worked with Venda (for two separate companies) and met Dan Wagner and their platform is truly an awful piece of software, and the man himself isn't much better, my job was basically to find methods of subverting the software in order to do what our marketing team wanted. It's roughly £6k per month, and account management is slow to respond and it's very difficult to do anything meaningful with the technology. One of the companies is still with Venda with the intention of moving away, and one moved to DemandWare after roughly a year. Powa is Venda's answer to Shopify, trying to capture the smaller market, the software, and the management, was never good enough to compete.

base 11y ago
Some years ago Venda was sending C&D letters and suing any startup that had "vend" on their name: Alvenda, Vendder, Vendr etc. Overall an awful company. https://dockets.justia.com/search?parties=Venda%2C+Inc&cases=mostrecent https://dockets.justia.com/search?parties=Venda%2C+Inc&cases...
dijit 11y ago
I worked /for/ Venda in their platform operations team in London, and everything in the original article is as true for Venda as it is for Powa. We had herman miller aeron chairs and a prime piece of real estate in central london (by the Noel Coward theatre) but had never turned a profit, the Venda application was 2million lines of perl that could "sustain" 1 hit every 30 seconds, so most of my job was maintaining expansive arrays of caching systems. The upper executives and thick layer of middle management were smarmy and entitled, and the operations staff took it as a challenge and a matter of personal pride to make it work "Smooth seas do not make skilled sailors" was a common motto. I was once publicly berated for helping a customer on the phone because the management wanted to bill time for what was literally a 30 second change (I did it WHILE on the phone with them). They do a good job of soaking up all the perl developers in London though. also, FWIW: they sold the company to someone shortly after I left, it may be better managed now, but I can't be sure.
- unfunco 11y ago
  I visited the office a few times between maybe 2008 and 2012, if you were working there then, we likely were in the same room at some point. I can't remember the exact syntax, but I used to find it hilarious that each Venda tag had to have a unique label, and since the code was notoriously difficult to navigate, everyone just ended up using random numbers and hoping that it wasn't used elsewhere. <venda_something label=5318008> ... </venda_something>

by unfunco 11y ago

base 11y ago

Some years ago Venda was sending C&D letters and suing any startup that had "vend" on their name: Alvenda, Vendder, Vendr etc. Overall an awful company. https://dockets.justia.com/search?parties=Venda%2C+Inc&cases=mostrecent https://dockets.justia.com/search?parties=Venda%2C+Inc&cases...

dijit 11y ago

I worked /for/ Venda in their platform operations team in London, and everything in the original article is as true for Venda as it is for Powa. We had herman miller aeron chairs and a prime piece of real estate in central london (by the Noel Coward theatre) but had never turned a profit, the Venda application was 2million lines of perl that could "sustain" 1 hit every 30 seconds, so most of my job was maintaining expansive arrays of caching systems. The upper executives and thick layer of middle management were smarmy and entitled, and the operations staff took it as a challenge and a matter of personal pride to make it work "Smooth seas do not make skilled sailors" was a common motto. I was once publicly berated for helping a customer on the phone because the management wanted to bill time for what was literally a 30 second change (I did it WHILE on the phone with them). They do a good job of soaking up all the perl developers in London though. also, FWIW: they sold the company to someone shortly after I left, it may be better managed now, but I can't be sure.

unfunco 11y ago
I visited the office a few times between maybe 2008 and 2012, if you were working there then, we likely were in the same room at some point. I can't remember the exact syntax, but I used to find it hilarious that each Venda tag had to have a unique label, and since the code was notoriously difficult to navigate, everyone just ended up using random numbers and hoping that it wasn't used elsewhere. <venda_something label=5318008> ... </venda_something>