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"People would legitimately be surprised to learn how low tech ordering/invoicing/remittances remain in 2017 even for half billion dollar contracts." People in

"People would legitimately be surprised to learn how low tech ordering/invoicing/remittances remain in 2017 even for half billion dollar contracts." People in finance / accounting hate tech. Broad statement, I know... but if it's not Excel or whatever old and busted reporting system they have been using for the last 20 years, you know they are going to hate it and raise a huge stink if anyone tries to even upgrade them. This has been true for every company I have ever worked with. You say, "You are on a version that's 12 years old, and riddled with bugs and security flaws. The software maker put out an end of life notice back in 2008 for this version and has a big warning sign saying that continuing to use it is very dangerous and opens you up to hackers. Also, even though we have backups, we have no idea how to re-install it should something fail... we don't even have documentation on what service packs it requires to run and we're terrified someone will accidentally run Windows Update on the machine it's on for fear of breaking something..." Their response, "The new version changes the color of the button I use, so I don't want it." Every time. Anyone work for an agency and have to track your time in the Project Management system and the Accounting systems? This is why. Old-ass, no-API systems that simply won't play nice with anything modern -- and the accountants who love them.

shitgoose 10y ago
users refuse to upgrade because they know, that the new version will change the navigation, button colors, move menu items to ribbons and so on. not to mention it will contain new bugs and "features". see, users and devs have different perspectives. for user the software is the tool to perform a profit-generating business task (create invoice etc). for devs the software is a way of self-expression and an opportunity to change things because they can. devs despise user and his little business problems as much as business despises tech with its constant desire to storm into the room and start breaking things that were working perfectly fine before.
- aeorgnoieang 10y ago
  Seems like there's an opportunity ripe for exploiting then! Figure out how much it's worth to these companies to provide just enough support to keep the software running – as-is – forever. Certainly that should be easier than also changing the UX or whatever. But how hard is this? I imagine it'd be a lot harder than one might naively expect. As evidence, consider how few (if any?) companies already do this. Maintaining software requires significant work; doing so for more than one version is even harder; doing so for a decade-old version that only one customer uses is probably just not profitable. But, as a dev myself, I emphatically don't "despise user and his little business problems". I may tho – honestly – tell 'business' people or users that I can't guarantee that I can fix bugs because, e.g. I can't purchase a license for the (version of the) software needed to work with the project source code. It's perfectly fine for people to run software unchanged forever! As it is also perfectly fine for those same people to have to rebuild their business or a portion thereof around some new software when the existing software system fails catastrophically and can't be recovered.
  - dbg31415 10y ago
    Good luck with that... the problem, as I see it, is every company is different. So you take 10 agencies, and you get 10 different core software platforms, and even when the platforms overlap, they are using various point-release versions that each of the the top-mother-hen-accountants just loves and won't let you touch. She doesn't care if it's hard to support, insecure, or if it's fundamentally unrecoverable if there's a catastrophic disaster -- she just wants what she wants. No amount of offering of features, or give time to training her staff will suffice. You'd need a dedicated staff of software devs, QA team, and IT support staff for each client. I don't mean to be so cynical here... but it's like every agency / startup with 50-500 people that I've ever been at. You're stuck on the old crappy system until they change the accountants... you've got a very limited window when the top accountant / CFO changes that you can actually push to enact technology changes. If the new accountant is over 40... just forget about it, you're going to be stuck on tech that reeks of 90s UX that simply won't integrate or sync or even allow you to do batch imports / exports of the data (we tried with one of these old systems and hit an issue where they recorded time in like 7 places in the DB and if you didn't update them in the right order the system freaked out... suffice to say we didn't have the staff to build and test and support any integrations). I still have one client who insists all of my expense reports be printed out. I can't just scan and email, I have to send paper copies of everything... I work remote, so... I'm literally mailing them in, waiting like 2 months, then -- assuming I filled everything out correctly and tagged it with the correct project code -- I get paid. This is a company with over 300 employees... and again, with them, I have to track my time in the Project Management Tools and the Accounting Tools... and the Accounting Tools to track time only work on Windows (but not Windows 10), so I have to fire up a specific VM to get Windows 7 (with the right service pack) to enter my time. Also the Accounting Project Codes are different from the Project Management project codes. It's such crap. I expensed them for a copy of Windows 7, made a backup of that image and expense them for offsite storage (incase Windows Update accidentally runs), expense them for overnight tracked postage, and I charge them like an hour for the week just to add my time -- and they have 300 employees! It's so freakin' expensive and moronic to let the accountants run anything... /rant
    - moftz 10y ago
gpawl 10y ago
If your old version was riddled with security flaws, and your priority was to mess with the UI colors, I have no confidence that your new version is less riddled with security flaws
- jessaustin 10y ago
  When the users and purchasers are the same group of people, and both groups are morons, why would you ever fix a security flaw?

shitgoose 10y ago

users refuse to upgrade because they know, that the new version will change the navigation, button colors, move menu items to ribbons and so on. not to mention it will contain new bugs and "features". see, users and devs have different perspectives. for user the software is the tool to perform a profit-generating business task (create invoice etc). for devs the software is a way of self-expression and an opportunity to change things because they can. devs despise user and his little business problems as much as business despises tech with its constant desire to storm into the room and start breaking things that were working perfectly fine before.

aeorgnoieang 10y ago
Seems like there's an opportunity ripe for exploiting then! Figure out how much it's worth to these companies to provide just enough support to keep the software running – as-is – forever. Certainly that should be easier than also changing the UX or whatever. But how hard is this? I imagine it'd be a lot harder than one might naively expect. As evidence, consider how few (if any?) companies already do this. Maintaining software requires significant work; doing so for more than one version is even harder; doing so for a decade-old version that only one customer uses is probably just not profitable. But, as a dev myself, I emphatically don't "despise user and his little business problems". I may tho – honestly – tell 'business' people or users that I can't guarantee that I can fix bugs because, e.g. I can't purchase a license for the (version of the) software needed to work with the project source code. It's perfectly fine for people to run software unchanged forever! As it is also perfectly fine for those same people to have to rebuild their business or a portion thereof around some new software when the existing software system fails catastrophically and can't be recovered.
- dbg31415 10y ago
  Good luck with that... the problem, as I see it, is every company is different. So you take 10 agencies, and you get 10 different core software platforms, and even when the platforms overlap, they are using various point-release versions that each of the the top-mother-hen-accountants just loves and won't let you touch. She doesn't care if it's hard to support, insecure, or if it's fundamentally unrecoverable if there's a catastrophic disaster -- she just wants what she wants. No amount of offering of features, or give time to training her staff will suffice. You'd need a dedicated staff of software devs, QA team, and IT support staff for each client. I don't mean to be so cynical here... but it's like every agency / startup with 50-500 people that I've ever been at. You're stuck on the old crappy system until they change the accountants... you've got a very limited window when the top accountant / CFO changes that you can actually push to enact technology changes. If the new accountant is over 40... just forget about it, you're going to be stuck on tech that reeks of 90s UX that simply won't integrate or sync or even allow you to do batch imports / exports of the data (we tried with one of these old systems and hit an issue where they recorded time in like 7 places in the DB and if you didn't update them in the right order the system freaked out... suffice to say we didn't have the staff to build and test and support any integrations). I still have one client who insists all of my expense reports be printed out. I can't just scan and email, I have to send paper copies of everything... I work remote, so... I'm literally mailing them in, waiting like 2 months, then -- assuming I filled everything out correctly and tagged it with the correct project code -- I get paid. This is a company with over 300 employees... and again, with them, I have to track my time in the Project Management Tools and the Accounting Tools... and the Accounting Tools to track time only work on Windows (but not Windows 10), so I have to fire up a specific VM to get Windows 7 (with the right service pack) to enter my time. Also the Accounting Project Codes are different from the Project Management project codes. It's such crap. I expensed them for a copy of Windows 7, made a backup of that image and expense them for offsite storage (incase Windows Update accidentally runs), expense them for overnight tracked postage, and I charge them like an hour for the week just to add my time -- and they have 300 employees! It's so freakin' expensive and moronic to let the accountants run anything... /rant
  - moftz 10y ago

gpawl 10y ago

If your old version was riddled with security flaws, and your priority was to mess with the UI colors, I have no confidence that your new version is less riddled with security flaws

jessaustin 10y ago
When the users and purchasers are the same group of people, and both groups are morons, why would you ever fix a security flaw?