6 ms·

Gates Foundation suing Saama Technologies on claims of fraud and more

50 points by mkempe 9y ago

amelius 9y ago
> Gates Foundation sues Saama, billed $2.8M and built ‘nothing of value in return’ Please insert "which" in the title after the comma; otherwise it makes little sense.
anovikov 9y ago
Interesting, i never heard it was possible. Nearly every project built by a large organisation by contract for someone else which i was ever a part of, failed, and the stuff described here sounds very familiar. Sometimes it was even more than $2.8M, while more commonly, $500K-$1M. I haven't even heard of someone being sued for that.
- swalsh 9y ago
  I used to work for a company that built systems like this for other organizations on contract. I'd consider every project I worked on there a success. We always "under promised and over delivered". I think the key, as the contractor, is to get a good set of devs, to keep them happy, and to have a great project manager. When these types of projects fail, it's usually because management is having problems juggling resources, and under-bid on the project. Or they're selling junior devs as senior devs.
  - 11thEarlOfMar 9y ago
    There is a set of 'contract project ethics' out there, waiting to be codified. Sounds like this firm violated all of them. It reminds me of how the Affordable Care Act web interfaces were rolled out with overruns and delays. Both sides can cause issues, whether it's cycling entire teams through, or, repeatedly changing requirements, there are particular challenges in this type of business. From my view: - Be expert in the domain of the code you're delivering. Both project leadership and at least a portion of the devs. In one project I observed, the contractor was a professor, took a large contract, and hired 6 grad students to fulfill it. None of them had professional experience, let alone domain experience. Disaster ensued. - Don't let commercial concerns get in the way of project success. If you've underbid and the company can survive the loss, take it on the chin and learn from the mistake. If you can't survive the loss, sit down with the customer and say, "We underbid and we can't survive the loss." Show them where you are and give them a chance to increase the budget. If they don't, fall back on your contract terms and terminate the project. You have contract terms that allow you to terminate without cause, right? Choosing to reduce the team, bring in lower cost devs, or deliver unfinished or untested code simply makes a bad situation worse. Don't do it.
    - anovikov 9y ago
      Thing is, most of the time there is simply no chance for win-win here. If someone can manage developers himself - why hiring a company - just go and hire developers directly. If someone can't, he will be scammed by a company no matter what, because that's what these companies exist for, they can't make money otherwise (as developers can work directly and if they were any good, they would do so). This is also why it is so insanely hard to find contract for a company: clients are not fools. Not most of them, at least. Caveat: companies also know that and learned very well to pretend to be individual developers since recently. In essence, my experience leads me to conclusion that custom software development is evil and should not exist. There is no space for it to be win-win.
      - swalsh 9y ago
        I'm super confused about what the point you're trying to convey here is... but I'll try to comment from what I can understand of it. When you say "There is no good reason to hire a contractor", I'd disagree. There are a few excellent business reasons to do so. The first is you simply don't have that expertise in-house. The second is you have the expertise, but your resources are on other priorities. Hiring an outside firm can be a quick way to gain an asset with the custom features not available on the market with off the shelf software. Many companies do this custom contracting, and they do it successfully. My own experience is with a company that has done it successfully. Your own experience would appear to be with a firm that has been unsuccessful. There are so many factors that go into the success of a project, and your firm may not be organized in a way to allow you to be successful. There's nothing inherent to contracting itself that leads to failure.
        anovikov 9y ago
        No, hiring a contractor is OK. When you know who you hire, that this is a real person, and he does not outsource to Indians, and he's not a hidden company. Firm that has been unsuccessful - problem is, most of these firms were and are quite successful. Their clients aren't. PS: maybe i am just too burnt out and trying to prove myself that leaving custom development is a good idea.
  - mkempe 9y ago
    I also worked for such a company. We regularly delivered small and big software projects, without failing the clients. There were several factors involved, from excellent project and client management to a solid culture of engineering and other disciplines; thorough scope management, meaningful core values, ...
- tptacek 9y ago
  From the complaint, it sounds like the straw that broke the camel's back was Saama's continued unauthorized use of the Gates Foundation as a reference customer.
nikcub 9y ago
Interesting that the Gates Foundation have a former Saama employee co-operating with them: > For example, according to CW1, a Big Data/Analytics Lead, a certain segment of the Saama’s sales force involved in setting up the scope and pricing of projects routinely fails to involve the company’s delivery teams to determine whether what had been represented to customers can actually be delivered. CW1 describes these individuals as high-level employees who are “running the show.” 26. > CW1 further explained that these sales employees commit Saama to projects without knowing whether they are feasible and that, as a result, “a lot of bizarre situations” emerge, including “bad deliverables.”
jmkni 9y ago
Doing some quick Google-fu, they seem to have removed any mention of working with the Gates foundation from their website - https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site%3Asaama.com+%22gates%22&oq=site%3Asaama.com+%22gates%22&gs_l=psy-ab.3...12569.17733.0.17827.16.16.0.0.0.0.136.1415.12j4.16.0....0...1.1.64.psy-ab..2.6.594...0j46j0i67k1j0i10i67k1j0i131k1j0i46k1.0.MQQGLSNtyp0 https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site%3Asaama.com+%22gates%... There are still results on Google, but they either 404 or just have the Gates Foundation part removed!
gotrecruit 9y ago
the entire story sounds like the standard (not stereotypical) SOP with indian companies. without investigating further, i immediately can conclude Saama is another one of those software outsourcing companies that for all intents and purposes, are an Indian company, but they pretend to be American or European by setting up offices in other continents so that they can shake off their Indian stink. I'm speaking from personal experience. Several years ago, I undertook a large project worth mid 6-figures with a similar Indian outsourcing firm. The EXACT SAME THINGS happened - they overpromised on specs without even verifying with their developers if the timelines and specs were feasible, could not deliver anything of substantial value during each deliverable, kept changing the development team without informing me (which i found out from a disgruntled ex-employee of theirs later that it's because they do not actually allocate developers to a team full-time even when clients supposedly pay for FTE - full time equivalent because they cut costs by allocating employees to several teams at once), and finally when the project was "concluded", the eventual piece of software was unusable to the degree that when i applied for a US business visa based on the business that this software was used for, the consulate officer looked at the website and said "this website looks poorly built and doesn't seem like a real site. if i was just a regular customer, i wouldn't believe this was a real business." and rejected my application at least partially on that basis. I'm still rather bitter from that experience because it cost me a lot in personal funds and was a professional stumbling block for a while, but I guess reading this article gives me a bit of catharsis knowing it wasn't just my inexperience that caused me to be fleeced by the Indians. I'm extremely averse to professional relationships with any Indian person now, because on top of that experience, all my professional interactions with Indians have never been positive. They are excellent salesmen with no integrity, they will sell you anything with no regard for whether or not they can deliver, they will promise you the world so you will pay them, but once they get your money, you will see that they are all talk and no substance. I've tried to defeat my personal biases, especially after the terrible experience with the indian company, but every single time without fail, the indian person I try to work with, whether as a potential partner in a project or as an employee, would reveal their true colors of laziness and incompetency and often even dishonesty. The company I worked with in India is called Icreon. DO NOT WORK WITH THEM. They used the exact same tactics as Saama, they claim to work extensively with companies like National Geographic, HBO, etc but they're probably all failed projects that did not come to fruition. Looking at their site now, they are also employing the exact same strategy of trying to minimize their Indian roots, when in fact they are 100% Indian through and through. The simple fact that they're doing this should tell you a lot.
everdev 9y ago
It sounds like a bad situation, but at the same time if someone stopped your progress it would be easy to make a claim like 90% of the code "doesn't work". I'd find it much more compelling if they said "after paying the first installment, they only delivered 10% of the scope a year late"
- gondo 9y ago
  "The Gates Foundation terminated the contract in February 2017, after more than 18 months, with Saama close to a year behind schedule." they were almost a year behind a schedule. that is not the case of "stopped your progress", they had no progress to be stopped
  - everdev 9y ago
    Why did they keep paying?
british_india 9y ago
This is standard practice for Indian companies: promise professional work and deliver shit. I have never encountered an Indian company that diverged from that pattern.

50 points by mkempe 9y ago

> Gates Foundation sues Saama, billed $2.8M and built ‘nothing of value in return’ Please insert "which" in the title after the comma; otherwise it makes little sense.

anovikov 9y ago

Interesting, i never heard it was possible. Nearly every project built by a large organisation by contract for someone else which i was ever a part of, failed, and the stuff described here sounds very familiar. Sometimes it was even more than $2.8M, while more commonly, $500K-$1M. I haven't even heard of someone being sued for that.

swalsh 9y ago
I used to work for a company that built systems like this for other organizations on contract. I'd consider every project I worked on there a success. We always "under promised and over delivered". I think the key, as the contractor, is to get a good set of devs, to keep them happy, and to have a great project manager. When these types of projects fail, it's usually because management is having problems juggling resources, and under-bid on the project. Or they're selling junior devs as senior devs.
- 11thEarlOfMar 9y ago
  There is a set of 'contract project ethics' out there, waiting to be codified. Sounds like this firm violated all of them. It reminds me of how the Affordable Care Act web interfaces were rolled out with overruns and delays. Both sides can cause issues, whether it's cycling entire teams through, or, repeatedly changing requirements, there are particular challenges in this type of business. From my view: - Be expert in the domain of the code you're delivering. Both project leadership and at least a portion of the devs. In one project I observed, the contractor was a professor, took a large contract, and hired 6 grad students to fulfill it. None of them had professional experience, let alone domain experience. Disaster ensued. - Don't let commercial concerns get in the way of project success. If you've underbid and the company can survive the loss, take it on the chin and learn from the mistake. If you can't survive the loss, sit down with the customer and say, "We underbid and we can't survive the loss." Show them where you are and give them a chance to increase the budget. If they don't, fall back on your contract terms and terminate the project. You have contract terms that allow you to terminate without cause, right? Choosing to reduce the team, bring in lower cost devs, or deliver unfinished or untested code simply makes a bad situation worse. Don't do it.
  - anovikov 9y ago
    Thing is, most of the time there is simply no chance for win-win here. If someone can manage developers himself - why hiring a company - just go and hire developers directly. If someone can't, he will be scammed by a company no matter what, because that's what these companies exist for, they can't make money otherwise (as developers can work directly and if they were any good, they would do so). This is also why it is so insanely hard to find contract for a company: clients are not fools. Not most of them, at least. Caveat: companies also know that and learned very well to pretend to be individual developers since recently. In essence, my experience leads me to conclusion that custom software development is evil and should not exist. There is no space for it to be win-win.
    - swalsh 9y ago
      I'm super confused about what the point you're trying to convey here is... but I'll try to comment from what I can understand of it. When you say "There is no good reason to hire a contractor", I'd disagree. There are a few excellent business reasons to do so. The first is you simply don't have that expertise in-house. The second is you have the expertise, but your resources are on other priorities. Hiring an outside firm can be a quick way to gain an asset with the custom features not available on the market with off the shelf software. Many companies do this custom contracting, and they do it successfully. My own experience is with a company that has done it successfully. Your own experience would appear to be with a firm that has been unsuccessful. There are so many factors that go into the success of a project, and your firm may not be organized in a way to allow you to be successful. There's nothing inherent to contracting itself that leads to failure.
      - anovikov 9y ago
        No, hiring a contractor is OK. When you know who you hire, that this is a real person, and he does not outsource to Indians, and he's not a hidden company. Firm that has been unsuccessful - problem is, most of these firms were and are quite successful. Their clients aren't. PS: maybe i am just too burnt out and trying to prove myself that leaving custom development is a good idea.
- mkempe 9y ago
  I also worked for such a company. We regularly delivered small and big software projects, without failing the clients. There were several factors involved, from excellent project and client management to a solid culture of engineering and other disciplines; thorough scope management, meaningful core values, ...
tptacek 9y ago
From the complaint, it sounds like the straw that broke the camel's back was Saama's continued unauthorized use of the Gates Foundation as a reference customer.

nikcub 9y ago

Interesting that the Gates Foundation have a former Saama employee co-operating with them: > For example, according to CW1, a Big Data/Analytics Lead, a certain segment of the Saama’s sales force involved in setting up the scope and pricing of projects routinely fails to involve the company’s delivery teams to determine whether what had been represented to customers can actually be delivered. CW1 describes these individuals as high-level employees who are “running the show.” 26. > CW1 further explained that these sales employees commit Saama to projects without knowing whether they are feasible and that, as a result, “a lot of bizarre situations” emerge, including “bad deliverables.”

jmkni 9y ago

Doing some quick Google-fu, they seem to have removed any mention of working with the Gates foundation from their website - https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site%3Asaama.com+%22gates%22&oq=site%3Asaama.com+%22gates%22&gs_l=psy-ab.3...12569.17733.0.17827.16.16.0.0.0.0.136.1415.12j4.16.0....0...1.1.64.psy-ab..2.6.594...0j46j0i67k1j0i10i67k1j0i131k1j0i46k1.0.MQQGLSNtyp0 https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site%3Asaama.com+%22gates%... There are still results on Google, but they either 404 or just have the Gates Foundation part removed!

gotrecruit 9y ago

the entire story sounds like the standard (not stereotypical) SOP with indian companies. without investigating further, i immediately can conclude Saama is another one of those software outsourcing companies that for all intents and purposes, are an Indian company, but they pretend to be American or European by setting up offices in other continents so that they can shake off their Indian stink. I'm speaking from personal experience. Several years ago, I undertook a large project worth mid 6-figures with a similar Indian outsourcing firm. The EXACT SAME THINGS happened - they overpromised on specs without even verifying with their developers if the timelines and specs were feasible, could not deliver anything of substantial value during each deliverable, kept changing the development team without informing me (which i found out from a disgruntled ex-employee of theirs later that it's because they do not actually allocate developers to a team full-time even when clients supposedly pay for FTE - full time equivalent because they cut costs by allocating employees to several teams at once), and finally when the project was "concluded", the eventual piece of software was unusable to the degree that when i applied for a US business visa based on the business that this software was used for, the consulate officer looked at the website and said "this website looks poorly built and doesn't seem like a real site. if i was just a regular customer, i wouldn't believe this was a real business." and rejected my application at least partially on that basis. I'm still rather bitter from that experience because it cost me a lot in personal funds and was a professional stumbling block for a while, but I guess reading this article gives me a bit of catharsis knowing it wasn't just my inexperience that caused me to be fleeced by the Indians. I'm extremely averse to professional relationships with any Indian person now, because on top of that experience, all my professional interactions with Indians have never been positive. They are excellent salesmen with no integrity, they will sell you anything with no regard for whether or not they can deliver, they will promise you the world so you will pay them, but once they get your money, you will see that they are all talk and no substance. I've tried to defeat my personal biases, especially after the terrible experience with the indian company, but every single time without fail, the indian person I try to work with, whether as a potential partner in a project or as an employee, would reveal their true colors of laziness and incompetency and often even dishonesty. The company I worked with in India is called Icreon. DO NOT WORK WITH THEM. They used the exact same tactics as Saama, they claim to work extensively with companies like National Geographic, HBO, etc but they're probably all failed projects that did not come to fruition. Looking at their site now, they are also employing the exact same strategy of trying to minimize their Indian roots, when in fact they are 100% Indian through and through. The simple fact that they're doing this should tell you a lot.

everdev 9y ago

It sounds like a bad situation, but at the same time if someone stopped your progress it would be easy to make a claim like 90% of the code "doesn't work". I'd find it much more compelling if they said "after paying the first installment, they only delivered 10% of the scope a year late"

gondo 9y ago
"The Gates Foundation terminated the contract in February 2017, after more than 18 months, with Saama close to a year behind schedule." they were almost a year behind a schedule. that is not the case of "stopped your progress", they had no progress to be stopped
- everdev 9y ago
  Why did they keep paying?

british_india 9y ago

This is standard practice for Indian companies: promise professional work and deliver shit. I have never encountered an Indian company that diverged from that pattern.