6 ms·

This is mostly a PR move. I currently work at DB, I can say that they make it look nice from the outside, but when you get here what you find is a large mess. I

This is mostly a PR move. I currently work at DB, I can say that they make it look nice from the outside, but when you get here what you find is a large mess. It's a big difference between a bank and a company that actually ships software. Most of the work here is done in interfacing systems together, and moving data from one place to another. There is no focus on quality, just patching things together and making them work. This is no surprise when a lot of work is done by contractors hired for 6-12 months. Software and tools are old , but I guess this is a know fact. There is a lot of duplication, there are usually 3-4 systems that can do the same thing, when a high level executive decides that then need to create a new one from scratch. Sure there are exceptions, there are people who work on trading algorithms, but these are rare occasions. These are some of my impressions after some time spent at DB, sorry if it sounds too negativistic.

Horusiath 9y ago
This is not only a DB specific, a whole banking industry works like that. Systems that have <10 years are considered new ones. To keep things working, just produce 5x more services created solely to move data from one place to another. No focus on programming discipline or sense of purpose and constant fear to change anything, because that could break things and we have not enough tests or monitoring infrastructure to even detect that. But in finances, IT is not on a focus. After all, we're just a "cost center" ;)
- nurettin 9y ago
  This is my exact experience while integrating with ERP systems in at least four global firms. Except I'd change the phrase "not enough tests or monitoring" to "no tests or monitoring except the ones I wrote".
- posterboy 9y ago
  It's a fact that you can't ever have enough tests, because, for one, the tests are not tested.
  - eru 9y ago
    That's funny in practice. But does not have to be a problem in principle. There are ways to test your tests (in a way that does not lead to an infinite regress), and alternatively you can also prove your tests correct; or just use plain old code review.
  - Smurfix 9y ago
    Of course the tests are tested – by the code they're covering, which is also covered by other tests.
- incompatible 9y ago
  I heard some banks still did crazy things like calculating mortgage payments with spreadsheets.
  - osullivj 9y ago
    Spreadsheets are heavily used in all financial sectors. Personally I've connected many trader developed pricing spreadsheets to etrading systems at investments banks. Last year I was contracting for a large UK mortgage lender who used spreadsheets for all their product dev & spec. Spreadsheets enable bankers to move quicker than bespoke or vendor supplied solutions, hence their enduring popularity.
    - eru 9y ago
      Any complicated spreadsheet might be a bug ridden mess, but at least it's one the finance guys understand and can augment themselves. Alternatively they could wait for in-house IT to take a few years and millions of pounds (add going running over schedule and budget, too) to produce a bug ridden mess that misses.
      - dsfyu404ed 9y ago
        >but at least it's one the finance guys understand and can augment themselves. And more importantly it enables the "money people" and the "1s and 0s people" to work together throughout the software life-cycle. When the people who input the data understand what's going in and the people who read the output know what should come out the black box in the middle is a lot easier to create and maintain.
      - lmkg 9y ago
        Programmers tend to look at shitty programs and imagine better ways that it could have been done... In practice the competitor to a shitty program is not a better program, but no program at all. Even shitty software can still make the world a better place, and the preponderance of half-assed bug-ridden brain-dead garbage software should be seen as a good thing.
- einrealist 9y ago
  I can underwrite this. I am currently working for a(nother) bank. And I want to add that a lot of the legacy systems, procedures and thought processes stem from the misinterpretation of regulations. When a bank gets a new regulation on their table, they tend to create a department that compartmentalizes the subject within the organisation. That's how we get the exact opposite of what the Agile mindset is. And that's also how we get organisations where nobody wants to work in, except if the pay or day rates are high enough to excuse any suffering. And that's how bad, bloated software is created.
- usr1106 9y ago
  This is not banking specific, the whole SW industry works like that. I have worked over 20 years in a couple of companies, where SW was an essential part of our products. Yet the quality has never been good, it's a bloat of solving similar problems again and again. Architecture is a mess, even if there are n architects who can present nice diagrams. (I have seen n=1 and n>30, but the fundamental problem is the same)
  - usr1106 9y ago
    To extend my thoughts a bit. Yes, I believe that some sectors might be worse than others. There are metrics and tools provided by the Software Engineering discipline to measure quality of architecture or code. However, they have remained mostly academic. There is no standard metric, which is widely accepted to be useful. And even if some rare(?) company might systematically measure their code base, they don't put the results in the their home page and not even in the contract with their customer. As long as that does not change, it's just more or less educated feeling where the situation might be better or worse than elsewhere.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
kenborge 9y ago
Working for multiple banks in a another country, i can confirm that this might as well have been written by someone here. It's the same everywhere.
- eru 9y ago
  I heard Goldman Sachs is a bit more on the ball.
gadders 9y ago
It seems more like a move to get people to standardise on the DB code as a means to send trading instructions via Symphony,
indescions_2017 9y ago
Day to day traditional banking operations will be slow to innovate. Partially due to the regulatory burden as you describe. But also the perception there is little financial upside for the investment. Outside of that however change is happening. And you will see new products coming out of "Innovations" groups operating entrepreneurially. My colleagues at WF and JPMC are busy experimenting with distributed ledger tech, mobile payments, global micro credit, and other "fintech." And the rollout of Zelle, instant peer-to-peer cash transfers, happened in weeks not months. Literally I was invited to participate in a beta program around the beginning of summer and a few days later billboards advertising the service started popping up around town ;)
- longerthoughts 9y ago
  It's worth stressing your point on perceived limitations of financial upside. I work for what is effectively a fintech business within a large financial firm and this is a constant hindrance to innovation because investment tends toward short term gains. I think it really comes down to how low the bar is set for software used by financial institutions with respect to originality and pushing boundaries. There's simply not much pressure to do extraordinary things because clients are accustomed to such laborious, outdated systems and processes. I hear a lot of fluffy talk about leveraging modern technologies and being pioneers but when it comes to building out teams and buying into exciting projects, leadership can't seem to find their wallets unless a client has specifically asked for something. You mentioned that your colleagues are working on things that break this mold - I won't try to speak for their companies, but in my experience those sorts of experimental projects (e.g. distributed ledger tech) tend to be wildly underfunded and consequently don't deliver much beyond an overblown, hype-building press release.
- jdmichal 9y ago
  It's probably worth noting that Zelle was mostly a rebranding of an existing service: clearXchange. Or, rather, a branding, as prior to the Zelle name, no one advertised the underlying clearXchange network. I strongly agree with your general point. Just like any extremely large business, there's small sects pushing forward in various ways, while the vast majority toils away on SSDD stuff.
FLUX-YOU 9y ago
>but when you get here what you find is a large mess. Had a friend that worked at BBVA Compass. Same deal: huge mess, overworked employees, and awful experience setting up and getting into a workflow.
DrBazza 9y ago
Sounds just like the investment banks I worked for. The software is just accretion of patches and fixes. Betas and hacks that make it into production because no-one is allowed to re-engineer things correctly. Imagine in 2017 still having to run IE6 because there's a web-ui written in a COBOL system back in early 2000 that everyone is afraid to touch. And supporting Solaris 2.6 for similar reasons. You don't have to imagine.
earlybike 9y ago
OT: Imagine you hire somebody and this person publicly posts that some of your company's work "is a large mess" after you worked months to improve the situation. Even if DB hasn't deserved any credits for this "PR move", is this fair? Why is a PR move worse than an employee who publicly badmouths his employer while being on the payroll? And why is this tolerated (upvoted) when it's a large corporation? Edit: thanks for downvotes (this was expected)
- Shaanie 9y ago
  It's perfectly fair to point out how things actually look in practice. It's upvoted because it presents another (probably more realistic) picture instead of the marketing spiel that DB wants you to believe. Why do you not think that employees should be allowed to discuss how their workplace looks in reality?
neohunterNYC 9y ago
Can't say better! Actually, the Bank - most of the big investment banks out there right now (Hello Goldman!) - are selling themselves as technology companies but they're far away from being or getting even close to that! If you think of yourself smart enough and want to make an "impact" (at least a tiny one) or at least work in a nicer, more friendly and more technology focused environment for sure an investment Bank is not the place to be - even if it's in the electronic/automatic/algo/quantitative trading area(s)! Go to Google, FB, Amazon, Apple, etc. The biggest 5 market capitalizations in the world right now are technology companies anyways, you'll get the knowledge and the money (if it's your purpose). And always remember, banks were, are and will always be primarily bankers/traders or whatever you want to call them place! Software engineers are at best an asset/tool even if software is eating the world and everything tend to be automated. If you want to make it within an IB as a software engineer, you should spend lots of time learning and educating yourself (books - always read books folks!, blogs, side projects, hackatons, etc.) and not relying on internal projects or teams you're working in/with and if you want to make it to upper level - either go get yourself a master in Financial Engineering or any other Economics/Financial master and more important add those few words to your daily dictionary (forget about best practices, code smell, SOLID, etc.): "governance", "tactical", "strategic", "process" and lately "agile" (the word thrown everywhere and most of the people don't ever know what it means outside the Oxford dico definition.
0898 9y ago
Somebody told me that at Lloyds Bank, the core standing order system is still written in pounds, shillings and pence. There's just a translation routine sitting on top of it.
mattvi 9y ago
i appreciate the thoughtfulness of this thread very much... obviously, defintely hit a nerve. and I agree with everything that's been said. i've been talking with a couple different banks (across the US) and they all are sharing the same concerns, whether their systems are VB6 or newer. i'm with a group of machine learning and software maintenance folks who are trying to build tools to make refactoring/ migration/ speedups easier. if anyone is curious, we'd love to get feedback on the tools, see if they might help in similar situations, or could be improved.

Horusiath 9y ago

This is not only a DB specific, a whole banking industry works like that. Systems that have <10 years are considered new ones. To keep things working, just produce 5x more services created solely to move data from one place to another. No focus on programming discipline or sense of purpose and constant fear to change anything, because that could break things and we have not enough tests or monitoring infrastructure to even detect that. But in finances, IT is not on a focus. After all, we're just a "cost center" ;)

nurettin 9y ago
This is my exact experience while integrating with ERP systems in at least four global firms. Except I'd change the phrase "not enough tests or monitoring" to "no tests or monitoring except the ones I wrote".
posterboy 9y ago
It's a fact that you can't ever have enough tests, because, for one, the tests are not tested.
- eru 9y ago
  That's funny in practice. But does not have to be a problem in principle. There are ways to test your tests (in a way that does not lead to an infinite regress), and alternatively you can also prove your tests correct; or just use plain old code review.
- Smurfix 9y ago
  Of course the tests are tested – by the code they're covering, which is also covered by other tests.
incompatible 9y ago
I heard some banks still did crazy things like calculating mortgage payments with spreadsheets.
- osullivj 9y ago
  Spreadsheets are heavily used in all financial sectors. Personally I've connected many trader developed pricing spreadsheets to etrading systems at investments banks. Last year I was contracting for a large UK mortgage lender who used spreadsheets for all their product dev & spec. Spreadsheets enable bankers to move quicker than bespoke or vendor supplied solutions, hence their enduring popularity.
  - eru 9y ago
    Any complicated spreadsheet might be a bug ridden mess, but at least it's one the finance guys understand and can augment themselves. Alternatively they could wait for in-house IT to take a few years and millions of pounds (add going running over schedule and budget, too) to produce a bug ridden mess that misses.
    - dsfyu404ed 9y ago
      >but at least it's one the finance guys understand and can augment themselves. And more importantly it enables the "money people" and the "1s and 0s people" to work together throughout the software life-cycle. When the people who input the data understand what's going in and the people who read the output know what should come out the black box in the middle is a lot easier to create and maintain.
    - lmkg 9y ago
      Programmers tend to look at shitty programs and imagine better ways that it could have been done... In practice the competitor to a shitty program is not a better program, but no program at all. Even shitty software can still make the world a better place, and the preponderance of half-assed bug-ridden brain-dead garbage software should be seen as a good thing.
einrealist 9y ago
I can underwrite this. I am currently working for a(nother) bank. And I want to add that a lot of the legacy systems, procedures and thought processes stem from the misinterpretation of regulations. When a bank gets a new regulation on their table, they tend to create a department that compartmentalizes the subject within the organisation. That's how we get the exact opposite of what the Agile mindset is. And that's also how we get organisations where nobody wants to work in, except if the pay or day rates are high enough to excuse any suffering. And that's how bad, bloated software is created.
usr1106 9y ago
This is not banking specific, the whole SW industry works like that. I have worked over 20 years in a couple of companies, where SW was an essential part of our products. Yet the quality has never been good, it's a bloat of solving similar problems again and again. Architecture is a mess, even if there are n architects who can present nice diagrams. (I have seen n=1 and n>30, but the fundamental problem is the same)
- usr1106 9y ago
  To extend my thoughts a bit. Yes, I believe that some sectors might be worse than others. There are metrics and tools provided by the Software Engineering discipline to measure quality of architecture or code. However, they have remained mostly academic. There is no standard metric, which is widely accepted to be useful. And even if some rare(?) company might systematically measure their code base, they don't put the results in the their home page and not even in the contract with their customer. As long as that does not change, it's just more or less educated feeling where the situation might be better or worse than elsewhere.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

kenborge 9y ago

Working for multiple banks in a another country, i can confirm that this might as well have been written by someone here. It's the same everywhere.

eru 9y ago
I heard Goldman Sachs is a bit more on the ball.

gadders 9y ago

It seems more like a move to get people to standardise on the DB code as a means to send trading instructions via Symphony,

indescions_2017 9y ago

Day to day traditional banking operations will be slow to innovate. Partially due to the regulatory burden as you describe. But also the perception there is little financial upside for the investment. Outside of that however change is happening. And you will see new products coming out of "Innovations" groups operating entrepreneurially. My colleagues at WF and JPMC are busy experimenting with distributed ledger tech, mobile payments, global micro credit, and other "fintech." And the rollout of Zelle, instant peer-to-peer cash transfers, happened in weeks not months. Literally I was invited to participate in a beta program around the beginning of summer and a few days later billboards advertising the service started popping up around town ;)

longerthoughts 9y ago
It's worth stressing your point on perceived limitations of financial upside. I work for what is effectively a fintech business within a large financial firm and this is a constant hindrance to innovation because investment tends toward short term gains. I think it really comes down to how low the bar is set for software used by financial institutions with respect to originality and pushing boundaries. There's simply not much pressure to do extraordinary things because clients are accustomed to such laborious, outdated systems and processes. I hear a lot of fluffy talk about leveraging modern technologies and being pioneers but when it comes to building out teams and buying into exciting projects, leadership can't seem to find their wallets unless a client has specifically asked for something. You mentioned that your colleagues are working on things that break this mold - I won't try to speak for their companies, but in my experience those sorts of experimental projects (e.g. distributed ledger tech) tend to be wildly underfunded and consequently don't deliver much beyond an overblown, hype-building press release.
jdmichal 9y ago
It's probably worth noting that Zelle was mostly a rebranding of an existing service: clearXchange. Or, rather, a branding, as prior to the Zelle name, no one advertised the underlying clearXchange network. I strongly agree with your general point. Just like any extremely large business, there's small sects pushing forward in various ways, while the vast majority toils away on SSDD stuff.

FLUX-YOU 9y ago

>but when you get here what you find is a large mess. Had a friend that worked at BBVA Compass. Same deal: huge mess, overworked employees, and awful experience setting up and getting into a workflow.

DrBazza 9y ago

Sounds just like the investment banks I worked for. The software is just accretion of patches and fixes. Betas and hacks that make it into production because no-one is allowed to re-engineer things correctly. Imagine in 2017 still having to run IE6 because there's a web-ui written in a COBOL system back in early 2000 that everyone is afraid to touch. And supporting Solaris 2.6 for similar reasons. You don't have to imagine.

earlybike 9y ago

OT: Imagine you hire somebody and this person publicly posts that some of your company's work "is a large mess" after you worked months to improve the situation. Even if DB hasn't deserved any credits for this "PR move", is this fair? Why is a PR move worse than an employee who publicly badmouths his employer while being on the payroll? And why is this tolerated (upvoted) when it's a large corporation? Edit: thanks for downvotes (this was expected)

Shaanie 9y ago
It's perfectly fair to point out how things actually look in practice. It's upvoted because it presents another (probably more realistic) picture instead of the marketing spiel that DB wants you to believe. Why do you not think that employees should be allowed to discuss how their workplace looks in reality?

neohunterNYC 9y ago

Can't say better! Actually, the Bank - most of the big investment banks out there right now (Hello Goldman!) - are selling themselves as technology companies but they're far away from being or getting even close to that! If you think of yourself smart enough and want to make an "impact" (at least a tiny one) or at least work in a nicer, more friendly and more technology focused environment for sure an investment Bank is not the place to be - even if it's in the electronic/automatic/algo/quantitative trading area(s)! Go to Google, FB, Amazon, Apple, etc. The biggest 5 market capitalizations in the world right now are technology companies anyways, you'll get the knowledge and the money (if it's your purpose). And always remember, banks were, are and will always be primarily bankers/traders or whatever you want to call them place! Software engineers are at best an asset/tool even if software is eating the world and everything tend to be automated. If you want to make it within an IB as a software engineer, you should spend lots of time learning and educating yourself (books - always read books folks!, blogs, side projects, hackatons, etc.) and not relying on internal projects or teams you're working in/with and if you want to make it to upper level - either go get yourself a master in Financial Engineering or any other Economics/Financial master and more important add those few words to your daily dictionary (forget about best practices, code smell, SOLID, etc.): "governance", "tactical", "strategic", "process" and lately "agile" (the word thrown everywhere and most of the people don't ever know what it means outside the Oxford dico definition.

0898 9y ago

Somebody told me that at Lloyds Bank, the core standing order system is still written in pounds, shillings and pence. There's just a translation routine sitting on top of it.

mattvi 9y ago

i appreciate the thoughtfulness of this thread very much... obviously, defintely hit a nerve. and I agree with everything that's been said. i've been talking with a couple different banks (across the US) and they all are sharing the same concerns, whether their systems are VB6 or newer. i'm with a group of machine learning and software maintenance folks who are trying to build tools to make refactoring/ migration/ speedups easier. if anyone is curious, we'd love to get feedback on the tools, see if they might help in similar situations, or could be improved.