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Was not surprised to see Oracle and PeopleSoft involved. I hope they get the crap sued out of them. That stuff is toxic, and I pity any organization that Oracl

by kabdib 9y ago

Was not surprised to see Oracle and PeopleSoft involved. I hope they get the crap sued out of them. That stuff is toxic, and I pity any organization that Oracle got its claws into using that junk.

walrus01 9y ago
Unless you are one of the people who makes a medium six figure salary as a deck officer on Larry Ellison's yacht, Oracle is utterly toxic.
- rosege 9y ago
  I doubt they are on medium - probably low. I once met the IT guy onboard his yacht. Told me a funny story about trying to get the superbowl for one of Larry's mates one year.
  - walrus01 9y ago
    Captain position ignored for a moment, I have no idea what second or third mate on a giant Russian/saudi oligarch class of yacht might make in yearly gross, but if I were a billionaire I'd be looking for people with many years of offshore experience and a degree from a major maritime University... $175k usd?
da02 9y ago
Back in 1999, I was in the elevator and I heard the admin. staff say PeopleSoft (the software) doesn't do anything. This was @ Polytechnic Uni. in Brooklyn. This conflicted with the school's public message where (officially) adopting PeopleSoft was a big step in the right direction. I always wondered if PeopleSoft improved since. I guess not?
- funkymike 9y ago
  My employer recently switched from PeopleSoft to Oracle for HR stuff. So now instead of the system itself being slow to respond, it is plenty responsive when I put in for time off. However, if I fill out the form too quickly it rejects the input as invalid. They can't even get form input validation to work correctly.
  - da02 9y ago
    Stuff like this reminds me of "Star Wars: A New Hope", where people noticed how the storm troopers kept missing Hans Solo despite having so many hi-tech rifles firing at him. "How can they miss him? They are highly trained and so many of them firing at him at once." These IT anecdotes might explain why.
    - scottmcf 9y ago
      Machine learning aim assist project gone awry.
  - all_blue_chucks 9y ago
    Oracle bought PeopleSoft. Oracle HR is PeopleSoft.
xienze 9y ago
> That stuff is toxic, and I pity any organization that Oracle got its claws into using that junk. In my experience, no one is really duped by these big companies. The people writing the checks generally start their search with magic quadrant leaders and then further narrow it down to the biggest players because "we can't trust our business to some no-name." It's really a situation that companies willingly put themselves in.
- uhhhhhhh 9y ago
  The only defense I've seen for that is "You want the company to be big enough to sue when they screw it up"
  - funkymike 9y ago
    Which is necessary of course because you can be sure they'll screw it up.
- mr_toad 9y ago
  And it’s rare for anyone to trial or test this software. The people who have to use it, who are probably best informed to point out it’s strengths and weaknesses are usually the last to see it.
- giobox 9y ago
  I've yet to see any way to procure custom "Enterprise" software that isn't awful, and sadly I do believe duping is a huge part of it. The duping starts long before the Oracles/IBMs/Whomever of the world ever reach a customer too - the "analyst" firm role is a huge problem with companies like Gartner/Forester who dream up the "Magic Quadrant" that people purchasing this stuff end up stuck relying on. I've seen in several roles the enormous gulf between what Gartner/Forester will claim about a leading player's capabilities vs the reality, which of course is a state of affairs large Enterprise software companies are all too keen to encourage. I've never seen a sales consultant answer "no" to a question about capability in an enterprise software sale scenario, ever, across many RFPs. If your job explicitly targets you to bring in x millions of dollars of business a year, you answer "yes, of course" safe in the knowledge that when it does blow up it's someone else's problem and far away from you by that point.
philjohn 9y ago
SAP is just as bad - at my last place there was a member of staff who worked 4 days a week - SAP could never get the rounding on their annual leave correct, often leaving them with 0.999 or 0.499 days left that they couldn't book. We had to just record it manually.

by kabdib 9y ago

Was not surprised to see Oracle and PeopleSoft involved. I hope they get the crap sued out of them. That stuff is toxic, and I pity any organization that Oracle got its claws into using that junk.

walrus01 9y ago

Unless you are one of the people who makes a medium six figure salary as a deck officer on Larry Ellison's yacht, Oracle is utterly toxic.

rosege 9y ago
I doubt they are on medium - probably low. I once met the IT guy onboard his yacht. Told me a funny story about trying to get the superbowl for one of Larry's mates one year.
- walrus01 9y ago
  Captain position ignored for a moment, I have no idea what second or third mate on a giant Russian/saudi oligarch class of yacht might make in yearly gross, but if I were a billionaire I'd be looking for people with many years of offshore experience and a degree from a major maritime University... $175k usd?

da02 9y ago

Back in 1999, I was in the elevator and I heard the admin. staff say PeopleSoft (the software) doesn't do anything. This was @ Polytechnic Uni. in Brooklyn. This conflicted with the school's public message where (officially) adopting PeopleSoft was a big step in the right direction. I always wondered if PeopleSoft improved since. I guess not?

funkymike 9y ago
My employer recently switched from PeopleSoft to Oracle for HR stuff. So now instead of the system itself being slow to respond, it is plenty responsive when I put in for time off. However, if I fill out the form too quickly it rejects the input as invalid. They can't even get form input validation to work correctly.
- da02 9y ago
  Stuff like this reminds me of "Star Wars: A New Hope", where people noticed how the storm troopers kept missing Hans Solo despite having so many hi-tech rifles firing at him. "How can they miss him? They are highly trained and so many of them firing at him at once." These IT anecdotes might explain why.
  - scottmcf 9y ago
    Machine learning aim assist project gone awry.
- all_blue_chucks 9y ago
  Oracle bought PeopleSoft. Oracle HR is PeopleSoft.

xienze 9y ago

> That stuff is toxic, and I pity any organization that Oracle got its claws into using that junk. In my experience, no one is really duped by these big companies. The people writing the checks generally start their search with magic quadrant leaders and then further narrow it down to the biggest players because "we can't trust our business to some no-name." It's really a situation that companies willingly put themselves in.

uhhhhhhh 9y ago
The only defense I've seen for that is "You want the company to be big enough to sue when they screw it up"
- funkymike 9y ago
  Which is necessary of course because you can be sure they'll screw it up.
mr_toad 9y ago
And it’s rare for anyone to trial or test this software. The people who have to use it, who are probably best informed to point out it’s strengths and weaknesses are usually the last to see it.
giobox 9y ago
I've yet to see any way to procure custom "Enterprise" software that isn't awful, and sadly I do believe duping is a huge part of it. The duping starts long before the Oracles/IBMs/Whomever of the world ever reach a customer too - the "analyst" firm role is a huge problem with companies like Gartner/Forester who dream up the "Magic Quadrant" that people purchasing this stuff end up stuck relying on. I've seen in several roles the enormous gulf between what Gartner/Forester will claim about a leading player's capabilities vs the reality, which of course is a state of affairs large Enterprise software companies are all too keen to encourage. I've never seen a sales consultant answer "no" to a question about capability in an enterprise software sale scenario, ever, across many RFPs. If your job explicitly targets you to bring in x millions of dollars of business a year, you answer "yes, of course" safe in the knowledge that when it does blow up it's someone else's problem and far away from you by that point.

philjohn 9y ago

SAP is just as bad - at my last place there was a member of staff who worked 4 days a week - SAP could never get the rounding on their annual leave correct, often leaving them with 0.999 or 0.499 days left that they couldn't book. We had to just record it manually.