5 ms·
Many times. A few of my favorites: - We upgraded our hardware and our forecasting software vendor wanted a one time $600,000 charge. I convinced my boss to r
by edw519 16y ago
Many times. A few of my favorites:
- We upgraded our hardware and our forecasting software vendor wanted a one time $600,000 charge. I convinced my boss to replace them with in-house written software. Took 6 weeks to write.
- Our 400 worker factory was $30,000 under-absorbed per month. I wrote both standard costing and data collection software. Supervisors compared the standards to the actuals to discover where they were losing money. We were over-absorbed by $30,000 per month 6 months later.
- We budgeted over $1 million for a new ERP system to "solve all of our problems". I helped others solve most of their problems by identifying them and coming up with solutions from the existing software. We never did buy new software.
- (My favorite). Our HCFA feed from the U.S. Government was broken and no one knew why. I dug in and changed 1 byte of code (1 byte, not 1 line). The next day, our bank account had $6.5 million more in it. I never had the heart to tell them how easy it was to fix.
- pavel_lishin 16y agoHow much did it cost to write it in-house, in terms of man-hours, and the salary cost? (I assume there was other stuff developers could have worked on, and that they weren't just sitting around previously.)
- edw519 16y agoI have no idea. I doubt anyone else does either, but "$600K > 6 man weeks" is something anyone can understand, especially management.
- danilocampos 16y ago> I dug in and changed 1 byte of code (1 byte, not 1 line). The next day, our bank account had $6.5 million more in it. That's just gangsta. Can you expand on that last story? I can't wrap my head around such a simple problem costing so much.
- edw519 16y agoHCFA issued a bulletin (as it often does) about its upcoming file layout changes but no one bothered to read it. They changed one line code from "SA" to "SK" or something like that. The change took effect, but since no one applied the mod, the money stopped. Three months later, I was brought in to fix it. I just read the bulletin, changed the hard code, and promoted it. I still can't believe they were that incompetent (and one of the many reasons I'll have nothing to do with health care any more.)
- sga 16y agoDidn't you also comment recently about doing an analysis that led to the reorganization of stocked products such that the most frequently lifted products were more accessible? That must have saved some indirect dollars (if not direct), through increased worker efficiency. Seems like you have a real eye for this type of thing!
- edw519 16y agoOh, you must be referring to this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1811500 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1811500 I work primarily on software that's being used pretty heavily in business. There are opportunities everywhere, if you only bother to look. To me, "hacking the business" is even more fun that "hacking the code".
- rokhayakebe 16y ago"hacking the business" is even more fun that "hacking the code" Consumer startups: Build something people want. Enterprise startups: Hack the business.