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I was reading the article thinking that I would take an approach just like that. I don't think there is any other way to ensure success.

by keiru 7y ago

brazzy 7y ago
It requires you to have complete and unwavering backing from top management even when some of the guys whose toes you're stepping on haven been golf buddies with said top management for 20 years. Sounds like an unrealistic expectation.
- jandrese 7y ago
  It also depends on you having a crack IT team who can get it right the first time. No months of stuff crashing or having a horrible interface that impedes work or being intolerably slow. You have to be confident enough to push back against the exec who says "oh, we'll just hire $massive_consultancy_firm to do it" and takes years to roll out a half baked hackjob on top of their stupidly expensive CMS.
  - JoeAltmaier 7y ago
    She insisted on a hand-picked team
  - crispyambulance 7y ago
    > ...No months of stuff crashing or having a horrible interface that impedes work or being intolerably slow. Dude, that's the not a temporary transition state. That is normal _all_ _the_ _time_ for much of enterprise systems. The crashing might stop, eventually, but the byzantine intractable complexity maintained by a small army of information-hording corporate battle-axes... that stays forever, regardless of whether you go to a single "web-api" or not.
- otakucode 7y ago
  That sort of nepotism can be a problem. It's why Amazon's search sucks so bad. In the book 'The Everything Store', it tells the story of when a team at Amazon responsible for something else saw how bad search was and decided to fix it. So they built a prototype with Elasticsearch and whatnot. It worked great. The dude at the head of the search team, good friends with Bezos, got all territorial and angry. Bezos solution? Have a test between the two solutions to determine which was best. Bezos idiocy? He let the head of the search team decide who won. So, no surprise, the head of the search team said the search team won. So the improved search was shut down and the garbage search we all have to deal with regularly got to stay. Once you've got that kind of thing going on, only retirements and deaths can effect good change at an organization.
- keiru 7y ago
  It is, in the sense that I wouldn't expect it to happen, at least to me. But it's not unrealistic that some CEO would actually listen to you about the matter and put his foot down to make it happen. These are not matters difficult to comprenhend, my guess is that people use to take IT stuff for granted and that's it. I've also known guys who didn't give a fuck when they saw upper management screw up tech-wise so as not to get into arguments. That also cripples healthy feedback.

I was reading the article thinking that I would take an approach just like that. I don't think there is any other way to ensure success.

by keiru 7y ago

I was reading the article thinking that I would take an approach just like that. I don't think there is any other way to ensure success.

brazzy 7y ago

It requires you to have complete and unwavering backing from top management even when some of the guys whose toes you're stepping on haven been golf buddies with said top management for 20 years. Sounds like an unrealistic expectation.

jandrese 7y ago
It also depends on you having a crack IT team who can get it right the first time. No months of stuff crashing or having a horrible interface that impedes work or being intolerably slow. You have to be confident enough to push back against the exec who says "oh, we'll just hire $massive_consultancy_firm to do it" and takes years to roll out a half baked hackjob on top of their stupidly expensive CMS.
- JoeAltmaier 7y ago
  She insisted on a hand-picked team
- crispyambulance 7y ago
  > ...No months of stuff crashing or having a horrible interface that impedes work or being intolerably slow. Dude, that's the not a temporary transition state. That is normal _all_ _the_ _time_ for much of enterprise systems. The crashing might stop, eventually, but the byzantine intractable complexity maintained by a small army of information-hording corporate battle-axes... that stays forever, regardless of whether you go to a single "web-api" or not.
otakucode 7y ago
That sort of nepotism can be a problem. It's why Amazon's search sucks so bad. In the book 'The Everything Store', it tells the story of when a team at Amazon responsible for something else saw how bad search was and decided to fix it. So they built a prototype with Elasticsearch and whatnot. It worked great. The dude at the head of the search team, good friends with Bezos, got all territorial and angry. Bezos solution? Have a test between the two solutions to determine which was best. Bezos idiocy? He let the head of the search team decide who won. So, no surprise, the head of the search team said the search team won. So the improved search was shut down and the garbage search we all have to deal with regularly got to stay. Once you've got that kind of thing going on, only retirements and deaths can effect good change at an organization.
keiru 7y ago
It is, in the sense that I wouldn't expect it to happen, at least to me. But it's not unrealistic that some CEO would actually listen to you about the matter and put his foot down to make it happen. These are not matters difficult to comprenhend, my guess is that people use to take IT stuff for granted and that's it. I've also known guys who didn't give a fuck when they saw upper management screw up tech-wise so as not to get into arguments. That also cripples healthy feedback.