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In UK/EU banking the way to get promoted is to be a yes man. Business has complete control and abhors IT. Impossible deadlines and hands-off approach make atroc

by alecco 7y ago

In UK/EU banking the way to get promoted is to be a yes man. Business has complete control and abhors IT. Impossible deadlines and hands-off approach make atrocious code bases. And this becomes a never ending feedback loop going on for decades. There’s never time to pay for technical debt. And now with the replacement of commercial staff for IT staff there’s a growing divide. Stay away.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
drcross 7y ago
I have experience of this and can confirm. Banking is not a sector for young smart people because it will wear you down. It's a constant battle of change approval boards, fighting their risk adverse fear of causing service distribution while at the same time expecting things to be delivered. Save these types of roles for when you are old and want a boring job.
- blowski 7y ago
  Unfortunately, the "finance is only for old and boring people" also leads to a certain prestige for finance - startups are for kids, finance is for adults. Many in finance almost pride themselves on how much time they spend in meetings, and how long it takes to release anything. For startups, the myth is that success comes from a "move fast and break things" culture, so they wear IT disasters with a badge of honour. In finance, it's the opposite - with enough planning and governance, huge budgets, and long timelines, they believe you can guarantee success on any project.
  - UK-Al05 7y ago
    The culture is don't make changes at any cost. As a result you don't make many changes, and as a result you're bad at them. Modern technology companies make tons of changes all of the time. As a result they become good at them. Looking at the reports they learned EXACTLY the wrong lessons. It's not to make fewer changes, it's to become good at changes.
    - xgb84j 7y ago
      It's also the risk distribution of one large vs. many small changes that heavily favors many small changes.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
      > Modern technology companies make tons of changes all of the time. As a result they become good at them. Really? That hasn't been my experience. Nearly every time some moderately large update to any modern software goes out it seems to break a bunch things. What it doesn't break it usually just ditches entirely.
      - UK-Al05 7y ago
        The trick is not to have large updates... Move a bit at time.
        AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
        Modern tech companies can't even seem to do relatively small updates without fucking them up. Just look at Windows Update for fuck sake. I think modern developers just make a whole lot of bullshit excuses for why they are crap at their job.
        jyounker 7y ago
        Those generally aren't what are considered to be small updates. Organizations doing small updates to are doing them multiple times a day. (e.g. FANGs) My experience is those is that those lessons (e.g. the need for extensive automatic testing) are learned the hard way.
        hoffs 7y ago
        > small updates > Just look at Windows Update for fuck sake. Yup, those updates that change the operating system that is run on billion of devices in extremely varying hardware and configurations. Very simple.
- temporallobe 7y ago
  It’s the same in the US Federal government IT space, especially when dealing with archaic legacy systems. Innovation is nearly impossible and change approval boards reign. Everyone is risk-averse because of previous breaches, even to the point where engineers are not allowed to run the code they wrote themselves. You heard that right. We can write code, but we can’t run it ourselves.
  - Aeolun 7y ago
    How would they even stop you from doing that? It just sounds like a challenge for a workaround to me.
  - lowercased 7y ago
    Had similar experience talking to ... someone at fidelity. I can't remember his title, but we were trying to negotiate some data exchange with them. He asked for our development workflow/process, and balked when he saw that a "developer" would also be the same person who had "access" to the database with customer information. "Developers can not touch the database" Umm... someone needs to, and we're a small team. "Developers can not touch the database" "Why not?" "They can exfiltrate data". "So could someone else who has access to the database" "Developers can not touch the database" "If we give a non-developer access to the database, by definition, they have access, and therefore the ability to exfiltrate data" "Developers can not touch the database" "Can you provide some examples of how other companies who've passed your inspection are making any sort of database changes/upgrades without someone having access to the database?" "Developers can not touch the database" And that ended it apparently.
    - orf 7y ago
      This is a pretty normal requirement. I believe what they are saying is that you should not be able to access sensitive customer data by virtue of “just” being a developer, and you should audit who has access to such data and why. And by “touch” they mean unfiltered access, not “you cannot do anything with the database and therefore cannot work”. This is pretty basic information hygiene, and if you don’t have enough care to implement even that then why should they partner with you? Sounds like a liability waiting to happen.
- cosmodisk 7y ago
  Unfortunately in a lot of countries in Europe that's the only sector that does pay a premium in comparison to other sectors. Try getting £100K+ dev job in London and suddenly all the potential employers ( with a few exceptions) end up being either in the City or Canary Wharf.
bhouston 7y ago
My theory is that the code never gets fixed in these pathological companies. They just get higher costs until people switch away to a bank that is more efficient.
devonkim 7y ago
You could replace banking with any other large enterprise vertical like healthcare, telecom, government and be very correct. The problem is that IT is a cost center, and cost centers are as a rule terrible to work in regardless of industry, even if you're at a tech company.
- Ididntdothis 7y ago
  Very true. Work somewhere where the CEO has some level of understanding and appreciation for your work and life will be much better. Corporate IT is an especially bad place. You can only lose. When things go well they start cutting costs by letting people go and offshoring jobs. And when things go badly you get the blame. The IT department at my company is hard to work with and often drive me crazy. But when I look at their structure it’s obvious that it doesn’t allow for people to a good job.
Ididntdothis 7y ago
I think that’s especially common in regulated industries. On the one hand top management are afraid of compliance issues but on the other hand they don’t understand and respect why things cost money and time. So they are very susceptible to hiring sweet talking people who pretend to be able to solve this.

by alecco 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

drcross 7y ago

I have experience of this and can confirm. Banking is not a sector for young smart people because it will wear you down. It's a constant battle of change approval boards, fighting their risk adverse fear of causing service distribution while at the same time expecting things to be delivered. Save these types of roles for when you are old and want a boring job.

blowski 7y ago
Unfortunately, the "finance is only for old and boring people" also leads to a certain prestige for finance - startups are for kids, finance is for adults. Many in finance almost pride themselves on how much time they spend in meetings, and how long it takes to release anything. For startups, the myth is that success comes from a "move fast and break things" culture, so they wear IT disasters with a badge of honour. In finance, it's the opposite - with enough planning and governance, huge budgets, and long timelines, they believe you can guarantee success on any project.
- UK-Al05 7y ago
  The culture is don't make changes at any cost. As a result you don't make many changes, and as a result you're bad at them. Modern technology companies make tons of changes all of the time. As a result they become good at them. Looking at the reports they learned EXACTLY the wrong lessons. It's not to make fewer changes, it's to become good at changes.
  - xgb84j 7y ago
    It's also the risk distribution of one large vs. many small changes that heavily favors many small changes.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
    > Modern technology companies make tons of changes all of the time. As a result they become good at them. Really? That hasn't been my experience. Nearly every time some moderately large update to any modern software goes out it seems to break a bunch things. What it doesn't break it usually just ditches entirely.
    - UK-Al05 7y ago
      The trick is not to have large updates... Move a bit at time.
      - AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
        Modern tech companies can't even seem to do relatively small updates without fucking them up. Just look at Windows Update for fuck sake. I think modern developers just make a whole lot of bullshit excuses for why they are crap at their job.
        jyounker 7y ago
        Those generally aren't what are considered to be small updates. Organizations doing small updates to are doing them multiple times a day. (e.g. FANGs) My experience is those is that those lessons (e.g. the need for extensive automatic testing) are learned the hard way.
        hoffs 7y ago
        > small updates > Just look at Windows Update for fuck sake. Yup, those updates that change the operating system that is run on billion of devices in extremely varying hardware and configurations. Very simple.
temporallobe 7y ago
It’s the same in the US Federal government IT space, especially when dealing with archaic legacy systems. Innovation is nearly impossible and change approval boards reign. Everyone is risk-averse because of previous breaches, even to the point where engineers are not allowed to run the code they wrote themselves. You heard that right. We can write code, but we can’t run it ourselves.
- Aeolun 7y ago
  How would they even stop you from doing that? It just sounds like a challenge for a workaround to me.
- lowercased 7y ago
  Had similar experience talking to ... someone at fidelity. I can't remember his title, but we were trying to negotiate some data exchange with them. He asked for our development workflow/process, and balked when he saw that a "developer" would also be the same person who had "access" to the database with customer information. "Developers can not touch the database" Umm... someone needs to, and we're a small team. "Developers can not touch the database" "Why not?" "They can exfiltrate data". "So could someone else who has access to the database" "Developers can not touch the database" "If we give a non-developer access to the database, by definition, they have access, and therefore the ability to exfiltrate data" "Developers can not touch the database" "Can you provide some examples of how other companies who've passed your inspection are making any sort of database changes/upgrades without someone having access to the database?" "Developers can not touch the database" And that ended it apparently.
  - orf 7y ago
    This is a pretty normal requirement. I believe what they are saying is that you should not be able to access sensitive customer data by virtue of “just” being a developer, and you should audit who has access to such data and why. And by “touch” they mean unfiltered access, not “you cannot do anything with the database and therefore cannot work”. This is pretty basic information hygiene, and if you don’t have enough care to implement even that then why should they partner with you? Sounds like a liability waiting to happen.
cosmodisk 7y ago
Unfortunately in a lot of countries in Europe that's the only sector that does pay a premium in comparison to other sectors. Try getting £100K+ dev job in London and suddenly all the potential employers ( with a few exceptions) end up being either in the City or Canary Wharf.

bhouston 7y ago

My theory is that the code never gets fixed in these pathological companies. They just get higher costs until people switch away to a bank that is more efficient.

devonkim 7y ago

You could replace banking with any other large enterprise vertical like healthcare, telecom, government and be very correct. The problem is that IT is a cost center, and cost centers are as a rule terrible to work in regardless of industry, even if you're at a tech company.

Ididntdothis 7y ago
Very true. Work somewhere where the CEO has some level of understanding and appreciation for your work and life will be much better. Corporate IT is an especially bad place. You can only lose. When things go well they start cutting costs by letting people go and offshoring jobs. And when things go badly you get the blame. The IT department at my company is hard to work with and often drive me crazy. But when I look at their structure it’s obvious that it doesn’t allow for people to a good job.

Ididntdothis 7y ago

I think that’s especially common in regulated industries. On the one hand top management are afraid of compliance issues but on the other hand they don’t understand and respect why things cost money and time. So they are very susceptible to hiring sweet talking people who pretend to be able to solve this.