4 ms·

My genuine experience is that when you are building something as large and high-profile as a large state's unemployment system, there is absolutely no possibili

My genuine experience is that when you are building something as large and high-profile as a large state's unemployment system, there is absolutely no possibility for the resulting software to be "good" anyway. This is especially true for government clients. And the reason that IBM/Deloitte/etc are always the names getting trashed for these is because those are literally the only companies big enough to take on such a project in the first place. All of the smaller projects I took part in had much better results, but you're much less likely to hear about some random mid-size company's app that is working just fine on the front page of HN (and of course, those smaller projects happen less often anyway since Deloitte really focuses more on getting those giant projects).

moron4hire 6y ago
It's a culture problem. There is a belief that the size and complexity of the project must match the size and complexity of the client. So small, nimble companies don't even get considered. The budget gets set before any evaluation of the problem is done. You could give that $10mil to a 250 person consulting company and they'll make it happen. But that will never happen. Hell, the SOW was probably written by some at Deloitte, stuffed with whatever cross section of requirements are unique enough to make them the only vendor available that matches it. Then they will bleed the contract by putting expensive partners on it who literally do nothing but suck oxygen out of the room. That's how they get around maximum multiplier of salary regulations on government contracts.
- txcwpalpha 6y ago
  >There is a belief that the size and complexity of the others must match the size and complexity of the client. So small, nimble companies don't even get considered. The budget gets set before any evaluation of the problem is done. My experience is that it's more about consistency and "knowing what you're going to get". When you hire Deloitte, you know they've done this exact same type of project 100 times before, and each time it turned out terrible-but-acceptable. You're 90% sure that it isn't going to result in an amazing product, but you're also 90% sure that you'll at least get something somewhat usable for your money (and if you don't, you know that Deloitte is going to be around long enough to sue them). With a random 250 person consulting company, you have no idea what you're going to get and much less confidence that you'll end up with anything usable at all. Hell, you don't even know if they're going to still be in business a couple years from now. And with that much money at stake, that's a risk nobody wants to take.
  - moron4hire 6y ago
    They may have sold 100 contracts for something that looks vaguely similar, but there will be zero continuity between the team or the code. At most, you'll get the same managing partner overseeing the sales end, taking the credit for it. This concept of the "safety" of Deloitte, et al, is an illusion. Cut the project budget to 10% but spend it 10 times. Make 10 smaller firms compete to make the thing and you will get what you need.
    - txcwpalpha 6y ago
      >They may have sold 100 contracts for something that looks vaguely similar, but there will be zero continuity between the team or the code. There is such a thing as institutional knowledge, and if there is any benefit of a consulting company like Deloitte, it's that. You might not be getting the exact same developer that worked on the last project, but other than for small niche areas, there is going to be an entire bench of consultants that have nearly identical experience, and also have an entire library of past deliverables, training material, etc to quickly get up to speed. And I can personally attest that these companies re-use the fuck out of any and all code, documentation etc they can. It's practically company motto that no matter how much a client insists they are a special snowflake that requires brand new, custom made designs, they certainly are not. No matter how much you think your pet project hasn't been done before, I can almost guarantee that it has, multiple times, and they are probably just going to take the deliverable from the last time they delivered it, Ctrl+F/replace the previous client's name with yours, and send it over to you. For better or worse, that's where the consistency comes from. >Cut the project budget to 10% but spend it 10 times. Make 10 smaller firms compete to make the thing and you will get what you need. Now this is a way to end up with an absolute clusterfuck of a project. You absolutely do not want to do this. Not only will you end up with 10 disorganized, disconnected projects that are each only 1/10th of the feature set you asked for, you're going to have to hire 10x the amount of people to oversee these 10 consulting companies (you'll probably have to hire an 11th consulting company just to PMO the other 10), and your entire project is going to turn into ruthless backstabbing as each of the 10 consulting companies try to sabotage each other or steal credit. It's not going to be some "friendly competition" where they all inspire each other to be better or some fantasy like that. Since leaving B4, I've been in several situations where the client had the same mentality you do (well, with ~4-5 consulting companies rather than 10). It always, always was a colossal failure and in one situation directly led to the project buyer getting canned. In another situation, they ended up cancelling the contract with the various smaller companies and ended up just hiring a single larger consulting company to come in and clean up the mess, anyway.

moron4hire 6y ago

It's a culture problem. There is a belief that the size and complexity of the project must match the size and complexity of the client. So small, nimble companies don't even get considered. The budget gets set before any evaluation of the problem is done. You could give that $10mil to a 250 person consulting company and they'll make it happen. But that will never happen. Hell, the SOW was probably written by some at Deloitte, stuffed with whatever cross section of requirements are unique enough to make them the only vendor available that matches it. Then they will bleed the contract by putting expensive partners on it who literally do nothing but suck oxygen out of the room. That's how they get around maximum multiplier of salary regulations on government contracts.

txcwpalpha 6y ago
>There is a belief that the size and complexity of the others must match the size and complexity of the client. So small, nimble companies don't even get considered. The budget gets set before any evaluation of the problem is done. My experience is that it's more about consistency and "knowing what you're going to get". When you hire Deloitte, you know they've done this exact same type of project 100 times before, and each time it turned out terrible-but-acceptable. You're 90% sure that it isn't going to result in an amazing product, but you're also 90% sure that you'll at least get something somewhat usable for your money (and if you don't, you know that Deloitte is going to be around long enough to sue them). With a random 250 person consulting company, you have no idea what you're going to get and much less confidence that you'll end up with anything usable at all. Hell, you don't even know if they're going to still be in business a couple years from now. And with that much money at stake, that's a risk nobody wants to take.
- moron4hire 6y ago
  They may have sold 100 contracts for something that looks vaguely similar, but there will be zero continuity between the team or the code. At most, you'll get the same managing partner overseeing the sales end, taking the credit for it. This concept of the "safety" of Deloitte, et al, is an illusion. Cut the project budget to 10% but spend it 10 times. Make 10 smaller firms compete to make the thing and you will get what you need.
  - txcwpalpha 6y ago
    >They may have sold 100 contracts for something that looks vaguely similar, but there will be zero continuity between the team or the code. There is such a thing as institutional knowledge, and if there is any benefit of a consulting company like Deloitte, it's that. You might not be getting the exact same developer that worked on the last project, but other than for small niche areas, there is going to be an entire bench of consultants that have nearly identical experience, and also have an entire library of past deliverables, training material, etc to quickly get up to speed. And I can personally attest that these companies re-use the fuck out of any and all code, documentation etc they can. It's practically company motto that no matter how much a client insists they are a special snowflake that requires brand new, custom made designs, they certainly are not. No matter how much you think your pet project hasn't been done before, I can almost guarantee that it has, multiple times, and they are probably just going to take the deliverable from the last time they delivered it, Ctrl+F/replace the previous client's name with yours, and send it over to you. For better or worse, that's where the consistency comes from. >Cut the project budget to 10% but spend it 10 times. Make 10 smaller firms compete to make the thing and you will get what you need. Now this is a way to end up with an absolute clusterfuck of a project. You absolutely do not want to do this. Not only will you end up with 10 disorganized, disconnected projects that are each only 1/10th of the feature set you asked for, you're going to have to hire 10x the amount of people to oversee these 10 consulting companies (you'll probably have to hire an 11th consulting company just to PMO the other 10), and your entire project is going to turn into ruthless backstabbing as each of the 10 consulting companies try to sabotage each other or steal credit. It's not going to be some "friendly competition" where they all inspire each other to be better or some fantasy like that. Since leaving B4, I've been in several situations where the client had the same mentality you do (well, with ~4-5 consulting companies rather than 10). It always, always was a colossal failure and in one situation directly led to the project buyer getting canned. In another situation, they ended up cancelling the contract with the various smaller companies and ended up just hiring a single larger consulting company to come in and clean up the mess, anyway.