5 ms·

> It's possible that your bargaining position vis-a-vis the ERP company would be worse if you were an employee. But probably not if you were a founder. And sure

by ozfive 5y ago

> It's possible that your bargaining position vis-a-vis the ERP company would be worse if you were an employee. But probably not if you were a founder. And surely the ERP company's bargaining position relative to your company is better than yours. I don't think that this is the case as the value they add comes with opinion entrenched in the belief of the path that their product should take. This opinion actually has caused them to flat out refuse to do some work which in my opinion is an opportunity to make things better for the company that has originally taken on this ERP system as their central authority of information. I actually came in from a friend of mine who knew that I was familiar with Coldfusion. Ultimately in my exploration for knowledge I have become intimately entrapped by the ERP data model based on the simple fact that it is esoteric and inflexible which has in fact been proven by how the front-end interface is a kludge of C++ utilities, C#, and some shell scripts. Upgrades continue to happen but they give me 0 faith that the small company that they are (ERP) has a clear path to less of a kludge of a system. It gives me solace that as long as their opinions are strong contrary to the revenue model of my employer that in fact I will be useful for a long time. The moment the ERP company actually understands the niche they are pursuing is the moment I will have less of a potential for work. Until then they can fight their way upstream against their customers as much as they like and their customers will hedge their bets until they can migrate to something better. It is assumed I am less in line with the directive of the customer and have my own agenda against the ERP company when in fact I am elongating the runway for my company to operate until they have a better plan to migrate away to a solution that doesn't assume so much about their customers. Manufacturing knows they have to evolve yet they have made past decisions that they realize they can only mitigate by extending their systems without having to pay the high prices their vendors request. How is this not a good strategy? It's not like I am a contractor and trust me when I say that my company is better off with my SPOF than just the SPOF of their ERP company. Lose the ERP company and you not only lose the company and their regular updates but you lose the custom development of that company which will be 10 times more when the developers that were fired become independent contractors themselves. It's just business.

kragen 5y ago
> actually has caused them to flat out refuse to do some work which in my opinion is an opportunity to make things better for the company What were the consequences for them of flat out refusing to do that work? What would the consequences be for you if you were to flat out refuse to do something similar? If they would be worse for you, as I suspect, that means their bargaining position is better than yours. What does your management believe the consequences for them (the management) would be if the ERP company stopped working for them entirely, for example because they got out of the ERP market? What does your management believe the consequences for them would be if you quit? If they would be worse in the first case, as I suspect, that means their bargaining position is better than yours. This is only loosely connected with how much value each of you actually contributes, which is what matters most in a moral sense. Unfortunately, how that value is distributed among stakeholders usually has more to do with how negotiations go than with how the value is created. Indeed, it's common for negotiations to happen in cases where the net value produced is actually negative, as in lawsuit settlement negotiations, and the question is not so much how to split the winnings as how to split the losses.

by ozfive 5y ago

kragen 5y ago

> actually has caused them to flat out refuse to do some work which in my opinion is an opportunity to make things better for the company What were the consequences for them of flat out refusing to do that work? What would the consequences be for you if you were to flat out refuse to do something similar? If they would be worse for you, as I suspect, that means their bargaining position is better than yours. What does your management believe the consequences for them (the management) would be if the ERP company stopped working for them entirely, for example because they got out of the ERP market? What does your management believe the consequences for them would be if you quit? If they would be worse in the first case, as I suspect, that means their bargaining position is better than yours. This is only loosely connected with how much value each of you actually contributes, which is what matters most in a moral sense. Unfortunately, how that value is distributed among stakeholders usually has more to do with how negotiations go than with how the value is created. Indeed, it's common for negotiations to happen in cases where the net value produced is actually negative, as in lawsuit settlement negotiations, and the question is not so much how to split the winnings as how to split the losses.