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As far as I can tell, this sort of over-promise, under-deliver, bill-huge thing is pretty normal for these massive consulting companies. Their big name experts
by paranoidrobot 4y ago
As far as I can tell, this sort of over-promise, under-deliver, bill-huge thing is pretty normal for these massive consulting companies.
Their big name experts come in, tell you how you're doing it all wrong and they have the best solution around for only $X million and they can deliver in 12 months. Management nods, gives the greenlight, tells you to cooperate fully with them.
Their layers of consultants then tie up a ton of your time/resources over the next 12 months figuring out what they actually should be doing, and why what the Expert said only has a passing resemblence to what's actually needed. So there's then rounds of discussion on how this and that change will be a variance, all billable extras.
After the 12 months is up, nothing is delivered in a workable state, it gets rejected, sent back for changes. This is all more billable variances, because of course it was delivered to the approved spec, and if you squint, and really push the definitions of words then it might vaguely resemble what it is that the spec said.
I've seen this play out multiple times.
The only surprising thing here (to me) is that Hertz pulled the plug while their spend was only $32M. Well done Hertz.
I can only hope that someone learned their lesson to stop using consulting groups for this kind of thing. I won't be holding my breath on that one, though.
- Aeolun 4y agoI’m pretty much convinced you can replace any consulting firm (of any size/developer count) with 4-6 competent in-house developers and have a better product at the end of the year. Regardless of what your project is.
- oneoff786 4y agoGood luck staffing a team of 4-6 competent in house developers
- soulofmischief 4y agoWhy do you think this is so difficult?
- CydeWeys 4y agoYou can't even get the budget to pay the salaries of good developers at these kinds of companies, for starters.
- Aeolun 4y agoClearly they have the budget for a 32M failure. I’m inclined to think they’d be saving money. Now whether they will or want to (the executives anyway) is a different question. It’s much easier to tell your boss that the project failed despite the hundreds of developers working on it. Clearly nobody would have been able to do a good job of it.
- jsty 4y ago> Clearly they have the budget for a 32M failure. I’m inclined to think they’d be saving money. The company would, but the relevant executive would be worse off. A $xx million consulting engagement failing is the consulting firm’s fault (politically speaking). Hiring and directing a $y million team that fails is the fault of the exec in charge. Executives in large companies are frequently not the bumbling idiots they’re portrayed as - their decisions make perfect sense in terms of protecting and advancing influence within the company, which wins out over good execution in driving decisions.
- oneoff786 4y agoBecause hiring tech talent is hard. Especially when you don’t have much tech expertise yourself.
- soulofmischief 4y agoI know it's hard. As a reasonably competent developer, why is it so hard for 5 of us to exist in one room? I know lack of hiring expertise is a big factor, I know salary is a big factor, but shouldn't this problem be solvable? hy is it so hard to consistently find qualified individuals? Do most other industries experience this same problem at the same scale?
- cjg 4y agoPay them a million each and it still works out cheaper.
- oneoff786 4y agoOk so you hire 6 people for a million dollars a year. Turns out they’re not capable of delivering. Now what?
- mrguyorama 4y agoYou fire them and had the same outcome as this case for $26 million cheaper
- oneoff786 4y agoOk, but what do you do next? Because usually the answer is “try to hire someone who says they can do this” Ideally it’s not Accenture’s battalions of scrubs, but it’s not like the problem is just gone.
- nerdawson 4y agoFor an exec, one of the big consulting firms is a safe choice. If things go wrong, you get to blame the outside company for screwing it up. Setup a team internally and your neck is on the line if they fail to deliver.
- civilized 4y agoConsultant nonsense is what convinced me the Pointy-Haired Boss popularized in Dilbert is the true IRL face of management.