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IT procurement in Australia is a piece of shit because, in the name of fairness, everything needs to go out to tender, but the only companies big enough to deal

by dools 4y ago

IT procurement in Australia is a piece of shit because, in the name of fairness, everything needs to go out to tender, but the only companies big enough to deal with a tender process are mostly lawyers with a couple of coders attached (or worse still, they just subcontract the coding). Almost all the money goes to people who sit in meetings discussing the scope, and some poor sap ends up doing the code for next to nothing. The government just needs to hire coders directly, that's what Service NSW does and it shows.

skippyboxedhero 4y ago
This is a problem almost everywhere today. Lots of businesses are now tech companies, but the managers are from a different age so you need layers of other managers to do exactly the same job (when people talk about weak productivity growth from technology, this is it...it took half a decade plus after the industrial revolution for things to filter through, it will be a bit quicker this time but there are massive institutional roadblocks...perhaps even bigger than in the 19th century which was all de novo innovation).
jiggawatts 4y ago
1,000x this. There are a bunch of potential projects I could knock over personally in a month or two each that I will never ever be allowed to bid on. Instead, it goes through an internal process at the department that takes months, which means a bunch of people have to justify their positions, driving up the minimum cost. These non-technical people architect the solution, put it a scribble of a Frankenstein's monster of a design in the tender with a laundry list of requirements, none of which are actually needed because what they really wanted was a mostly static website any idiot could develop. A couple of years later (I wish I was kidding), the tender process is finished and a Big Consultancy begins the hard work of... subcontracting the work. To my parent company, that finally gives it to me. Out of the $millions on the tender, I now have 2 weeks to a job that should have been 2 months. The design is now hilariously out-of-date, and was wrong to begin with, but it is now a part of a legally binding contract between orgs I have zero leverage with. It MUST be implemented, verbatim. Including the bits that are actively harmful, stupid, backwards, legacy, or just idiotic. All of it. This stuff is audited to make sure there's no corruption or dodgy work! The end result is a monstrosity built in a hurry by a poorly paid tech, while 10+ middle manager types all take their cut. It's abhorrent.
bottled_poe 4y ago
This seems to be the correct answer based on my experience.

by dools 4y ago

skippyboxedhero 4y ago

This is a problem almost everywhere today. Lots of businesses are now tech companies, but the managers are from a different age so you need layers of other managers to do exactly the same job (when people talk about weak productivity growth from technology, this is it...it took half a decade plus after the industrial revolution for things to filter through, it will be a bit quicker this time but there are massive institutional roadblocks...perhaps even bigger than in the 19th century which was all de novo innovation).

jiggawatts 4y ago

1,000x this. There are a bunch of potential projects I could knock over personally in a month or two each that I will never ever be allowed to bid on. Instead, it goes through an internal process at the department that takes months, which means a bunch of people have to justify their positions, driving up the minimum cost. These non-technical people architect the solution, put it a scribble of a Frankenstein's monster of a design in the tender with a laundry list of requirements, none of which are actually needed because what they really wanted was a mostly static website any idiot could develop. A couple of years later (I wish I was kidding), the tender process is finished and a Big Consultancy begins the hard work of... subcontracting the work. To my parent company, that finally gives it to me. Out of the $millions on the tender, I now have 2 weeks to a job that should have been 2 months. The design is now hilariously out-of-date, and was wrong to begin with, but it is now a part of a legally binding contract between orgs I have zero leverage with. It MUST be implemented, verbatim. Including the bits that are actively harmful, stupid, backwards, legacy, or just idiotic. All of it. This stuff is audited to make sure there's no corruption or dodgy work! The end result is a monstrosity built in a hurry by a poorly paid tech, while 10+ middle manager types all take their cut. It's abhorrent.

bottled_poe 4y ago

This seems to be the correct answer based on my experience.