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I think a more positive take away is that this is a relatively small traditional manufacturing business with a few hundred employees that managed to automate a

I think a more positive take away is that this is a relatively small traditional manufacturing business with a few hundred employees that managed to automate a lot of their workflows at a small captial cost using off the shelf components and a willingness to take a stab at skilling up their own staff to build a solution to solve their usecase. The alternative is hiring a consultancy that may or may not actually deliver anything worthwhile at the cost of many thousands a day and leaving you with a solution that you cannot maintain because you completely lack the internal compentence as a consequence of outsourcing all of the development in the first place. More small/medium sized businesses should take risks like this. We should honestly be questioning, esp in the UK, the degree to which we depend upon consultants for seemlingly everything and how little businesses and government are willing to invest in taking small bets on their own employees over hiring frankly overpriced consultants from Accenture or McKinsey who are often expensive suits backed by a bunch of very recent graduates with little or no experience.

sulcate 4y ago
Yes, absolutely! But a part that's missing is the reason WHY companies often prefer to hire inefficient outside consultants that will under deliver, over promise, and often leave you with a half functional system at the end. It's for class politics and control reasons that managers and executives don't want to invest in on-site talent to expand their skills. They want disposable labor even if it costs them more money in the end, because it's a decision motivated by their power interests. They don't want to depend on on-site talent, they don't want to promote you, they don't want to pay you what you are worth, they don't want your talents to develop. They want to pay an outside agency whatever amount of money for the promise of a system, because even if the consultant fails they have fulfilled their capitalist due diligence and did things the right way, rather than having had local employees that are crucial to you that you invest in do work for you. If you take issue with this characterization, I'd ask you why do many people here find it notable that this company had an existing employee develop a system rather than just dragging in the consultants.
- a_humean 4y ago
  I don't disagree that there might be a class issue involved esp in UK workplaces, but there is also this mystery that it seems like everyone knows that the big consultancies fail to deliver much more often than than they succeed by everyone except for the people in management with the budgets to hire these people. They are parasites on both the private sector, public sectors, and even government policy development. I actually suspect its corruption more than classism. I am speaking as someone that used to be one of those pink face graduates behind the expensive suits that was horrified at how hollowed out so many of our publically traded companies and government are.

sulcate 4y ago

Yes, absolutely! But a part that's missing is the reason WHY companies often prefer to hire inefficient outside consultants that will under deliver, over promise, and often leave you with a half functional system at the end. It's for class politics and control reasons that managers and executives don't want to invest in on-site talent to expand their skills. They want disposable labor even if it costs them more money in the end, because it's a decision motivated by their power interests. They don't want to depend on on-site talent, they don't want to promote you, they don't want to pay you what you are worth, they don't want your talents to develop. They want to pay an outside agency whatever amount of money for the promise of a system, because even if the consultant fails they have fulfilled their capitalist due diligence and did things the right way, rather than having had local employees that are crucial to you that you invest in do work for you. If you take issue with this characterization, I'd ask you why do many people here find it notable that this company had an existing employee develop a system rather than just dragging in the consultants.

a_humean 4y ago
I don't disagree that there might be a class issue involved esp in UK workplaces, but there is also this mystery that it seems like everyone knows that the big consultancies fail to deliver much more often than than they succeed by everyone except for the people in management with the budgets to hire these people. They are parasites on both the private sector, public sectors, and even government policy development. I actually suspect its corruption more than classism. I am speaking as someone that used to be one of those pink face graduates behind the expensive suits that was horrified at how hollowed out so many of our publically traded companies and government are.