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I used to be a data analyst at a Big 4 management consultancy, so I've seen an awful lot of this kind of thing. One thing I never understood is the inverse cor

I used to be a data analyst at a Big 4 management consultancy, so I've seen an awful lot of this kind of thing. One thing I never understood is the inverse correlation between "cost of product" and "ability to do serialisation properly". Free database like Postgres? Perfect every time. Big complex 6-figure e-discovery system? Apparently written by someone who has never heard of quoting, escaping or the difference between \n and \r and who thinks it's clever to use 0xFF as a delimiter, because in the Windows-1252 code page it looks like a weird rune and therefore "it won't be in the data".

ethbr1 2y ago
> Big complex 6-figure e-discovery system? Apparently written by someone who has never heard of quoting... It's because about a certain size, system projects are captured by the large consultancy shops, who eat the majority of the price in profit and management overhead... ... and then send the coding work to a lowest-cost someone who has never heard of quoting, etc. And it's a vicious cycle, because the developers in those shops that do learn and mature quickly leave for better pay and management. (Yes, there's usually a shit hot tiger team somewhere in these orgs, but they spend all their time bailing out dumpster fires or landing T10 customers. The average customer isn't getting them.)
- deepsun 2y ago
  Just a nitpick about consultancy shops -- I've had a chance of working in one in eastern europe and noticed that it's approach to quality was way better than client's. It also helped that client paid by hours, so consultancy company was incentivized to spend more time on refactorings, improvals and testing (with constant pushback from client). So I don't buy the consultancy company sentiment, it always boils down to engineers and incentives.
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    How big was the one you worked for? In my experience, smaller ones tend to align incentives better. Once they grow past a certain size though, it's a labor arbitrage game. Bill client X, staff with resources costing Y (and over-represented), profit = X-Y, minimize Y to maximize profit. PwC / IBM Global Services wasn't offering the best and brightest. (Outside of aforementioned tiger teams)
    - deepsun 2y ago
      I agree with you in general, although my case was the other way around. My company was 10k+ people. But my client was probably the most technically advanced company at that time, with famously hard interviews for their own employees. My employer also didn't want to lose the client (it was beginning of collaboration), and since everyone wanted to work there (and move to US+California) my shop applied pretty strong filter for their own heads, even before sending them to client's vendor-interview. And client was very-very happy with the quality, and that we didn't fight for promotions and could maintain very important, but promotion-poor projects. Up to the point that client trusted to completely gave couple of projects fully to my shop. When you don't need to fight for promotions, code quality also improves.
deleted 2y ago
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recursive 2y ago
"Enterprise software" has been defined as software that is purchased based on the decisions of people that will not use it. I think that explains a lot.
- mjw_byrne 2y ago
  Yep, we had a constant tug of war between techies who wanted to use open-source tools that actually work (Linux, Postgres, Python, Go etc.) and bigwigs who wanted impressive-sounding things in Powerpoint decks and were trying to force "enterprise" platforms like Palantir and IBM BigInsights on us. Any time we were allowed to actually test one of the "enterprise" platforms, we'd break it in a few minutes. And I don't mean by being pathologically abusive, I mean stuff like "let's see if it can correctly handle a UTF-8 BOM...oh no, it can't".
  - mharig 2y ago
    [dead]

ethbr1 2y ago

> Big complex 6-figure e-discovery system? Apparently written by someone who has never heard of quoting... It's because about a certain size, system projects are captured by the large consultancy shops, who eat the majority of the price in profit and management overhead... ... and then send the coding work to a lowest-cost someone who has never heard of quoting, etc. And it's a vicious cycle, because the developers in those shops that do learn and mature quickly leave for better pay and management. (Yes, there's usually a shit hot tiger team somewhere in these orgs, but they spend all their time bailing out dumpster fires or landing T10 customers. The average customer isn't getting them.)

deepsun 2y ago
Just a nitpick about consultancy shops -- I've had a chance of working in one in eastern europe and noticed that it's approach to quality was way better than client's. It also helped that client paid by hours, so consultancy company was incentivized to spend more time on refactorings, improvals and testing (with constant pushback from client). So I don't buy the consultancy company sentiment, it always boils down to engineers and incentives.
- ethbr1 2y ago
  How big was the one you worked for? In my experience, smaller ones tend to align incentives better. Once they grow past a certain size though, it's a labor arbitrage game. Bill client X, staff with resources costing Y (and over-represented), profit = X-Y, minimize Y to maximize profit. PwC / IBM Global Services wasn't offering the best and brightest. (Outside of aforementioned tiger teams)
  - deepsun 2y ago
    I agree with you in general, although my case was the other way around. My company was 10k+ people. But my client was probably the most technically advanced company at that time, with famously hard interviews for their own employees. My employer also didn't want to lose the client (it was beginning of collaboration), and since everyone wanted to work there (and move to US+California) my shop applied pretty strong filter for their own heads, even before sending them to client's vendor-interview. And client was very-very happy with the quality, and that we didn't fight for promotions and could maintain very important, but promotion-poor projects. Up to the point that client trusted to completely gave couple of projects fully to my shop. When you don't need to fight for promotions, code quality also improves.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

recursive 2y ago

"Enterprise software" has been defined as software that is purchased based on the decisions of people that will not use it. I think that explains a lot.

mjw_byrne 2y ago
Yep, we had a constant tug of war between techies who wanted to use open-source tools that actually work (Linux, Postgres, Python, Go etc.) and bigwigs who wanted impressive-sounding things in Powerpoint decks and were trying to force "enterprise" platforms like Palantir and IBM BigInsights on us. Any time we were allowed to actually test one of the "enterprise" platforms, we'd break it in a few minutes. And I don't mean by being pathologically abusive, I mean stuff like "let's see if it can correctly handle a UTF-8 BOM...oh no, it can't".
- mharig 2y ago
  [dead]