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There's something special about private enterprises making them reconsider their approaches, though - the fact that they lose their own money (which is often co

by _yosefk 13y ago

There's something special about private enterprises making them reconsider their approaches, though - the fact that they lose their own money (which is often combined with having a smaller pool of money to begin with). Few enterprises can spend $150M and fewer will keep spending upon signs of things not working out. As to private contractors doing a poor job when paid with taxpayer money - makes some sense, as long as said money keeps flowing. In a different setting the flow would stop more quickly.

fred_k 13y ago
Can you justify this? More software projects fail than succeed, private or not, VC's base their decisions on it, everyone knows it.
gruseom 13y ago
This is untrue of large private enterprises, which are quite capable of throwing good money after bad, engaging in wishful thinking, and all the rest of it. As another commenter pointed out, the difference with the public sector may rather be that private failures can be more easily hidden. I did one stint at a BigCo, during which they blew over $100M on a "platform of the future" project on which all their disparate software products were going to be developed going forward. It was obviously never going to work, yet they kept funding it and kept pushing it on all their software teams. Even though this was a massive failure, it was never announced as such or even explicitly canceled. It just crawled off to die alone somewhere. Official rhetoric was that the project had succeeded, and the executive who had championed it was promoted to run the entire software division of the company. Edit: so I think the salient difference here is not private vs. public, but large vs. small.
superuser2 13y ago
In what sense is it "their own money"? The programmers at a private enterprise are not doing anything with "their own money" besides collecting a salary. The same detachment from the outcome that happens in government work can happen in businesses, and it does all the time. The people at the top of a business software product might be stockholders, so they could have some risk. The people at the top of a government project also understand that it will be their photo in the media along with the public outrage. And both understand that the consequences - whether public anger or a dip in the stock price - are temporary and will go away in a few weeks.
leejoramo 13y ago
I know of a private newspaper with a circulation of around 30,000 that spent $3M on a failed Print software system. How does that compare to the BBC's viewer & listenership numbers for $150M for a Audio/Video production system?
- takluyver 13y ago
  According to barb.co.uk, BBC 1 (the flagship TV channel) had some 45M viewers over a recent week. We could consider other channels, radio stations and the website, but that's already well over half the UK population. By cost per customer, that's more than an order of magnitude better than your newspaper example.

by _yosefk 13y ago

fred_k 13y ago

Can you justify this? More software projects fail than succeed, private or not, VC's base their decisions on it, everyone knows it.

gruseom 13y ago

This is untrue of large private enterprises, which are quite capable of throwing good money after bad, engaging in wishful thinking, and all the rest of it. As another commenter pointed out, the difference with the public sector may rather be that private failures can be more easily hidden. I did one stint at a BigCo, during which they blew over $100M on a "platform of the future" project on which all their disparate software products were going to be developed going forward. It was obviously never going to work, yet they kept funding it and kept pushing it on all their software teams. Even though this was a massive failure, it was never announced as such or even explicitly canceled. It just crawled off to die alone somewhere. Official rhetoric was that the project had succeeded, and the executive who had championed it was promoted to run the entire software division of the company. Edit: so I think the salient difference here is not private vs. public, but large vs. small.

superuser2 13y ago

In what sense is it "their own money"? The programmers at a private enterprise are not doing anything with "their own money" besides collecting a salary. The same detachment from the outcome that happens in government work can happen in businesses, and it does all the time. The people at the top of a business software product might be stockholders, so they could have some risk. The people at the top of a government project also understand that it will be their photo in the media along with the public outrage. And both understand that the consequences - whether public anger or a dip in the stock price - are temporary and will go away in a few weeks.

leejoramo 13y ago

I know of a private newspaper with a circulation of around 30,000 that spent $3M on a failed Print software system. How does that compare to the BBC's viewer & listenership numbers for $150M for a Audio/Video production system?

takluyver 13y ago
According to barb.co.uk, BBC 1 (the flagship TV channel) had some 45M viewers over a recent week. We could consider other channels, radio stations and the website, but that's already well over half the UK population. By cost per customer, that's more than an order of magnitude better than your newspaper example.