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Yeah, the CA version (https://www.coveredca.com/ https://www.coveredca.com/) had so many visual glitches and various problems (404s and 500s), I threw up in my

by ericd 13y ago

Yeah, the CA version (https://www.coveredca.com/ https://www.coveredca.com/) had so many visual glitches and various problems (404s and 500s), I threw up in my mouth a little when I found out that Accenture charged the state over 180M to build it and another 174M to operate it for four years. I don't know how that's possible.

scarmig 13y ago
Are you serious? Christ.
akjetma 13y ago
Do you have a source for those numbers? I need to vomit, but I can't without a source. edit: Nevermind: http://newsroom.accenture.com/news/accenture-chosen-to-implement-california-health-insurance-exchange.htm http://newsroom.accenture.com/news/accenture-chosen-to-imple... Vomit everywhere.
frozenport 13y ago
I had a job interview with Accenture that had 2 parts a dinner and a technical chat. 1. At the dinner their representative spoke about how life at Accenture was a breeze and how as a undergraduate he spent most of this time drinking. He drank on the weekdays but his favorite time to drink was on Sundays. He said he used to do some SQL but now he had moved onto the business side of things. One of the candidates told us how his hobby of skydiving let him see the big picture and another told us that his desi background would enabled to come up culture specific features for software services. I probed this question further, and he said that in India showing your muscles was considered hubris, while in America it made you look strong. On his facebook page he wouldn't show his bare chest... Nobody at the table `looked` like they could do any programming work. 2. During the technical interview I was asked what `clubs` I was in. I told them I wasn't in many clubs and instead spent my time doing research work (which by that time had yield publications) and administrating websites. I told them my hobby was programming. I wanted to tell them how I dealt with EC2 sight outages, worked with clients and their clients to write WordPress plugins. I wanted to talk about my experience engineering our production and outsourcing workflow. I wanted to summarize the techniques I learned overseeing our production staff. They didn't comprehend and asked he what `clubs` I was in. I was scheduled to have 3 interviews, I walked out after the first. Don't work for Accenture, they are a joke because their employees are a joke, which is much in agreement with this article. They also have 275,000 employees.
- tedsanders 13y ago
  I often wonder if this attitude makes the problem worse. If good programmers don't work for Accenture because Accenture is full of bad programmers, then how can Accenture ever become better? How can it evolve to provide better contracting services? If you were in charge of Accenture hiring strategy, what would you change?
  - danmaz74 13y ago
    IMHO they would need to acknowledge there is a problem and launch a public program to fix it. "Come fix the biggest consulting company in the world" could attract top talent. But they just can't do it, even if they wanted - how would customers react?
  - usea 13y ago
    > If you were in charge of Accenture hiring strategy, what would you change? Is my goal to improve the ability of the developers? What does that gain me? If the ability of my talent is only loosely coupled with landing contracts, then I'd try to maximize the gulf between the salary I pay and the value they provide. If fresh grads can produce good enough work to satisfy contracts, and they cost less, they're my target. Many firms work this way, and it seems to be a fairly successful strategy if you can land the contracts. Having a few senior, competent people in the mix probably helps hedge against any serious problems. Also, I'd make sure to get everybody as many useless certifications from big companies as possible, as they improve our ability to land contracts. I'm just playing devil's advocate though. My real answer is I'd change my job.
  - frozenport 13y ago
    Easy, rebrand and say they are gathering people for a new team. Maybe call it Accenture+. Maybe don't even use the Accenture name. Start a lean technical consulting service company that is 100% owned by Accenture. With 275,000 employee it is clear they are looking for volume and not talent.
    - ericd 13y ago
      Good point, working for Walmart Labs is actually a much more appealing idea than working for Walmart.
nostromo 13y ago
The WA version (https://wahealthplanfinder.org/ https://wahealthplanfinder.org/) doesn't redirect you to www, so if you click that link you get a big red SSL warning. This caused a number of people to worry that this was one of those scam exchanges people had been warned about. Total cost: $54.8 million
- cdcarter 13y ago
  Plus, it doesn't allow the #-sign in the address lines...
smsm42 13y ago
Wow! Given how awful it was on Oct 1 and that it was broken under the load of less than 10 req/s [1], it is outrageous how much it costed. It is probably standard for the government contracts everywhere, but when it is where I know how badly it is done and how much it costs, it's just doubly disgusting. [1] http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-california-health-exchange-glitches-20131001,0,7108713.story http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-california-he... BTW it looks like Accenture is not the only one. This page: https://www.coveredca.com/shopandcompare/#calculator https://www.coveredca.com/shopandcompare/#calculator has this in the source: Produced for Covered California and the State of California by Kiefer Consulting, Inc. www.kieferconsulting.com (and then for some reason Apache license - copy-paste from somewhere?) So 180M might be just one part of it, the whole sum may be much bigger.

by ericd 13y ago

scarmig 13y ago

Are you serious? Christ.

akjetma 13y ago

Do you have a source for those numbers? I need to vomit, but I can't without a source. edit: Nevermind: http://newsroom.accenture.com/news/accenture-chosen-to-implement-california-health-insurance-exchange.htm http://newsroom.accenture.com/news/accenture-chosen-to-imple... Vomit everywhere.

frozenport 13y ago

I had a job interview with Accenture that had 2 parts a dinner and a technical chat. 1. At the dinner their representative spoke about how life at Accenture was a breeze and how as a undergraduate he spent most of this time drinking. He drank on the weekdays but his favorite time to drink was on Sundays. He said he used to do some SQL but now he had moved onto the business side of things. One of the candidates told us how his hobby of skydiving let him see the big picture and another told us that his desi background would enabled to come up culture specific features for software services. I probed this question further, and he said that in India showing your muscles was considered hubris, while in America it made you look strong. On his facebook page he wouldn't show his bare chest... Nobody at the table `looked` like they could do any programming work. 2. During the technical interview I was asked what `clubs` I was in. I told them I wasn't in many clubs and instead spent my time doing research work (which by that time had yield publications) and administrating websites. I told them my hobby was programming. I wanted to tell them how I dealt with EC2 sight outages, worked with clients and their clients to write WordPress plugins. I wanted to talk about my experience engineering our production and outsourcing workflow. I wanted to summarize the techniques I learned overseeing our production staff. They didn't comprehend and asked he what `clubs` I was in. I was scheduled to have 3 interviews, I walked out after the first. Don't work for Accenture, they are a joke because their employees are a joke, which is much in agreement with this article. They also have 275,000 employees.

tedsanders 13y ago
I often wonder if this attitude makes the problem worse. If good programmers don't work for Accenture because Accenture is full of bad programmers, then how can Accenture ever become better? How can it evolve to provide better contracting services? If you were in charge of Accenture hiring strategy, what would you change?
- danmaz74 13y ago
  IMHO they would need to acknowledge there is a problem and launch a public program to fix it. "Come fix the biggest consulting company in the world" could attract top talent. But they just can't do it, even if they wanted - how would customers react?
- usea 13y ago
  > If you were in charge of Accenture hiring strategy, what would you change? Is my goal to improve the ability of the developers? What does that gain me? If the ability of my talent is only loosely coupled with landing contracts, then I'd try to maximize the gulf between the salary I pay and the value they provide. If fresh grads can produce good enough work to satisfy contracts, and they cost less, they're my target. Many firms work this way, and it seems to be a fairly successful strategy if you can land the contracts. Having a few senior, competent people in the mix probably helps hedge against any serious problems. Also, I'd make sure to get everybody as many useless certifications from big companies as possible, as they improve our ability to land contracts. I'm just playing devil's advocate though. My real answer is I'd change my job.
- frozenport 13y ago
  Easy, rebrand and say they are gathering people for a new team. Maybe call it Accenture+. Maybe don't even use the Accenture name. Start a lean technical consulting service company that is 100% owned by Accenture. With 275,000 employee it is clear they are looking for volume and not talent.
  - ericd 13y ago
    Good point, working for Walmart Labs is actually a much more appealing idea than working for Walmart.

nostromo 13y ago

The WA version (https://wahealthplanfinder.org/ https://wahealthplanfinder.org/) doesn't redirect you to www, so if you click that link you get a big red SSL warning. This caused a number of people to worry that this was one of those scam exchanges people had been warned about. Total cost: $54.8 million

cdcarter 13y ago
Plus, it doesn't allow the #-sign in the address lines...

smsm42 13y ago

Wow! Given how awful it was on Oct 1 and that it was broken under the load of less than 10 req/s [1], it is outrageous how much it costed. It is probably standard for the government contracts everywhere, but when it is where I know how badly it is done and how much it costs, it's just doubly disgusting. [1] http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-california-health-exchange-glitches-20131001,0,7108713.story http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-california-he... BTW it looks like Accenture is not the only one. This page: https://www.coveredca.com/shopandcompare/#calculator https://www.coveredca.com/shopandcompare/#calculator has this in the source: Produced for Covered California and the State of California by Kiefer Consulting, Inc. www.kieferconsulting.com (and then for some reason Apache license - copy-paste from somewhere?) So 180M might be just one part of it, the whole sum may be much bigger.