There's this ISP in Belgium, Telenet, that does this. I've never understood it. Their code is some java enterprise crap, and when helping out helpdeskers I've s

There's this ISP in Belgium, Telenet, that does this. I've never understood it. Their code is some java enterprise crap, and when helping out helpdeskers I've seen it and I've had the opportunity to see some of the code. It's easy to point out 10 obvious errors in each of their (horribly long) functions. The problem is that this infects all of their business processes. Even the quality of the code, which I'm sure costs them dozens of FTE-equivalents on an ongoing constant workarounds at least. There's also a constant workload for damage repair, whose costs probably go beyond merely the cost of the people doing it. The real big problem is the complete and total disconnect between the business and the development side. The impact of this goes from prioritization problems (spelling fixes get precedence over database corruption bugs), to month-long projects having to be redone multiple times. It also means that there is a massive disconnect between the business policy and what the system will actually do (legal frequently freaks out over it too. On one hand it lets some customers openly abuse the telco, and it often disconnects people for a payment deficit of EUR 0.01 that was caused by that very system). And of course, the business has to cope in the meantime. The government has assigned a "judge" (ombudsman, but with legal teeth) to do nothing other than override this system in ridiculous cases. Why the fuck do (large) companies accept this sort of shit ? I can understand a startups' "needs to work right fucking now" attitude with uncertain market fit, but hundreds of millions of revenue depend on this software ... Although this is partly why I've heard people leave Europe. In Europe, firstly, the money available to pay for a job is determined by "social order", not by value of the position. So a programmer makes $X (less than EUR 70k, and that's very, very well paid, and keep in mind minimum tax level is 56%). Even the one that when he makes a small mistakes crashes the entire network. If there's budget, they hire more programmers, not better ones. So you find 20-year old php monkeys doing those jobs, and constant outages. And second, sadly, this behavior is not at all limited to huge telcos. Baffles the mind.