4 ms·

I was under the impression pretty much everyone in CS knew what was up. When I graduated, some people I knew went to Accenture, who billed them out at $350/hou

by qdog 12y ago

I was under the impression pretty much everyone in CS knew what was up. When I graduated, some people I knew went to Accenture, who billed them out at $350/hour immediately. So you'd have a few dozen "consultants" with little to no experience and one or two people who had been on projects before. I assume all the big consulting companies operate that way. I'm sure the state of Oregon screwed up, but I have little doubt Oracle was bilking them for every dollar they could get. Whether Oregon can prove this in court will be interesting to see, I assume Oracle will settle at some point, since they wouldn't want everyone to wake up and smell the $$$.

tootie 12y ago
I once worked alongsize Accenture on a Siebel integration. They staffed about 100 liberal arts grads who toiled away 80 hours a week like monkeys at typewriters until the system worked. To their credit, it did. They took home $100-200MM filtered through their headquarters in Bermuda, but at least the system existed when they left.
- qdog 12y ago
  One of my CS friends actually got on there, and he was a capable programmer at the school level. So maybe by sprinkling in a few competent people here and there they get things done. Was very funny, at some point they found out he knew something about C, so they called him in on a project that had been languishing for 6 months with some guy unable to complete it, my friend did whatever in a couple of hours and was the local company hero after that. It's quite possible the jobs they do just need a handful of people and everyone else is just padding the consulting rate.
theIV 12y ago
I haven't worked for Accenture, but a friend of mine did (not on the software side, but on strategy). These recent grads were referred to as "green beans." Don't know if this is a general term or what, but I always found it both slightly amusing and slightly terrifying.
bane 12y ago
Wait until you have to deal with the gangs of fresh b-school grads a place like McKinsey or Boston Consulting tosses at a problem. It's almost like a human powered Markov Powerpoint slide Chain...you'll never see so many content-free slides generated so fast. The best part is that every question about why a group of barely shaving 20 somethings with zero corporate management experience are charging out hundreds to thousands of dollars per hour to "advise" senior C-level staff on how to run their billion dollar companies is answered with "well these are Ivy Leaguers, we only hire the best!" Meanwhile every 6-12 mo program turns into a scheduled 24 month program that inevitably misses every deadline ever set for it and runs millions of dollars over before producing a barely functional solution that gets scrapped and rebuilt a year later.

by qdog 12y ago

tootie 12y ago

I once worked alongsize Accenture on a Siebel integration. They staffed about 100 liberal arts grads who toiled away 80 hours a week like monkeys at typewriters until the system worked. To their credit, it did. They took home $100-200MM filtered through their headquarters in Bermuda, but at least the system existed when they left.

qdog 12y ago
One of my CS friends actually got on there, and he was a capable programmer at the school level. So maybe by sprinkling in a few competent people here and there they get things done. Was very funny, at some point they found out he knew something about C, so they called him in on a project that had been languishing for 6 months with some guy unable to complete it, my friend did whatever in a couple of hours and was the local company hero after that. It's quite possible the jobs they do just need a handful of people and everyone else is just padding the consulting rate.

theIV 12y ago

I haven't worked for Accenture, but a friend of mine did (not on the software side, but on strategy). These recent grads were referred to as "green beans." Don't know if this is a general term or what, but I always found it both slightly amusing and slightly terrifying.

bane 12y ago

Wait until you have to deal with the gangs of fresh b-school grads a place like McKinsey or Boston Consulting tosses at a problem. It's almost like a human powered Markov Powerpoint slide Chain...you'll never see so many content-free slides generated so fast. The best part is that every question about why a group of barely shaving 20 somethings with zero corporate management experience are charging out hundreds to thousands of dollars per hour to "advise" senior C-level staff on how to run their billion dollar companies is answered with "well these are Ivy Leaguers, we only hire the best!" Meanwhile every 6-12 mo program turns into a scheduled 24 month program that inevitably misses every deadline ever set for it and runs millions of dollars over before producing a barely functional solution that gets scrapped and rebuilt a year later.