I have previously worked as a Consultant and in both cases they have been for software houses. I always felt that if you were going to pimp out yourself then you might aswell have the inside track and worked for the company that wrote the software. Despite the supposed prestige associated with them I was never ever tempted to work for any of the then so called 'Big Six' (now known as the Final Four) consulting firms as I don't believe that our personalities would have been compatable.
Why? If you had witnessed some of the things I've seen the Big Six get away with you'd understand. Some classics include:
- A 'Big Six' female PM lodging a sexual misconduct complaint against a male client PM who sought to challenge the success of a major project. I can't say whether the complaint had any grounds but it was clear that it would never have seen the light of day had the client PM kept his mouth shut.
- A Big Six firm getting a project I was working on shutdown because we were close to delivering more in 3 months than they had in two years and promising to finish out Project within a month. This one ended up in litigation I'm pleased to say.
- Rigging RFI scoring to pick the most expensive packages to implement rather than those that best fit the client requirements.
- Attending onsite training courses with the client staff and then advising the client on configuration against the advice of the consultant trainers.
- An Big Six 'oracle development practice' that was running around Sydney in the 90's developing applications. Only was that they'd never discovered what an Index was!
- Big Six consultants sitting onsite doing a online SQL training course whilst billing a grand a day.
I'm sure there are lot smore examples out there and I'm not saying that the consultancies I worked for were whiter than white but there's a long way between them and what I've seen of the Big Six.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
More jokes at Larry's expense
Don't get me wrong - I think Oracle are a great company and I enjoyed working for them immensely. It's just that if you're going to work for them you need to develop a pretty thick skin. Besides which I think Larry can weather a joke or two.
So here are the best two jokes that used to do the rounds when I worked at the Big O.
"What do you call an optimistic Oracle Sales Rep?". Somebody who irons five shirts at the start of the week.
"What's the best platform that Oracle runs on?". Powerpoint.
So here are the best two jokes that used to do the rounds when I worked at the Big O.
"What do you call an optimistic Oracle Sales Rep?". Somebody who irons five shirts at the start of the week.
"What's the best platform that Oracle runs on?". Powerpoint.
Thin is the new Fat
Back in the mid 90's and arguably towards the end of the client server period there was a debate still being had on the relative merits of Thin versus Fat Client.
At the time Oracle Apps has just introduced 10SC (a gui fat client) replacing the previous green screen block character interface. I remember one PreSales technical slide from an Oracle Applications presentation in particular extolling the virtues of Fat Client over the three-tier Thin Client model that was used by SAP. The thin client was even given the derogatory label as a 'screenscraper'.
The funny thing is that just a short while later after the IT world had taken the browser to its heart I saw the same Tech PreSales giving the same presentation and giving exactly the opposite message with regard to Thin client after Oracle Apps has adopted the model.
So how do you know when an Oracle PreSales presenter is lying? Probably when their lips are moving.
At the time Oracle Apps has just introduced 10SC (a gui fat client) replacing the previous green screen block character interface. I remember one PreSales technical slide from an Oracle Applications presentation in particular extolling the virtues of Fat Client over the three-tier Thin Client model that was used by SAP. The thin client was even given the derogatory label as a 'screenscraper'.
The funny thing is that just a short while later after the IT world had taken the browser to its heart I saw the same Tech PreSales giving the same presentation and giving exactly the opposite message with regard to Thin client after Oracle Apps has adopted the model.
So how do you know when an Oracle PreSales presenter is lying? Probably when their lips are moving.
My Year of Living Dangerously
For exactly one year I gave up being technical and concentrated on the client relations side of the IT business. I remember the year exactly because FY96 (mid 1995-1996) was possibly the worst year of my professional life. FY96 was going to be Oracle's year of Customer Service.
I was picked out as having the prerequisite soft skills to work as one of twelve ambassadors within the customer base with the aim of improving overall referenceability. I was flattered as it meant reporting to a Director and I saw it as a great opportunity. Ultimately, however, the role came undone because:
- Halfway through the financial year it looked like Oracle Australia wasn't going to make its country numbers. Customer focus was dropped like a hot potato and sales targets re-emerged as the only real measure of success. My Director was given another portfolio related to Support Sales and given targets.
- Support and Sales could never agree on what our role was supposed to be about. Support (my organisation) wanted to us focus on the Tier 1 accounts and Sales wanted us to work as a Tier 3 Account Manager.
The long and the short of it was that whilst it was a poor year for me professionally I did gain a valuable insight into the inner workings of the sales organisation of a very successful software house.
It's easy to write of Salespeople as low, unscrupulous, pond life but that would be a generalisation and incorrect in many cases. The really successfull account managers were smart, driven and hard working. Were they honest? Well that's the 64 million dollar question. I prefer to think that they inhabit a world of greys rather than black and white. After a year of swimming with the sharks let's just say it was a relief to re-enter my technical world again. Binary, after all is pretty much a black and white sort of thing.
I was picked out as having the prerequisite soft skills to work as one of twelve ambassadors within the customer base with the aim of improving overall referenceability. I was flattered as it meant reporting to a Director and I saw it as a great opportunity. Ultimately, however, the role came undone because:
- Halfway through the financial year it looked like Oracle Australia wasn't going to make its country numbers. Customer focus was dropped like a hot potato and sales targets re-emerged as the only real measure of success. My Director was given another portfolio related to Support Sales and given targets.
- Support and Sales could never agree on what our role was supposed to be about. Support (my organisation) wanted to us focus on the Tier 1 accounts and Sales wanted us to work as a Tier 3 Account Manager.
The long and the short of it was that whilst it was a poor year for me professionally I did gain a valuable insight into the inner workings of the sales organisation of a very successful software house.
It's easy to write of Salespeople as low, unscrupulous, pond life but that would be a generalisation and incorrect in many cases. The really successfull account managers were smart, driven and hard working. Were they honest? Well that's the 64 million dollar question. I prefer to think that they inhabit a world of greys rather than black and white. After a year of swimming with the sharks let's just say it was a relief to re-enter my technical world again. Binary, after all is pretty much a black and white sort of thing.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
What no disk?
At the tail end of my time working for the big O Larry introduced the Network Computer. From memory it was the talk of the town at Oracle Openworld 1997. I remember being in a client briefing with a senior Oracle Marketing VP telling the client that in two years time they would have replaced their PC's with NC's.
I have to say that I bought into the concept of the NC and so did Sun and IBM (with their respective Javastation and Netstation). I'd recently finished a site visit for a large telco who had basically locked down their SOE PC build so that the PC barely used the local C: drive anyway. The logical extension of this was to produce a computer that would boot directly from the network and store eveything on network drives.
Funnily enough it wasn't any theoretical limitations that did for the NC but more than when it was released the price of PC's dropped from thousands of dollars to hundreds of dollars undermining any potential cost savings that Network Computers may have introduced. Shame really becuase I still think the idea had legs.
I have to say that I bought into the concept of the NC and so did Sun and IBM (with their respective Javastation and Netstation). I'd recently finished a site visit for a large telco who had basically locked down their SOE PC build so that the PC barely used the local C: drive anyway. The logical extension of this was to produce a computer that would boot directly from the network and store eveything on network drives.
Funnily enough it wasn't any theoretical limitations that did for the NC but more than when it was released the price of PC's dropped from thousands of dollars to hundreds of dollars undermining any potential cost savings that Network Computers may have introduced. Shame really becuase I still think the idea had legs.
Electic dreams
The early days of personal computer in the US may have been dominated by the likes of Apple II, the Tandy TRS-80 the Commodore Vic-20 but in the UK there were a number of other suppliers that preceded the days of the IBM PC. These were the likes of the Sinclair, Atom (BBC Micro), and Research Machines (making early CP/M based PC's).
Of these the first computer I ever owned was a second hand Sinclair ZX81 and I wish I had perhaps persevered with it a bit more. My problem was that I had no way of storing any programs I'd written, something at the time which was normally done on cassette tape. This meant that I had to type each and every program in fresh every time and anyone who ever struggled with the ZX81's rubbery keypad would understand just how frustrating this could be and just how limited the results for 20 minutes of typing could be. Having said that I still have fond memories of the old ZX81 and plugging away writing simple BASIC programs.
The most remarkable thing about the machine was it's low cost - about fifty pounds. Just imagine if the personal computer had evolved more along the lines of the ZX81 instead of the expensive beiges boxes costing thousand of dollars than invaded our desktops and homes instead.
In a recent Guardian article it came to light that Sir Clive Sinclair, the UK's personal computing pioneer, does not actually use a PC as he believes that they are wasteful (in memory and CPU cycles), take ages to boot and that he'd rather pick up the phone than communicate via email. Funnily enough these are thoughts I've already expressed in previous entries in this blog.
Anyway, hat's off to Sir Clive. A real thinker and a guenuine innovator.
Of these the first computer I ever owned was a second hand Sinclair ZX81 and I wish I had perhaps persevered with it a bit more. My problem was that I had no way of storing any programs I'd written, something at the time which was normally done on cassette tape. This meant that I had to type each and every program in fresh every time and anyone who ever struggled with the ZX81's rubbery keypad would understand just how frustrating this could be and just how limited the results for 20 minutes of typing could be. Having said that I still have fond memories of the old ZX81 and plugging away writing simple BASIC programs.
The most remarkable thing about the machine was it's low cost - about fifty pounds. Just imagine if the personal computer had evolved more along the lines of the ZX81 instead of the expensive beiges boxes costing thousand of dollars than invaded our desktops and homes instead.
In a recent Guardian article it came to light that Sir Clive Sinclair, the UK's personal computing pioneer, does not actually use a PC as he believes that they are wasteful (in memory and CPU cycles), take ages to boot and that he'd rather pick up the phone than communicate via email. Funnily enough these are thoughts I've already expressed in previous entries in this blog.
Anyway, hat's off to Sir Clive. A real thinker and a guenuine innovator.
Madness in the Method
In the UK there was a famous 80's TV commercial for British Telecom starring Maureen Lipman (http://centuryads.blogspot.com/2007/01/you-got-ology-1987-launch-of-bt-beattie.html). She plays a stereotypical Jewish grandmother who upon discovery that her gransdon has flunked all his exams except Pottery and Sociology replies "He gets an ology and he says he's failed... you get an ology you're a scientist." Maybe, just maybe, Andrew (the grandson) didn't become a scientist but got another ology ... a methodology instead.
This would tie in with how many methodologies are used (and abused?) in today's IT. From what I seen methodologies are used as a crutch by below standard IT consulting organisations/individuals to present a veneer of professional competency and mask the lack of any real ability.
Don't get me wrong, there's nothing inherently wrong with a good methodology as far as they go, but don't for one minute believe that an ology will somehow replace common sense, experience and good judgement.
This would tie in with how many methodologies are used (and abused?) in today's IT. From what I seen methodologies are used as a crutch by below standard IT consulting organisations/individuals to present a veneer of professional competency and mask the lack of any real ability.
Don't get me wrong, there's nothing inherently wrong with a good methodology as far as they go, but don't for one minute believe that an ology will somehow replace common sense, experience and good judgement.
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