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Why Can't Non-Tech Companies Do Tech Well?

posted by LaminatorX on Wednesday February 19 2014, @10:30PM   Printer-friendly
from the you-must-be-new-here dept.

Walzmyn writes:

"The company I work for is not a tech company. We are, however, a multi-national, multi-billion dollar company that claims to be the largest of our kind in three industries (and second largest in a 4th). And yet, our company network sucks. There is a mishmash of Citrix and SAP, multiple web-portals, and none of them work with each other. The several thousand non-technical people that work for this company are routinely asked to interface with this system and end up spending time with the helpdesk or with a supervisor looking over the shoulder for something that was supposed to be private.

I've heard of similar situations with other companies, so I wanted to ask the folks that live and breathe the tech sector this: Why can't a company this size get something so fundamental done right? Why can't they at least hire a third party to do it right for them?"

 
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  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Monday February 24 2014, @03:51PM

    by VLM (445) on Monday February 24 2014, @03:51PM (#6106)

    "we have to stay up to date on the current trends, and in many situations, have to develop our own apps to fill specific needs."

    Internally its all "see this cover of PC magazine, do that by next week, don't care if you've never heard about it before." And frankly it usually works out OK.

    So that's how new tech is handled internally.

    "we still have a hard time finding qualified candidates."

    Right outta the HR job posting:

    - Must have minimum 20 years experience in new technology that was just announced on PC Magazine front cover last month and/or Nobel prize and/or Turing award.

    - Must have expert level experience in (insert list of keywords generated by selecting 20 random wikipedia articles, none of which are actually used on the job). Also mandatory that this list was from 2004 and has not been updated since the previous guy being replaced was hired.

    - Must survive two day interview gauntlet consisting proving Fermats last theorem, inventing 3 new sorting algorithms in IBM 360 basic assembly language, implementing a quantum factoring algorithm using Radio Shack parts and an old TI-81 calculator, all for an ungodly stereotypical CRUD app dev position.

    - Must be under 28 years of age, thirtysomethings are too expensive as employees and willing to relocate to outer Elbonia.

    And this is how new tech is handled externally.

    Spot any little difference?

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