[
sick and wrong
]
2002-07-29
The truth about corporate "solutions": I like
this biting piece in Salon about how tech companies have been selling broken products for awhile. While CEOs pat themselves on the back about how well they're drumming up sales, they're oblivious to the fact that their products just plain don't work.
McNealy's attitude is the culmination of the last decade's ascendant ethos for U.S. business: near worship and lavish compensation for people who "make things happen" coupled with near contempt and minimal rewards for people who "make things work."
...
Many a CEO, or even a CIO, would be shocked to discover, were they to inquire (or encourage their subordinates to discover), that some of their employees are manually entering data (from two quarters back) into one system from printouts produced by another. Or that some 20 people buried in the customer service department do nothing, all day, but correct errors created when salespeople (after a half day's training) enter orders into a system so complicated and cumbersome that it takes weeks to train the people in customer service and accounts receivable delegated to picking up the pieces to use it properly. Or that out in the warehouse the complicated wireless system (which took years, not months, to really get working and cost four times what was budgeted) is randomly on the fritz, and stock must be picked manually several hours a day.
Yow. The truth hurts.
