Software Fugitives

I used to work for a small software consulting company. I was the network guy... well the guy that did everything else because I didn't know enough to be a developer. This company was primarily in business to develop custom software. We did ok. Nothing spectacular. But we delivered what the customer wanted and the price wasn't astronomical. I made a mistake, though. I wanted it to be perfect. I wanted real software. Stuff that people buzzed about. Like blogger for instance. But what I didn't realize is that wasn't necessarily what the customer wanted. That company is what it is. They'll never be billionares, but they'll never be hungry. Mainstream isn't why they're playing the game.... jeans, sneakers, t-shirts and foosball is.

So now I'm a V.P. at one of the top 10 homebuilding companies in the country. I was hired to bring 3 technical systems together at a division where there was no technical savvy whatsoever. It turned into an executive management gig and I rarely look back.

But something's bothering me.

One of the new technical systems that have been implemented at this division and across this company is a horrible piece of cow dung. Without getting into too many of the specifics, I'll mention a couple of phrases that should drive any technical person crazy while reading this:

How 'bout "Progress Database" or "not normalized" or "inordinate sums for enhancements" or "manual nightly batch pushes to transfer data" or "data disappears" or "not relational" or "not user friendly" or "hire more people just to maintain it".... I could go on and on, but I won't. My point here is that the company I'm working for is already in the hole over $5,000,000.00 for this piece of crap. They started trying to implement this product 5 years ago and limped along until they decided to either scrap the project all together or hire people like me to get it going. They decided to get it going and the amount of money that they are continuing to spend and will spend to get it where it needs to be is hard to swallow.

I've spent countless hours struggling with this product. I've also spent many hours on conference calls with the CIO of my company and the developers (in Canada) of this product along with several other technical people. And the biggest problem I have with the whole situation is that the people who developed this product just don't care to help us. They've gotten so much money from us and they stand to get so much more that they just don't care. They know we're not going to leave now... we've got too much invested. But we should leave, because it sucks. We'll never benefit.

We should have some sort of recourse though, shouldn't we? I mean, we've paid for a product that is barely doing what it needs to do and we're pouring money into it. A real company would respond. A real company has to answer to the press and shareholders and stuff. These people answer to no one. They just half-ass the day and get in their Ferrari's and drive home.

The small company that I used to work for would have never gotten themselves into this situation. God bless 'em they couldn't sell to save their lives, so they just did what they could through people they knew. They never would have hit the big time, but they also never would get themselves in a situation where a lawsuit is far from farfetched. But who are the idiots here? The homebuilding company that's paying the money? The dorks in Canada who produce shit? Or the small cute little companies that simply stay in the black and forgo this colossal sea of money where mistakes are forgiven through trial, error and uneducated people forking over cash?

At some point you have to look in the mirror and say to yourself that you don't want to take advantage of people. But I was never asking my old company to do that. I simply wanted them to take a little more of a lover's leap into a world where people will pay dearly for what they want... and let you make mistakes getting there. Someday there will be lawsuits and lawyers and technically-minded CIO's who will hold software companies accountable for the crap they produce. But until then we have to keep paying and the Canuk's have to keep answering support calls and cashing checks and rolling their eyes at our whining. And those missing the boat, well, congratulations gentlemen!... You'll never lose another foosball match in a local bar... BRAVO.