PSA: Never Work For a Company With 3 Generations of Ownership

[K1052]

Their culture is terrible, management is idiotic, and smart people get pushed out. I can’t wait for the day that they fire us and blame everything on the consultants

You probably just described 80% of businesses. Public, private, or otherwise.

 

[BoberFett]

My current client is such a train wreck of a company. We were brought into to help out with an ERP implementation that was 90% done because half of the IT and Finance team quit. Almost all of their legitimate recommendations were ignored because they were not exactly how things were done before. Their only competent finance resource even took a job interview with me in the room today and didn't care.

Management has crippled the 2 year $5M project so much that, amazingly, the software is now worse than before. The best example I can give is buying a BMW and then slashing the tires, busting two windows, denting the hood, and never doing an oil change.

The owner is one of the least qualified people to run a company on the planet. He literally runs around bothering people, talking about star trek, and changing light bulbs. Imagine Steve Wozniak running a $200M+ revenue company. I haven’t seen him do one thing right as a CEO in over a month. Last week he even said that he didn't want to grow the company anymore because it was getting too big to handle.

Amazingly, they still have 40%+ margins and the owner makes millions a year. I still don’t get how they are still even in business with lead times of a year and a half and an average production delay of 6+ months. Their culture is terrible, management is idiotic, and smart people get pushed out. I can’t wait for the day that they fire us and blame everything on the consultants

That sounds like a typical ERP rollout to me...

 

[Ns1]

This guy I referenced in my previous post got the bright idea to do it in his production instance. Yeah......

I DIDN'T KNOW HE WAS REAL!!!

 

[Rage187]

I worked for a software company with a shit CEO, quarter after quarter of losses. He gets canned.

He then weasels his way onto the board, the one that just fired him, and gets all his buddies elected. They make him CEO again.

1 year later, total bankruptcy.

 

[xeemzor]

That sounds like a typical ERP rollout to me...

Only at terrible companies. The ones that have their shit together usually manage OK. There are a few big indicators that the project will be a failure:

• Management is completely disengaged from the project. They do not participate except for on the steering committee.
• IT owns and manages the project instead of the functional teams.
• The project manager is inexperienced.

 

[Spungo]

I've worked for good companies before. Usually they are the ones that are super fast growing and less than 10 years old.

Once they go public everything turns to shit though.

Companies always turn to shit when they go public. They'll fire their best people to cut costs and pad the bottom line. They forget that companies are supposed to make and sell things. How is your engineering firm supposed to get large contracts if you've just fired all of your senior engineers? That's like selling your car to raise cash. Then you realize you can't get to work because you have no way of getting to work, so you quit your job as well. Who cares if you don't have a job. That's next quarter! This quarter looks great because we sold all of our productive assets! We have so much cash on the balance sheet!

HP has fired about 50,000 employees over the past year. Can someone remind me what HP does? There's not much you can do without workers. Can't design anything, can't build anything, can't sell anything. Is HP just a front for drug cartels? I know they make extremely low quality printers, but I'm not sure what else they make.

 

[OutHouse]

What ERP system Is being installed?

 

[Jadow]

Amazingly, they still have 40%+ margins and the owner makes millions a year

say no more

 

[xeemzor]

What ERP system Is being installed?

Dynamics AX. If they had gone with SAP or Oracle it would have been an even bigger disaster.

 

[Ns1]

Dynamics AX. If they had gone with SAP or Oracle it would have been an even bigger disaster.

lololololol dynamix.

 

[OutHouse]

Can someone remind me what HP does? There's not much you can do without workers. Can't design anything, can't build anything, can't sell anything. Is HP just a front for drug cartels? I know they make extremely low quality printers, but I'm not sure what else they make.

never heard og HP ProLiant servers? How about laptops? Or personal work stations? Or lefthand storage?

 

[xeemzor]

lololololol dynamix.

Don't knock it until you try it. For most companies it's a better choice than the larger ERP systems.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

lololololol dynamix.

I'm not so sure I'd laugh at Dynamics -- there are tons of high-paying jobs out there for it, so they must be doing something right.

If you want a laughable ERP system, talk to Oracle. :awe: Note that I'm saying that as a technical person, but end users at a place I used to work called it "Obstacle."

 

[Ns1]

Don't knock it until you try it. For most companies it's a better choice than the larger ERP systems.

I'm not so sure I'd laugh at Dynamics -- there are tons of high-paying jobs out there for it, so they must be doing something right.

If you want a laughable ERP system, talk to Oracle. :awe: Note that I'm saying that as a technical person, but end users at a place I used to work called it "Obstacle."

My one and only experience with Dynamix was less than impressive. I don't even remember what happened with the audit, I just remember the collective shaking of heads as we discovered Dynamix was calculating costs wrong for the better part of a year. SO very, very wrong.

Maybe it's gotten better, or maybe the company is the same one that's in the OP and the implementation is still on-going.

 

[xeemzor]

My one and only experience with Dynamix was less than impressive. I don't even remember what happened with the audit, I just remember the collective shaking of heads as we discovered Dynamix was calculating costs wrong for the better part of a year. SO very, very wrong.

Maybe it's gotten better

90% of the time it's an end user error or customization that wasn't properly tested.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

90% of the time it's an end user error or customization that wasn't properly tested.

You must be mistaken. End users ALWAYS properly test and ALWAYS discover errors and report them BEFORE a customization is rolled into production.

 

[xeemzor]

You must be mistaken. End users ALWAYS properly test and ALWAYS discover errors and report them BEFORE a customization is rolled into production.

But of course. As a consultant I am always wrong about everything.

 

[Anubis]

the company I work for was founded in 1851 and was run by the same family on and off until like 2000

we are doing just fine

 

[Rage187]

We started requiring our customers to write automation for their customizations.

Our problem was them not testing their customizations against upgrades and then blaming us. Now, we just include their tests in our suites and things are much better.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

We started requiring our customers to write automation for their customizations.

Our problem was them not testing their customizations against upgrades and then blaming us. Now, we just include their tests in our suites and things are much better.

That's one big difference between my coworker and I (we're both consultants). In her case, she would painstakingly and exhaustively perform tons of manual labor for the client (such as legacy data analysis and scrubbing) in an effort to "help" them. I strongly disagreed with her philosophy and told her so -- I think business users REALLY need to have some skin in the game and be involved with stuff like that. Therefore, I basically did a quick check of customer data, found the big areas of concern, and made it clear to the customer they were responsible for correcting the issues.

 

[Rage187]

We stipulate that if they use our API to write their own customizations, that they are responsible for testing it against future versions.

Before, we would give them the final build 2 weeks before it hit production so they could test. But they never did.

Now, they find out as soon as it breaks and we can tell them what we changed and they can fix it.

 

[BoberFett]

That's one big difference between my coworker and I (we're both consultants). In her case, she would painstakingly and exhaustively perform tons of manual labor for the client (such as legacy data analysis and scrubbing) in an effort to "help" them. I strongly disagreed with her philosophy and told her so -- I think business users REALLY need to have some skin in the game and be involved with stuff like that. Therefore, I basically did a quick check of customer data, found the big areas of concern, and made it clear to the customer they were responsible for correcting the issues.

You can tell people they're responsible until you're blue in the face, but unless they take that responsibility, the failure of the system due to shoddy data will be blamed on the core implementation team.

I'm part of a team in the final stages of a small scale ERP rollout (very small company that had an accounting and inventory nightmare on it's hands) using a Salesforce.com addon called Glovia. I was astounded at the blank stares I would get from people when I would ask for information or assign tasks, everybody just expects systems like to work without input from the business owners. It's a computer, it's supposed to make things easier, right? What's with all this "work" you want them to do?

 

[angminas]

That's like selling your car to raise cash. Then you realize you can't get to work because you have no way of getting to work, so you quit your job as well. Who cares if you don't have a job. That's next quarter! This quarter looks great because we sold all of our productive assets! We have so much cash on the balance sheet!

It's more like selling your neighbor's car and getting $20 million for it.

 

[Linux23]

This sounds like the place I work at. And, it's not owned & operated by 3 generations of a family. Or any family. It's a bunch of overpaid no nothing 'leaders'.

And, there are plenty of places where non-bloodline management cliches stick together. They flow together from job to job, leeching 6 digit figures and accomplishing next to nothing - much like the 3 gens you just described.

ding, ding, ding. this. i'm seriously thinking about just getting fired so i can have some time to study and apply for something else because i can't take the stupidity any longer.

 

[xeemzor]

ding, ding, ding. this. i'm seriously thinking about just getting fired so i can have some time to study and apply for something else because i can't take the stupidity any longer.

Why not? It's like a 6 month paid job search.