Reply To: Poxy BA websites stuffed again!

[Charlieface]

SteveCroydon wrote:

Hi JDB,

I’m well aware about BABS/Amadeus/Sabre etc. I have friends who worked at BA for 30+ years. Even after many years running on Amadeus, it still didn’t offer half the functionality of the old IBM mainframe-based BABS.
I know other airlines have inadequate IT – that’s not an excuse.
Throwing 100’s of people at such projects doesn’t work. A small core team of the best people who know how the system works is the best solution. Cut out endless subcontractors/out-sourcing/consultants/etc and get some technically competent people and hang on to them. A few good individuals, not endless “bums on seats” from large companies with huge overheads and mark-ups on everything that moves!
Management/directors who don’t know their keyboards from a hole in the ground are a waste of space and money. You can’t manage something that you don’t understand.
With the Internet everybody thinks they can write code and work with computers – NO!
If I had written code like this or managed such a project, I would expect to be fired. I would also have fired people working for me who produced such garbage.
BA wouldn’t want to speak to me or deal with me. The truth would hurt and we know what the PLC directors fraternity are like. You stuff up in company A, leave with an undeserved payout and your colleagues at Company B then take you on. Repeat ad infinitum.

As an actual developer I can tell you this 100% true.

Big companies hire contractors to do this kind of work. Contractors cheap out and either outsource it out the country to a team that can’t communicate effectively in the client’s language, or cheap out by getting developers straight out of Uni with no work experience (who claim they know what they’re doing because “CS degrees whatever”), or both.

CEOs like it because it works out cheap on paper, but you end up with so many problems on the way that it’s not worth it. Meanwhile the real good developers aren’t getting hired, because they mostly have degrees in other fields or none at all. If good developers were hired and retained in-house, they could substantially reduce the cost of rewriting their IT system, and still have better product at the end, because the team is closer to management who can communicate with them.

The skillset of a developer is not really down to getting a degree, it comes down to work experience and a very string problem-solving mindset. If you don’t have it you don’t have it.

It basically boils down to CEOs not understanding IT at all, and just taking a contractor’s word for it.