hackles_raised
From a technical perspective they were completely incompetent, refusing to consider that a plan put in place years before might now be invalid.
Investing in hardware and the associated data center, years before a system is due to be deployed 'because my bonus depends on it'.
Outsourcing gone mad.
Obvious quid pro quo arrangements between management and vendors.
There were good people there but they were ignored or marginalized by the Frankfurt crowd.
Most of the technical staff would not get though an intern technical interview at Apple / Google / ...
I tried to build an internal team in Cary to try and prove that outsourcing is not the answer, but it was pointless, the staff available were totally and obliviously incompetent, one of them refused to participate unless we used Erlang, I know Erlang, I really like it, so I quizzed him on why he wanted to use Erlang, you know the outcome, he had no knowledge of OTP, and only a cursory familiarity with the language, and yet I was asked to let this guy lead my development team.
Try hiring technical talent into that environment. They did pay well though.
I bailed and headed back to the valley.
I thought docker came about because this mechanism is inefficient, but if they have, as they claim, resolved that particular problem, it might be interesting
Enterprise software is a cess pool of crappy software written by underachieving engineers and dominated by consultants who literally make money through failure.
If you deny this then we probably need to talk about Evolution and Climate Change next!
Look, most of us dig agile, but all you really need is the four tenets of the agile manifesto.
When someone says agile, consider the source, the best practitioners aren't publishing books, they are producing working systems every day.
I used to work at a company, let's call it Beutche Dank, I was part of a program that has spent millions of euro developing specifications, that amounted to little more than power point presentations. One of the Business analysts, nice chap, says to me, "Your going to deliver this using Agile right?". He didn't realize that they had already compromised the delivery, but they had followed every instruction of the 'agile consultant' they had hired, they just forgot to include the people that really add value, the development team. You either understand this stuff or you don't.
We need project managers, but they should not outnumber the engineers, we need engineering managers but they better be engineers. If you have directors of technical programs who are not technical, get rid of them.
It is the guys and gals writing the code that are of the most value to you, make everyone who deems themselves above these people justify themselves.
OK enough orthogonal ranting, got to go write me some tests, oops I mean compile my code.
Largely because it is a complex beast that many don't bother to become familiar with before they use it. Perhaps that is damning enough.
Lots of SQLite and PLISTS prevail, perhaps indicating the domain of data that needs to be stored for your average application.