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Comment by BlobRunner | Hacker News Reader

Please note that I am not saying it is easy ! Far from it. I say it is possible to obtain something friendly that actaully help you get the job done.

I discovered that Lidl spent 500 millions $ for nothing (literally) trying to implement SAP.

Give 500 millions euros to a talented group of Stripe - like engineers and, maybe, you will have something sorted out and maintained for a few decades.

Half a billion dollars....

50 engineers well paid (5000$ net after taxes / month) cost 6 millions a year (France)

With 500 millions your system can be build and maintained for a century.

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Ah, but you're not just paying coders.

You need tax lawyers to ensure you're doing that right. You need employment lawyers to ensure your termination process follows the law. You need accounting experts to ensure you're reporting correctly. In every legally distinct market.

How many laws, regulations and reporting requirements does your average chemical plant comply with?

The press headlines of how much was spent on an IT system; as well as how much actually went to "coding" portion; in my experience can be sensationalized and wrong by several orders of magnitude.

As indicated elsewhere, ERP implementations can go spectacularly badly - and I maintain my claim that treating them as an IT project, which your estimate/equations are doing, is the #1 way of setting them up for failure.

In fact, I would imagine that the key work done at Stripe is not by talented engineers/coders with IT/systems knowledge (not to in any way put them down), but by business/financials/law/banking experts (who ideally would have some or lots of IT knowedge or background so as to not be dangerous). Again, think of our friendly neighbourhood patio11 as a perfect example of technical skills and hard-earned real-world business experience.

Even if you're in France working for the worst staffing companies, the lowest bill for a developer is 400 E a day, times 218 working days per year so roughly $100k a year.

So we're already starting at almost double what you planned for and there are much more costs to cover than just staff. Large scale projects are insanely expensive and hard. It's not just mismanagement.

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