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Comment by rich_sasha | Hacker News Reader

My main question is: who hires Accenture for this kind of job, for no less than $32m??? They would be my last point of call, literally after my mum, and maybe even after my dog. At least he's cheap.

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Hertz hired a new CIO in 2015, and you can't just come in and keep the ship running in the same direction. You need new, big, flashy changes! Not just $32M, actually over $400M in changes, to prove the CIO knows what he's doing. Compare the article with the CIO's self provided description of his 3 years at Hertz(from his Linkedin):

> I was hired by Hertz to integrate and optimize technology infrastructure following the acquisition of Dollar/Thrifty car brands into Hertz Global Holdings. Reported to the CEO and led a team of 1,200 professionals in eCommerce delivery, customer digital experience, digital business processes and communications, information security, IT operations and delivery, and new digital ventures. Consolidated car rental systems, transitioning from legacy mainframe to the Cloud and rebuilding the fleet reservation and accounting system to streamline all aspects of the customer lifecycle. Aligned digital initiatives (IoT, AI, CRM, Big Data, Mobile) into the strategic business planning process.

> My Achievements Include:

> § Drove technology integration of the multi-billion dollar acquisition of Dollar/Thrifty car brands. Transitioned Mainframe/Cobol to Cloud/Microservices to support the new technology infrastructure utilizing an agile development cycle.

> § Reduced technology spend by 20% and enhanced customer service and product offerings through a complete system project redesign (CRM, Fleet, Rental, Reservation, Data Warehouse).

> § Improved marketing and revenue segmentation by optimizing technology to more effectively align brand/service offerings to Corporate vs. Leisure consumers.

> § Realized a 35% increase in website visits and 12% growth in conversion rates by spearheading redesign and modernization of the e-commerce platform utilizing microservices technology and AWS Cloud environment.

https://www.cio.com/article/191244/how-one-cio-and-hockey-co... (2021)

Veteran CIO provides his team with accountability, board exposure, and continual feedback to turn them into tomorrow’s IT leaders.

>My Achievements Include [...]

These all look like your typical resume inflating BS.

Reminds me of the Silicon Valley series satire from Mike Judge.

I once interviewed a guy who "revolutionized" his Major Department in Big Firm with Deep Learning. Genius.

He hasn't heard about gradient descent, not by name, not by maths. He was quite impressed when I described it to him, in fact.

If it didn't happen to me, and i still have written records, i wouldn't believe it today.

This tells you everything you need to know about the kind of person that hires Accenture and what motivates them. Accenture will always be Accenture (and Deloitte, EY, PwC) as long as there's this CIO personality flaw of burning money doing flashy things without accomplishing much. Or in this case, anything at all.

I'm sure microservices and AWS and cloud were the reasons for the growth.

That’s the problem. They hired a CIO and not a CTO to rebuild their online presences. CTO creates revenue and CIO reduces costs. Big difference. CIO rely on consultants and CTOs rely on internal software teams.

I’m kind of surprised to see that the CV of a CIO like that is filled with the same meaningless drivel that mine is.

Like, I could write these exact same things, and they’d be true, except I’d have to scale the number of employees down to 15… and change a few instances of car.

not sure about the case here, but a common executive play I've seen at bigcorps is: 1. take credit for what was in-flight when you came in 2. kick off massive projects which you can't possibly be around to measure before you bounce to the next gig 3. switch roles / bounce and blame it on your successor (if anyone bothers to follow up / ask)

The executive that hired Accenture paid them with OPM (pronounced "opium", known as "other people's money"). Accenture is a safe choice because nobody got fired for hiring Accenture. This executive likely jumped ship to another venture before the project failed, in the interim heralding themselves as a leader of a major strategic initiative. Long gone.

>nobody got fired for hiring Accenture

Are you sure? It's not a name that inspires confidence.

Clients think a large consulting firm like Accenture can throw more bodies at the problem or rotate out under performers if things start to go wrong.

Companies hire Accenture and other firms like that usually because their demands are so challenging that only big firms can give a shot at that. On top of that usually the contracts provide so much strong guarantees to the Client that only these firms can afford and this is a tremendous incentive for closing the deal. It's a common strategy also to sell the initial contract at low margins with the outlook that the deal will continue and will bring other money with less risky maintenance streams. In a short summary in the vast majority of the cases these kind of projects already start with a lot of risk and on shaky grounds.

Such consulting companies are on paper quite well suited for these kind of jobs: you can easily ramp and down teams in a matter of weeks, consultants already have experience with your project, they do have experts in all possible areas. Additionally, usually upper management in both companies already know each other so if you need something why don't you go and ask a person you know about this? I actually think it's almost sells itself. Accenture & Co. won't tell you though that the experts will only stay for the first week in the projects (afterwards they need to go and honeypot a new customer), and they won't mention that the developers only need to pass a behavioural interview for getting hired (absolutely no code required) and that they have a constant massive turnover so that people stay usually in your project for 3-6 months, or that there is basically no coder that has more than 3 years of experience.

> My main question is: who hires Accenture for this kind of job, for no less than $32m

The cheapest people possible.

Mostly its a "no one gets fired for choosing IBM" thing.

Imagine the position of the CTO if the project went to a smaller sized, not so well known, consulting firm, and it failed. The CTO would be responsible for the failure.

But with firms like Accenture, it would be the firms fault as they "are the experts".

Sadly, IT knowledge is low enough in the general population that this shifting of blame will be the norm for the foreseeable future.

I wonder the same thing. The article has the section: "How Hertz Could Have Done Things Differently". I think the obvious answer is: Hire an in-house development team that has some sense of responsibility and attachment to the company.

If you're Hertz, your website is central to what you do, it's how most people will rent a car. It's something you should do in-house.

I often wonder how much it would cost to literally hire the best freelancers in the market today to build their alternative to this monstrosity

100x cheaper.

Probably much less. The issue is finding those folks (or getting hold of their time).

I'm not one of the best freelancers in the world, but I suspect that if I were, I would say there's no amount of money you could pay me, because I'm already making all the money I want working on projects I am interested in. The fact that, in our reality, Hertz went with Accenture, probably indicates they have other dysfunctions as well, and would be a pain to work with.

I really think the skills and "product" would be better. The managing and structure could be a nightmare though.

Then again, Accenture shows they can be a nightmare too.

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