Thread

1. tencentshill · 1790104162 · focus · HN ↗

   Well that's a big one.

   Perhaps firing expertise and hiring incompetents wasn't a good idea.

   1. nateb2022 · 1790107107 · focus · HN ↗

      There's incompetence in every major company including Oracle. PeopleSoft isn't known for being the most modern or secure thing out there. Less reliance on 3rd party software like this will be a good thing going forward.

      1. lenerdenator · 1790108690 · focus · HN ↗

         That's assuming that the result of this will be to switch away from PeopleSoft.

         1. nateb2022 · 1790108957 · focus · HN ↗

            I think enterprise software in this vein used to have a quasi-monopoly due to the sheer work required to build software of its size (not enough engineers exist in the government to do so), and the difficulty for competitors to enter regulated markets and so pretty much 1-2 options to choose from.

            AI now makes it possible to build this kind of software in-house, offering a 2nd choice, though it'll only be as good as the standards of the teams using it. Only time can tell.

            1. sarchertech · 1790109552 · focus · HN ↗

               Enterprise software is complicated mostly because of number of customers it can support.

               Bespoke software can be orders of magnitude less complex. There are many reasons companies choose to use vendor solutions, but for large organizations it’s usually not “we literally can’t hire enough engineers to build it.”

               There are so many counter examples.

               1. nateb2022 · 1790112626 · focus · HN ↗

                  > Bespoke software can be orders of magnitude less complex.

                  Not in government. For payroll/HR, we're talking about hundreds of pages of legislative mandates, union bargaining rules, Title 5 statutory compliance, and FISMA/NIST regs. Just customizing something like PeopleSoft to fit is a large task in itself, let alone trying to implement bespoke software using an engineering pool that isn't even large enough to modernize the software it currently owns.

                  Bespoke sounds nice and works well in startups but that&#x27;s not the context we&#x27;re discussing. Check out Phoenix Pay: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Phoenix_pay_system" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Phoenix_pay_system and understand the US is even more complex.

                  1. sarchertech · 1790121958 · focus · HN ↗

                     I’ve worked on HR software. There are currently at least 3 large scale, bespoke, homegrown payroll&#x2F;HR systems in use by the Federal government. There used to be many more. There are many reasons to outsource software but the government can’t hire enough engineers is not one of them. It’s clearly been done before.

                     &gt;Just customizing something like PeopleSoft to fit is a large task in itself, let alone trying to implement bespoke software

                     Customizing large enterprise software in many cases is harder than writing software from scratch. You end up paying enormous vendor margins on top of the costs for something that is effectively bespoke software anyway.

                     There is so much bespoke software out there that is at least as complex as government payroll software.

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.