[News] Mass IT Outage

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Eric the meek

Fiveways Wilf
NSC Patron
Aug 24, 2020
7,103
Us change mangers always were seen as an interfering bunch of busybodies stopping Trekkie wizzkids putting through their changes on the fly with impunity.

i had great reservations about automated changes that the original coding was presented to CAB ago be approved when only the Indian tekkies understood what was being shown, and then the shysters would subtly change the code before it went into production.

” so why did this automated change fail and take down our critical infrastructures “
” well you signed it off”
” so was there any changes made to the coding before it was implemented”
”no”
” are you sure”
“ yes”
” very sure”
” yes”
” so what is this line of code that wasn’t in the original change plan”
” erm…ask my supervisor”


does that sound familiar dealing with the sub continent?

I was once told on a CAB meeting not to ask a direct question to our Indian tekkies as culturally they couldn‘T lose face therefore will never give you a straight answer. This came from a senior technical manager at INFOSYS!
Not losing face sounds very familiar. My contracting years were a rich seam of entertainment.

On one project for HBOS, two Indians from Cognizant were moved in to sit amongst 6 experienced contractors including me, with the object of knowledge transfer. When their 3 month stint was over, I checked with all the others around them. Neither of them had asked anyone, one single question about the system, processes, business, nothing.

On a project for RBS, while system testing a new pension front end by the Indian software company ITD, we began to notice error messages, which appeared nowhere in the spec. In all, we came across a total of 41 new error messages, which hadn't been specified. They had made them all up. How do you even begin to tell them that this shouldn't be happening? How far back to basics do you have to go? If the spec is wrong, and you've identified an error condition that is not covered, then you raise it with the customer. You don't code round it.

Other anecdotes, including from Infosys, are also available on request.
 


Springal

Well-known member
Feb 12, 2005
24,785
GOSBTS
It's a risky strategy but I bet a few gamblers will.
Inevitable drop on Friday but was hardly a bloodbath. Suggest investors & institutes aren’t to concerned about longer term impact
 


raymondo

Well-known member
Apr 26, 2017
7,361
Wiltshire
Not losing face sounds very familiar. My contracting years were a rich seam of entertainment.

On one project for HBOS, two Indians from Cognizant were moved in to sit amongst 6 experienced contractors including me, with the object of knowledge transfer. When their 3 month stint was over, I checked with all the others around them. Neither of them had asked anyone, one single question about the system, processes, business, nothing.

On a project for RBS, while system testing a new pension front end by the Indian software company ITD, we began to notice error messages, which appeared nowhere in the spec. In all, we came across a total of 41 new error messages, which hadn't been specified. They had made them all up. How do you even begin to tell them that this shouldn't be happening? How far back to basics do you have to go? If the spec is wrong, and you've identified an error condition that is not covered, then you raise it with the customer. You don't code round it.

Other anecdotes, including from Infosys, are also available on request.
But they were cheap, and not on the headcount, so companies liked that. Whether or not it was (is?) cost effective was another question 😉 ...as your anecdote suggests.
 


Washie

Well-known member
Jun 20, 2011
6,054
Eastbourne
Having a look at their stocks, stock prices fell by $34 the same week this happened. Monday stock prices were 377, this dropped to 343 on Thursday. This then kicked off on Friday. Did someone know?
 




tedebear

Legal Alien
NSC Patron
Jul 7, 2003
17,104
In my computer
Not losing face sounds very familiar. My contracting years were a rich seam of entertainment.

On one project for HBOS, two Indians from Cognizant were moved in to sit amongst 6 experienced contractors including me, with the object of knowledge transfer. When their 3 month stint was over, I checked with all the others around them. Neither of them had asked anyone, one single question about the system, processes, business, nothing.

On a project for RBS, while system testing a new pension front end by the Indian software company ITD, we began to notice error messages, which appeared nowhere in the spec. In all, we came across a total of 41 new error messages, which hadn't been specified. They had made them all up. How do you even begin to tell them that this shouldn't be happening? How far back to basics do you have to go? If the spec is wrong, and you've identified an error condition that is not covered, then you raise it with the customer. You don't code round it.

Other anecdotes, including from Infosys, are also available on request.

I have a small list I could add too from Infosys including the “lower environment had different data“…type ones…
 


Bozza

You can change this
Helpful Moderator
Jul 4, 2003
57,292
Back in Sussex
Having a look at their stocks, stock prices fell by $34 the same week this happened. Monday stock prices were 377, this dropped to 343 on Thursday. This then kicked off on Friday. Did someone know?
Most major tech stocks, as well as the Nasdaq Composite itself, trended down over Monday to Thursday last week.
 


Eric the meek

Fiveways Wilf
NSC Patron
Aug 24, 2020
7,103
I have a small list I could add too from Infosys including the “lower environment had different data“…type ones…
They sent a team of programmers (they were still called programmers in 2004) over from India, to take the jobs of two permies and two contractors here in Brighton.
The project was to maintain a myriad of standalone telco billing systems written in French PL/1, in and out of 150 DB2 tables, while fielding a daily succession of support requests from French users.

One of their questions was 'who is going to do the analysis?'. Our answer was 'you are'. Infosys had been economical with the truth with them. We had all left by the time the shit had hit the fan.
 












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