
A tale of a 7 year journey in developing software for the enterprise - jtwaleson
http://www.theenterprisearchitect.eu/archive/2013/01/05/a-tale-of-a-7-year-journey-in-developing-software-for-the-enterprise
======
lucb1e
One of the many inspiring stories on HN. The methods sound great, the company
sounds great, and I'd want to either work for them or start my own company
like that.

But I'm a student and I guess I should finish my studies before dropping out.
Despite the great tales of Bill Gates & co, it seems like the right thing to
do. It also gives me an opportunity to watch behind the scenes of "real life"
companies. Internships.

And that's what I want to ask about: All companies seem so traditional...
There is no space for the methods described in all these HN stories; no time
for innovation. "The customer wanted these features last week, do you think we
have time for [you name it]?"

So I don't know what my question really is... It's just, these stories sound
so good, but during internships, it turns out they're no more than stories. Or
are they? Or is it an American thing or something?

~~~
mslot
I guess I've been in your situation as a CS student. I dreaded the thought of
working for one of the big Dutch IT companies or consulting firms and their
string of boring and/or failing projects. None of the Dutch start-ups appealed
to me, I didn't feel ready to start my own, and I figured I could learn more
from success than from failure.

If you're studying computer science in university, I can really recommend
getting an internship at a major American company. It's very useful to get a
peek in the kitchen of hugely successful companies. They can be a bit tricky
to get into from Europe. Some universities give better access than others. I
did an MSc in Parallel and Distributed Computer Systems at VU Amsterdam. An
internship at Google, Facebook, or Amazon is almost a standard part of the
program. Of course, you do have to pass the interviews yourself, and work very
hard in general. Most of the TU's also have pretty good access to Google and
Microsoft internships.

I did a 5 month internship at Amazon right after I finished college and it was
a fantastic experience. Amazon is a start-up-like environment, with small,
autonomous teams churning out new services and features all the time. You
typically get a good deal of freedom to plot your own course and rethink the
way things are done if you dare. "Disagree & commit" they like to call it.
There are tons of really smart and experienced people to learn from, very
interesting problems that force you to really understand distributed systems
top to bottom, and some brilliantly simple solutions to problems such as
large-scale software deployment. One of the best parts of the experience is
figuring out how the business works and why things are done in a certain way.
I was part of launching a new Amazon Web Service called CloudFront during my
time there, and came up with a couple of new concepts that are still in use
today. Different companies have different cultures, but I know many people who
had similarly good experiences as interns at Google or Facebook. The
experience does depend heavily on the team that you end up in, but also on how
well-rounded and adaptive you are by then. Take your time.

I can also really recommend studying/finishing Computer Science. University is
a unique chance to develop independent, analytical thinking together with your
peers and build up a solid background in the field, which will give you a huge
advantage throughout your career. Remember that for every dropout millionaire,
there is someone like Larry Page, Sergey Brin, or Jeff Bezos with a
prestigious cum laude MSc degree outsmarting them on the long run. Speaking of
which, try to aim for cum laude, not because anyone cares, but because working
hard on hard topics makes you smarter.

After the internship, I went on to do a PhD in cooperative self-driving cars,
because I found that a hugely interesting problem, but I kept a part-time
software development job at Amazon.

btw, in case you didn't notice, Mendix is originally a Dutch company, so you
might not have to look very far.

------
briguy
I have seen many Java based Process Modelers Fail to live up the the promise
of allowing "business users" the ability to create workflows without writing
any code. It appears however that Mendix may have figured out how to make it
work. I think that it has to do with the entire closed-loop solution (develop,
deploy, monitor, app store, SVN integration, Domain model management, DSL's
etc). Without those supporting pieces all working together, developers would
inevitably need to be involved, thus stunting business user adoption.

------
patrick_schwart
Agile is mentioned quite a lot in this article, but something doesn't feel
right. It is rather hard to conquer some ground in the Enterprise world as an
Agile start-up. I don't think big companies are ready for this.

~~~
nahname
They were not transforming any enterprises, they were selling working
software. That is a much simpler problem. Most companies do not care about
your internal methodologies, they only care about delivering what they need.

This does raise an interesting point. Maybe this is just me, but have others
been noticing a great disillusionment with IT? I can universally bash IT to
anyone I know and no one ever defends them. If what the people I am talking to
is true, IT departments everywhere are focused on preventing change and
delivering things without value.

~~~
meaty
Regarding your latter point, I think this comes from the exposure of
technology increasing every day.

I've built and operated a helpdesk for a 150,000 employee organisation with a
high security requirement.

People bash the IT guys because they think they understand it, but they don't.

Users really are absolute fucking criminals most of the time purely due to
either ignorance or arrogance.

IT departments are primarily focussed on protecting people from each other,
the internet and from making massive fuck ups. Every user who comes whinging
to the helpdesk over a trivial issue or a brick wall is usually unaware that
it's there for their own protection. It is the thing that is probably stopping
that secure document pissing off out of the building on a USB stick.

The 150k member organisation in question eventually had to lock their PCs into
custom built frames with a hole for a finger to turn them on, all USB ports
epoxied up, MAC address locking on all switches and oodles and oodles of cable
ties and body search on entry and exit to stop USB sticks, phones etc being
taken in.

That's the front line for you. They need defending and I stand up for them
regularly.

~~~
parasubvert
The above dystopia is in fact why most people hate IT. It's not the front
line, it is the policies such as expoxying USB ports for data loss prevention
that are reviled. Some organizations really do require high levels of DLP -
national security for one, production support for secure managed services is
another. Others are utterly draconian for questionable cost/benefit reasons.

It should not be considered criminal to use documents on multiple devices.
Thankfully saner heads are prevailing as bring-your-own-device policy
management and app containerization becomes mandatory now that the CEO and VP
of marketing insists on using their iPad.

~~~
oz
The incentive structure of an IT worker is similar to that of a government
bureaucrat: When in doubt, ban.

Because the _one_ time something happens, you're gonna hear that the systems
were 'improperly secured.' Then they'll call in external auditors fresh out of
school working from an over-photocopied checklist to tell you how incompetent
you are.

Personally, I'm happy with trends like BYOD etc. If the CEO loses data because
he wanted email on his iPad (and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that),
then IT won't be blamed for it.

~~~
jacques_chester
> _Personally, I'm happy with trends like BYOD etc. If the CEO loses data
> because he wanted email on his iPad (and there is absolutely nothing wrong
> with that), then IT won't be blamed for it._

Yes, it will. For the same reason "the government" is blamed when someone eats
a lump of poison out of a can labelled "poison".

"Why didn't you stop me?"

~~~
oz
You're quite right :)

