Comment by TheMagicHorsey

I once worked at a startup that came very close to securing a development contract with <TELCO> to build an early App Store like functionality for them. There was a major consulting group, like Accenture, bidding against us. In meetings with us TELCO would relay to us all the wonderful things this consulting company promised, which made absolutely no sense to us given the budget TELCO had given us. We figured the consulting company must already have those capabilities built for other telco clients, and must be benefitting from their massive scale. I figured the TELCO IT team knew how to due diligence these kinds of things well, being that it was their entire job.

We lost the sale because we told TELCO honestly that we could deliver what they wanted in the budget they had set. So TELCO went with the consulting company.

18 months later the consulting company came to us and offered to give us a subcontract to complete the project, within the scope we had originally offered to TELCO, for the same amount we had offered TELCO! We were stunned and could not understand how this could possibly make any sense economically. We had a meeting with the consulting company and took a look at the project status. It was a colossal pile of shit. Nevertheless, the consulting company promised that we would only be responsible for the scope they had laid out, which we were very comfortable delivering.

We were about to sign a contract to do so, and one of our advisors said we should flip the desks, run out of the negotiation, under no circumstances sign the contract, and for good measure close the offices for a month and not answer any phone calls or emails from the consulting company.

According to him getting involved in that project was in the very best case scenario going to destroy our morale and therefore destroy our team. And in the worst case would enmesh us in litigation and ruin all of our careers.

We thought hard about it, because we needed the money, but ultimately we didn't sign the contract.

Years later I met someone who worked for the consulting company and they told me that the project was an internal meme for a colossal disaster and shitshow. Apparently several consultants had nervous breakdowns over it. And one partner left the company. Meanwhile the project never saw light at TELCO.