Comment by Spooky23

Agreed. Often the “solution” laid out is more accountability for the engineer, which I find equally disgusting.

I’ve been in big company/gov tech for a long time. The companies building these types of projects are almost universally incompetent and often malevolent. Having had the occasion to “rescue” a few big projects, they are usually infused with a culture of incompetence and ambiguity in accountability for all things besides billing.

The problem is that it’s what I call “mutually assured incompetence”. The customer is bad at writing RFP/tenders, and often accepts substandard work out of ignorance. Contractors are disincentivized from delivering a sensible outcome as a result. Contractors only understand pain as a motivation once the deal is done. Garbage in, garbage out.

The failure of accountability is endemic as more and more tasks are automated and outsourced. Something as trivial as cash room accounting is a proven practice, traditionally with many eyes keeping all parties honest. While the personal tragedy isnt a factor, in the US, Bank of America “lost” tens of millions of dollars of physical cash in their outsourced counting facilities. The company’s response? Spend a fortune to physically shift cash around ahead of audits to pretend the money was there.