Greetings from another HP Enterprise Services Victim!

Hello all!

My company on June 1st became the latest victim of the HP/EDS charade, signing a...wait for it....10 YEAR CONTRACT to outsource about 95% of our IT and development functions to these clowns (The CIO resigned immediately after the deal was signed). I figured I'd post here because our "Network Delivery Manager" (granted I have yet to see him deliver anything other than insults about our company and the area we live in) comes from your account as well.

I have never seen incompetence on the level their team has demonstrated so far. In addition, their transition team is just plain RUDE. They came in with a "shut up and get out of our way" attitude towards the retained staff, and they have had nothing but a condescending and belittling attitude towards all of us since arriving. Their "How 'bout them Indians" offshore team has pulled many good ones too, including taking down all of our customer web sites when they randomly ran the maintenance scripts during business hours, and blowing up a key server when attempting to deploy their "HP tools" required for administration of servers (1.5 gigs of tools for MONITORING? really?). Oh, and their help desk ticketing system is so impossible to use, no tickets that get escalated to retained staff ever get closed and rarely looked at, which is basically the same level of service their global service desk is providing us.

Since the transition period ended on 12/1 (and frequently before then), we have had a MAJOR OUTAGE EVERY SINGLE WEEK. In the three years I was with the company before HP came, we had maybe 3-4 major outages total. Anyways, I deeply sympathize with what you guys have suffered through, and appreciate the posts here and in the other Cafepharma IT forums other outsourcing scam victims have posted to make me know we're not the only ones suffering. Thanks for letting me use a small portion of your space to vent, and good luck dealing with IBM.

We feel your pain. HP has not delived much two years into the contract, and this was the vendor that Lilly though was going to drive their IT environment into the brave, new IT world.

Why did your CIO resign? Shame or a boatload of kickbacks?

Hope you have a get-out-of-contract clause and a credit back for these bloopers they have caused your company?

Originally Posted by Anonymous

We feel your pain. HP has not delived much two years into the contract, and this was the vendor that Lilly though was going to drive their IT environment into the brave, new IT world.

Why did your CIO resign? Shame or a boatload of kickbacks?

Because he found another CIO gig at Eli Lilly.

Originally Posted by Anonymous

We feel your pain. HP has not delived much two years into the contract, and this was the vendor that Lilly though was going to drive their IT environment into the brave, new IT world.

Why did your CIO resign? Shame or a boatload of kickbacks?

Hope you have a get-out-of-contract clause and a credit back for these bloopers they have caused your company?

So let's see...That MF resigned and took a job at a company getting ready to have their IPO, and as an officer of the company we got to see that he made 500K off that. He basically took a shit in the datacenter and left laughing at us. Pretty cool of him huh?

So the rumor allegedly is that our early exit clause to leave the contract has financial penalties that are so high, we would never pay them. Great negotiating skills we have apparently. I have no idea what kind of financial penalties HP is paying for this, I can only hope it's some. We're allegedly getting a "surge" of people to try to fix this crap (Operation "throw more Indians at it"). We'll see how it goes. They actually made it through a weekend without breaking anything, but I'm pretty sure they held the work and didn't do anything this weekend for fear of breaking something else.

FACT: Many if not all Indian IT workers LIE on their resumes.

PROOF: This post.

QED.

Originally Posted by Anonymous

FACT: Many if not all Indian IT workers LIE on their resumes.

PROOF: This post.

QED.

We know more about your systems than you ever will again. We're indispensible. Your people are nothing but overhead constantly creating meaningless processes and documentation that is never followed because those creating it don't know how work actually gets done.

Originally Posted by Anonymous

We know more about your systems than you ever will again. We're indispensible. Your people are nothing but overhead constantly creating meaningless processes and documentation that is never followed because those creating it don't know how work actually gets done.

bullshit

Originally Posted by Anonymous

bullshit

Find someone in Lilly IT who could actually support a line of Lilly's own code. LIlly people only know the high level description of what their programs are suppose to do, not what they are actually doing. And they're two stupid to be able to verify what the code is doing themselves. They have to take our word for it. How is that being in control?

Originally Posted by Anonymous

Find someone in Lilly IT who could actually support a line of Lilly's own code. LIlly people only know the high level description of what their programs are suppose to do, not what they are actually doing. And they're two stupid to be able to verify what the code is doing themselves. They have to take our word for it. How is that being in control?

I hope your code syntax is better than your English syntax.

Originally Posted by Anonymous

W Your people are nothing but overhead constantly creating meaningless processes and documentation that is never followed because those creating it don't know how work actually gets done.

(I posted the original message)...Yep, this is basically an exact description of how HP fucks us with their endless calls and their required 45 days lead times to do 3 minutes worth of work . Good call!

Originally Posted by Anonymous

Find someone in Lilly IT who could actually support a line of Lilly's own code. LIlly people only know the high level description of what their programs are suppose to do, not what they are actually doing. And they're two stupid to be able to verify what the code is doing themselves. They have to take our word for it. How is that being in control?
I hope your code syntax is better than your English syntax.

I hope your code syntax is better than your English syntax.

A true systems professional knows that it is not just about how things are done, he needs to understand and work toward the high-level description of what is actually needed by the business. Being able to read the lower level code and debug is useful, but a systems professional runs the risk of getting lost in the details without verifying that the application/system accomplishes what is needed by the business.

Lilly buys a lot of COTS packages; they expect the vendors of these packages to deliver applications that do what they are supposed to do. Expecting someone else to inspect your work (read your code) is pointless; your code should work because you were paid to write it.

Originally Posted by Anonymous

A true systems professional knows that it is not just about how things are done, he needs to understand and work toward the high-level description of what is actually needed by the business. Being able to read the lower level code and debug is useful, but a systems professional runs the risk of getting lost in the details without verifying that the application/system accomplishes what is needed by the business.

Lilly buys a lot of COTS packages; they expect the vendors of these packages to deliver applications that do what they are supposed to do. Expecting someone else to inspect your work (read your code) is pointless; your code should work because you were paid to write it.

This is a correct statement, and for the HP dude that seems to think he knows it all...there are still some very compentent technical people left in IT who know more about coding, system admin, networks etc. than you think. So again, bullshit.

Originally Posted by Anonymous

Lilly buys a lot of COTS packages; they expect the vendors of these packages to deliver applications that do what they are supposed to do. Expecting someone else to inspect your work (read your code) is pointless; your code should work because you were paid to write it.

Lilly also develops a few custom applications, and customizations/interfaces around COTS packages.

Most of the coding is done by contractors who are not rewarded to make maintenance easy.

If there is nobody left at Lilly with enough technical knowledge to inspect the code before it is moved to prod, you should not be surprised to find out later that this code is a nightmare that no other person/organization would be able/willing to maintain without a lot of $$$$, even if this code does what is is supposed to do from a functional standpoint.

Originally Posted by Anonymous

Lilly also develops a few custom applications, and customizations/interfaces around COTS packages.

Most of the coding is done by contractors who are not rewarded to make maintenance easy.

If there is nobody left at Lilly with enough technical knowledge to inspect the code before it is moved to prod, you should not be surprised to find out later that this code is a nightmare that no other person/organization would be able/willing to maintain without a lot of $$$$, even if this code does what is is supposed to do from a functional standpoint.

ahhh. You must be on LSS.

So let me add to my original post some more...After seeing this shithead from HP post, I thought of something I forgot to mention...

Within 5 months of the contract signing, 98 PERCENT of our rebadged collagues quit, along with about 15 percent of our retained IT colleagues...

Let me repeat that first number...

98 PERCENT.

Gee I wonder why? Could it be because they have to work with classy people like this guy? First we were getting people who were just assholes and liars (transition team) to people now who are just downright stupid (steady state). In the last month, they have managed to take down our core application 4 times, when it has been down once in the past 3 years. I mean, these are literally the dumbest people working in IT I have ever met. If you explain something simple to them like "testing patches against your 'HP golden image' is pointless because the vast, vast majority of the machines in our building aren't running that image", it flies over their head...and then stuff breaks.

The entire project is in a failing state right now, and we're supposedly getting a "surge" of people in to try and fix it, so I can only take comfort in the fact that I imagine HP is losing money on this so far.

Tell them to "please do the needful" - that might help! LMAO!!

I worked at Lilly for about 2 years. I have worked at 5 major corporations in my career and found that Lilly (at least the IT organization) was completely out of touch with reality, they were extraordinarily arrogant, overly pampered, underworked, and completely overstaffed. Because of their historical high margins (ability to almost print money) no one ever left. I saw a very high percentage of their IT leadership hired into Lilly from college and have been nowhere else in their 20+ year careers. It has become a huge echo chamber, where they all think, act, and talk the same way. It was the most bizarre experience of my life. It felt like the corporate version of the Stepford Wives.

I worked at Lilly for about 2 years. I have worked at 5 major corporations in my career and found that Lilly (at least the IT organization) was completely out of touch with reality, they were extraordinarily arrogant, overly pampered, underworked, and completely overstaffed. Because of their historical high margins (ability to almost print money) no one ever left. I saw a very high percentage of their IT leadership hired into Lilly from college and have been nowhere else in their 20+ year careers. It has become a huge echo chamber, where they all think, act, and talk the same way. It was the most bizarre experience of my life. It felt like the corporate version of the Stepford Wives.

This smacks of the same old attitude I saw from contractors at Lilly. Contractors are jealous, backstabbing lairs. Funny how the Overlord Pharohs (Mgmt) always like to stir things up by hiring low quality contractors to try to create a wedge in the Lilly IT workers. By the way, we didn't care about what you think about Lilly IT and we still don't care.

Originally Posted by Anonymous

I worked at Lilly for about 2 years. I have worked at 5 major corporations in my career and found that Lilly (at least the IT organization) was completely out of touch with reality, they were extraordinarily arrogant, overly pampered, underworked, and completely overstaffed. Because of their historical high margins (ability to almost print money) no one ever left. I saw a very high percentage of their IT leadership hired into Lilly from college and have been nowhere else in their 20+ year careers. It has become a huge echo chamber, where they all think, act, and talk the same way. It was the most bizarre experience of my life. It felt like the corporate version of the Stepford Wives.

You're going to get heat for that statement but you are correct. I worked in Lilly IT without the Red Badge of Courage (FTE). I was shocked at the number of great ideas that came from the contractors, promptly taken by Lilly FTE as their own and then implemented.

After you leave Lilly, you appreciate just how lazy and overstaffed Lilly IT really is.