A few weeks ago someone in the JoelonSoftware forums recommended to me a book called Big Blues, about how IBM nearly went out of business during the rise of the PC industry (and Microsoft).  I'm only about half done with it and all I can say is that IBM makes my company (and Snoofle's which sometimes sounds alot like mine) look pretty tame.  They seemed to have written the book on how to kill projects by committee-ing them to death.  Here is a really breath-taking example, and the epitome of "worse than failure":

In 1987, any model of DEC Vax could talk to any other model (using DEC's proprietary-but-good networking protocol called DECNET), and they could also talk to other machines.  Apple machines had Appletalk.  PC's were starting to be networked via early TCP/IP.  IBM's mainframe and minicomputer models had no networking protocol and couldn't even talk to each other.  People used to say that if you wanted two IBM machines to talk to each other, you had to put a Vax between them.  IBM didn't like the snarky comments, so they attempted to develop their own networking protocol.

After 4000 people worked for 4 years on it, the project was cancelled as a failure.

 Where's the WTF here? That IBM monsters which were never designed to talk to each other weren't able to?

Sheesh, so many times, the WTF is that I have to point out the obvious WTF to some of you people.  Okay, listen closely:

 4000 people * 4 years = 16,000 man-years flushed down the toilet.  If you want some more fun, take a guess at some average salary and multiply that in too.

Not being fond of IBM's big iron (I did like OS/2), I don't know what layer 3 protocols they supported that early.  They did have the PC LAN, DLC, and token ring in layers 1 and 2 at that time. I assume it's that unnamed layer 3 protocol they failed with.  Why they didn't just use TCP/IP (or even NETBIOS, in small LANs) is beyond me.

jetcitywoman:

Sheesh, so many times, the WTF is that I have to point out the obvious WTF to some of you people.  Okay, listen closely:

 4000 people * 4 years = 16,000 man-years flushed down the toilet.  If you want some more fun, take a guess at some average salary and multiply that in too.

A "WTF" isn't just a failed project, or a piece of software that doesn't work. It's something that fails spectacularly in a most fascinating and often humorous manner.

Jeff S:

jetcitywoman:

Sheesh, so many times, the WTF is that I have to point out the obvious WTF to some of you people.  Okay, listen closely:

 4000 people * 4 years = 16,000 man-years flushed down the toilet.  If you want some more fun, take a guess at some average salary and multiply that in too.

 

A "WTF" isn't just a failed project, or a piece of software that doesn't work. It's something that fails spectacularly in a most fascinating and often humorous manner.

Calling 16,000 wasted man-years less than "spectacular" is TRWTF.

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Token_ring

IBM definitely had networking in the 80s.

ammoQ:

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Token_ring

Are you calling Token Ring a WTF? Because Token Ring is freaking awesome? How many other networking protocols do you know based upon the idea of the talking stick?

EDIT: Yeah, you better edit your post. Don't make me come over there, ammoQ...

bstorer:

Are you calling Token Ring a WTF? Because Token Ring is freaking awesome? How many other networking protocols do you know based upon the idea of the talking stick?

Not at all (calling it a WTF) (sorry, I've edited my post several times...)

emurphy:

Calling 16,000 wasted man-years less than "spectacular" is TRWTF

Not to mention humorous.  I think he works for IBM.

BTW, by posting this, I'm not trying to slam IBM, really.  I know they've since come back to their core business and are doing really well again.  Cheers to them!  But they did go through a phase of spectacular wtfery.

Another less breathtaking thing mentioned in the book was when Gates n Crew were trying to work with the IBM developers on OS/2.  The two groups had completely different development methods.  IBM was slow and meticulous.  Their programmers' performance was measured by lines of code.  Gates' guys were fast and efficient.  They would make snarky comments about each other.  At one point (I assume to make a point) the Microsoft guys rewrote some of the IBM'ers code, reducing it by 160%.  The developers were not amused.  But I thought it was amusing that when IBM management ran their performance metrics (remember, lines of code), they went back to Gates and asked why his programmers had negative performance.  (Bunch of slackers!) 

How can anybody not find these things amusing?

jetcitywoman:

Microsoft guys rewrote some of the IBM'ers code, reducing it by 160%.

Impressive. Instead of 1000 lines, there were only -600 lines left. After IBM developers wrote another 600 lines, the file was empty again.

jetcitywoman:

16,000 man-years flushed down the toilet.

The way you said that was damn sexy.

morbiuswilters:

The way you said that was damn sexy.

Oh stop it... you say that about every post I make too.

ammoQ:

Impressive. Instead of 1000 lines, there were only -600 lines left. After IBM developers wrote another 600 lines, the file was empty again

Hey, you must work for IBM! 

Seriously, I could have the percentage wrong - I'm typing from memory and the book is at home.  But it implied that their metrics somehow combined the Microsoft code output with the IBM code output to end up with a negative number.  I'm starting to learn project accounting here in my company and I can sort of see how this works.  When I was young and naive, I thought that accounting was a hard skill that stressed precision and accuracy.  Now I'm old and cynical and know that it's actually a black art and corporations manage to combine all kinds of sorcery into the numbers.  I'm still puzzled that the SEC hasn't caught on yet....

jetcitywoman:

I'm still puzzled that the SEC hasn't caught on yet....

You're joking, right?  The SEC is the body tasked with coming up with the accounting standards to begin with.  And whatever accounting trickery public corporations use, the feds take the cake when it comes to cooking the books. 

bstorer:

How many other networking protocols do you know based upon the idea of the talking stick?

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcnet

 Beat out token ring by a decade.  Would run over two bare copper wires.  Terminated or unterminated.  Add/remove stations at will.  Could run 2000 feet without repeaters.  Guaranteed ping times.  Had support for longer lengths (with repeaters) by slowing token timing.  Able to determine station availability.  Seriously, the thing was that robust. Unified driver.  Fast as hell (ie: Could reach 100% load).  Freaking awesome.

 Too bad this monstrosity of CD/MA called "Ethernet" won.  :-(

shepd:

Too bad this monstrosity of CD/MA called "Ethernet" won.  :-(

Who in God's name doesn't use switched Ethernet at this point?  And, yeah, I'm always thinking "boy, Ethernet just doesn't have enough token-passing".  Especially when dealing with hundreds of connected servers. 

morbiuswilters:

shepd:

Too bad this monstrosity of CD/MA called "Ethernet" won.  :-(

Who in God's name doesn't use switched Ethernet at this point?  And, yeah, I'm always thinking "boy, Ethernet just doesn't have enough token-passing".  Especially when dealing with hundreds of connected servers.

 Just because complicated hardware can band-aid the problem doesn't mean it's not there...  Even with all that lovely extra hardware, it's rare to find ethernet get to 100% throughput.  Arcnet, though, 100% throughput was normal, anything less and you had a network issue.  Just saying...  And even so, Ethernet is still ridiculously picky about cabling, the cabling is VERY expensive (compared to Arcnet), and it requires twice the wiring.  :-)

Everytime I see his avatar, it reminds me of Wiske, the girl in this Belgian comic. FIY: "einde" means "the end"; every book ends with this picture (or a slight 'funny' variation).

Me:

Everytime I see his avatar (...)

16,000 man years to develop something that took the authors of *nix - what - a couple of man months to design and code the first time around?

Spectacular example of [mis]management not having a clue. Any properly designed system can be broken down into chunks sufficiently small and simple that any code monkey can bang it out relatively quickly.

At my old company, a client of ours had to deal with IBM, so I did too (by proxy). They seemed to be a seething mass of red tape and bureaucracy who would charge a fortune for a two-line change in a configuration file.

I'm sure they're full of WTFs!

shepd:

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcnet

 Beat out token ring by a decade.  Would run over two bare copper wires.  Terminated or unterminated.  Add/remove stations at will.  Could run 2000 feet without repeaters.  Guaranteed ping times.  Had support for longer lengths (with repeaters) by slowing token timing.  Able to determine station availability.  Seriously, the thing was that robust. Unified driver.  Fast as hell (ie: Could reach 100% load).  Freaking awesome.

Ok, comparing old arcnet to old ethernet:
100% of 2.5MBit/s = 2.5MBit/s
50% of 10MBit = 5.0MBit/s

arcnet plus compared to more advanced ethernet:
100% of 20MBit/s = 20MBit/s
50% of 100MBit/s = 50MBit/s

 Seems like ethernet still wins.

snoofle:

16,000 man years to develop something that took the authors of *nix - what - a couple of man months to design and code the first time around?

Spectacular example of [mis]management not having a clue. Any properly designed system can be broken down into chunks sufficiently small and simple that any code monkey can bang it out relatively quickly.

Yep, my husband mentioned that about the *nix difference also.

The book makes no small mention of the "Process" that IBM used at the time for any project.  Got idea?  Run it through every company division to see if anybody had any input or arguments against it.  (And I do mean EVERY division.  The Mainframe teams had input over the printer teams and the minicomputer teams, and vica versa.  Which meant that if the mainframe team felt that a minicomputer project idea had the potential to reduce it's mainframe market share, it would do everything it could to nix the project.) 

Everybody agree it's a good idea?  Run it through committees at every level of the company to flesh out the design, including the international portions of the company to make sure the project works for foreign markets.  Disagreements about the design?  Run it through an escalating series of committees that ended with the Management Committtee who were the end-all-be-all decision-makers.  What they said was law. 

Finally got a workable design?  Collect a team of programmers and analysts to implement it.  And by "team" we're talking about thousands of bodies.  Disagreements during implementation?  Work it up through the same escalating series of committees until it ended up at the Management Committee again.

Not surprisingly a great many projects failed before seeing the light of day.