[mbpark]

Tony,

Believe me I've seen this in my four years in this area working in the industry.

I read your story and was pointing out the .com assholes we dropped as clients, some of whom we are still collecting money from.

Mostly, they were run by Ivy Leaguers with little or no clue about technology who wanted websites. I know, we employed several of those asswipes, and kicked their asses to the curb after getting sick of their shit. If you know where I work, you know who these people were who got fired.

"The Internet" isn't something that's going to change the world. It's a way of distributing hypertext and multimedia rather inefficiently. Trying to transform it into something else is like polishing a turd. I've dealt with too many Internet "experts" whose knowledge of the Internet does not extend past ports 80 and 443.

I have dealt with a LOT of .com people, and thank god I didn't work with them on a client basis. At the end of the day, it all comes down to whether the site works or not, and what back-end integration works or not. Considering the asinine requests and complete disregard for either business logic or understanding of technology, I'm glad to see most .coms fail.

Quite honestly, there was no process to 90% of these sites, and most of the "Internet Arms" of major corporations had no respect for the IT people. They also had no respect for IT whatsoever, because the designers knew more than the DBAs and developers in back. What a bunch of fucknuts. They shot themselves in the feet being arrogant and not planning out their sites.

One certain very large client we had had a separate division for the web sites. Since we worked with their IT and web divisions, we had to follow IT's standards for any deliverable, and ensure we had code that was damn good, was documented, and was tested, with accompanying signoffs from everyone who mattered. I was personally told by the web people to ignore the IT standards because it was more important to get code revisions on the site fast. I paid attention to the IT people. We were one of three vendors on the project. Guess whose back-end and front-end code actually worked? I loved watching the head of IT at this client openly bash the other vendors because they handed in crap.

Now if only we can give the Wharton MBA's who pissed away VC money, the I-bankers who hyped the IPO's, and brokers who conned people into investing into companies that do not make money either jail time or jobs at McDonalds, I would be a happy Oracle DBA.

We never were an "Internet Company" or a "Web Company". We're a Software Engineering shop that happens to know a lot about Internet development. We also view web development as a logical extension of corporate business process, and didn't put the MarchFirst or RazorFish spin on our stuff. Also, we're not as arrogant and our CEO has a degree in finance, not dance. It was a matter of selling that to the right high-level people that got us where we are, and making them understand what the Internet really is. We also have serious legal teeth that prevent clients from screwing us over.

Tony, I've seen too many good shops close up in this area because of the fact that nobody had a clue or cared to listen to someone like you. I've always respected you because you do have a clue about business and software development. However, you got caught in the "gold rush" where many web shops in this area did cheap substandard work, charged through the nose, and got paid. The sales people were worse than Amway salesmen. The clients often did not make valid business decisions, and no matter how much you talked to them, would not understand.

I have been down that specific road so much because of the hype that was placed on the Net. Who the fuck needs a site that ships 50 lb bags of dogfood for free when you can pick it up at Genuardi's or PETCO for less? Who the fuck buys carpet online? Who the HELL needs to buy furniture online and have it shipped? Do people even think practically, or is this hopefully an aberration?

Mitch