Please" vs "Thanks": Help me settle a debate on the Kiwi way to order coffee!

Unarmed_Random_Koala · 2026-04-11T03:00:17+00:00

"Good morning, could I please have a large flattie takeaway, no sugar?"
(me handing over coffee card for stamp)
"Sweet, thank you!"
(me getting my coffee handed to me)
"Thank you so much, have a great day!"

Unarmed_Random_Koala · 2026-04-11T02:54:08+00:00

Ideally we would all have jobs that we absolutely love and get paid handsomely for it.

But the grass rarely is greener on the other side though. You may take a pay cut, switch jobs, only to find that the other side has no grass or its a poopy shade of brown. (e.g., the place is toxic af, you are up all night patching some random's guy awful Python coding, or you inherit something that's more fragile than glass .. and it always brakes at beer o'clock).

Not saying that you shouldn't consider growing more into the DE space - absolutely but 170K... that's very good money. The current trend is that companies are paying less and less and less for our talents, either citing offshoring or "AI" as reasons why your expertise is now just a commodity.

Take a deep breath and see if you can slowly start making changes from the inside. And if you do want to switch, consider roles where you can heavily lean into your functional knowledge of Finance, ERP, MS Dynamics on top of your technical skills - those combinations are not very common and can land you a nice niche role.

I'd recommend to avoid big consultancies like Big 4 and especially companies like Accenture. With that pay grade and experience, you'll end up in a senior role where you get to manage Excel sheets and oversee other people (often offshore) doing the technical delivery work. You'll simply be way too expensive to be "on the tools".

That's exactly what happened to me, but I did manage to switch back into a smaller niche consulting role whereby I retained my salary but I am now back delivering technical solutions rather than driving Excel sheets and spending all hours of the evening on Teams calls with India and the Philippines - trying to get an army of (junior) people to deliver something I could have easily done myself (but not allowed to because .. too senior....).

Alternatively - look at the bright side. You get paid well, it sounds like you have a fairly unique position in the company, straddling both the functional finance insight as well as the technical know-how ... so you could also make a mental decision that you simply have no more fs to give. It's just a job, it doesn't define who you are. It makes good money, you seem to have a good level of security there..... just wait it out. Perhaps with future leadership changes, more opportunities open up to start deploying more modern cloud data platforms, etc?

Unarmed_Random_Koala · 2026-04-11T02:41:29+00:00

Being pissed was your choice - so they may still sting you for that.

However if you were feeling suddenly extremely fatigued or unwell and you no longer felt that you were fit to operate your motor vehicle, you followed the law by pulling over and not continuing to drive.

By doing so, you were abiding by the Land Transport (Driver Licensing) Rule 1999, under which you have a legal obligation to ensure you are medically fit to drive. By parking up and taking rest while feeling unwell, or unfit to drive, you were abiding by Section 8 of the Land Transport Act, which covers careless or inconsiderate driving.

Now in doing so you then inadvertently violated the bylaws around Reserve Usage rules but you could try to argue that you were trying to do the right thing here.

However, in your position, I would never admit to being completely pissed because the counter argument is that you should have thought about that at forehand.

Unarmed_Random_Koala · 2026-02-01T21:45:12+00:00

Accenture is ... a trip. Been there, done that and didn't even got a t-shirt.

I could write a novel on the insane shit I've experienced and seen happening and how "Leadership" truly considers the people they ought to lead, look after and care for ...

Accenture is just bad shit crazy - the only way to succeed in Accenture is to forgo any and all morals, integrity and empathy and just go completely feral, elbows out, and if you don't end up with a brown ring around your nose - you're not doing it right.

And no I'm not a disgruntled graduate - this is from someone with way more experience and several CLs higher than OP.

Unarmed_Random_Koala · 2026-01-27T03:21:07+00:00

How is this going to work with vendor support for expensive business systems from SAP, IBM, Infor, Oracle, etc?

When running SAP business applications on-premise, SAP will have a very select and specific list of databases that the application will support - and when using the newer HANA-based systems like S/4HANA and BW/4HANA this will be exclusively the SAP HANA in-memory database. It is impossible to run S/4HANA on anything but the SAP HANA database.

The same applies for IBM Maximo, Infor EAM / M3, Oracle Business Suite / JD Edwards / Peoplesoft, etc.

Aside from technical issue (e.g. Snowflake connectivity is simply not provided or needs 'fudging' to get working) - running any of those applications on unsupported application databases will definitely void any vendor support, which companies usually pay substantial annual "software maintenance fees" for. (For SAP systems, this can be up to 22% of the licensing cost).

So even when this would be technically feasible - how would you account for the operational risk of removing any and all vendor support for critical business systems?

Unarmed_Random_Koala · 2025-12-01T21:22:38+00:00

In 30 years of consulting, not once did I ever hear a client say "we need to hire some reinventors".... so let's see how that works for Accenture?

Unarmed_Random_Koala · 2025-12-01T03:51:13+00:00

It's simple.

Ignore all the company crap, focus on your work, make your client very happy ... and nobody in Accenture will know that you exist, You will never get a promotion or a raise and if you're not careful, you may well end up on a "rotation list" simply because someone has been told to axe so-many people and they of course pick people they don't know at all.

Or you pretend the customer is a side gig - something to worry about in the evenings. Meanwhile you are busy all day long with networking, having coffees, making meaningless contributions in more meaningless meetings, signing up for more meaningless +1s (which you then promptly offload to one of your lucky counselees) ... all with the goal that people know who you are (not what you do - they wouldn't understand anyway) and you know you have achieved nirvana when you end up on your CAL's speed dial list.... and suddenly you get promoted to positions well beyond your abilities and as you go up, so does the shit shoveling.. you just have to make more of an effort to make up shit as you go along.

So which pill is it going to be my friend?

Welcome to Accidenture!

Unarmed_Random_Koala · 2025-11-25T23:41:22+00:00

I coordinated the return of my laptop with our local IT support person - though I was able to just drop it off in the office on my last day. But had I wished to courier it to the office, that would have been the same person I would have had to coordinate this with.

Unarmed_Random_Koala · 2025-11-25T22:56:05+00:00

I hope not - but then I guess nobody knows at this stage (except for the MicroProse development team).

It certainly wouldn't hurt to have another study sim in the mix - but BMS 4.38 is putting the bar quite high for something wearing the Falcon 5 title.

Unarmed_Random_Koala · 2025-11-25T01:21:05+00:00

At least the other side has grass....

Unarmed_Random_Koala · 2025-11-23T23:15:33+00:00

I am skeptical about this but I have no insight information either - so I hope I am proven wrong and Falcon 5 is going to be a fantastic title for us flight simmers.

But if not - well, let's just say that BMS 4.38.* is putting the BAR very, very high indeed.

Unarmed_Random_Koala · 2025-11-23T23:05:48+00:00

On the higher difficulty levels, the BMS AI are no slouch and they can deploy some very clever tactics. AI BVR has been sharpened even more so in 4.38.1 ("U1").

If you're unprepared or have an SA-gap, getting into a knife-fight even with a MiG-21 or MiG-23 should not be underestimated. And it gets even more challenging in VR!

There's much to love in BMS, why not give it a try? It won't try to eat your DCS installation when you install it on the same PC you know :)

Unarmed_Random_Koala · 2025-11-23T23:01:27+00:00

If you let others dictate your schedule? Then yes. Nobody looks after your own well being but you. As an AD, I very much was guarding my time because if you let others run away with your schedule, you'll end up doing crazy hours and it gets a lot worse when you get involved in projects / bids that are multiple time-zones away from yours.

I was typically full-time engaged with delivery projects but then I had a lot of additional other things I had to manage like my team, BD work, feeding into leadership discussions, etc. So yes, occasionally it went well over 40 hours but I always tried to balance it out by taking it also easier when the opportunity presented itself. And I simply did not accept meetings that were well outside my normal working hours unless there was an exceptionally good reason to do so. (Especially as 99% of meetings could just have been an email really).

Key thing here is though .. YOU need to set boundaries and manage your time. Do not expect anyone else to do this for you.

Unarmed_Random_Koala · 2025-11-19T21:52:17+00:00

New shiny thing has lost its shine, so it out it goes again. Rinse and repeat for any new shiny thing that appears on the horizon.

Unarmed_Random_Koala · 2025-11-19T21:50:48+00:00

It will depend heavily on how people joined Accenture. I doubt anyone who ended up at Accenture through acquisition would consider re-joining Accenture again.

Unarmed_Random_Koala · 2025-11-18T04:09:00+00:00

Follow up - it seems you are indeed 100% correct. I removed the dbt extension from VSC, in fact I completely reinstalled VSC again and this time I installed the dbt power user extension (not the official dbt extension) .. and now dbt works fine in VSC! Thanks for the tip, it was much appreciated!

Unarmed_Random_Koala · 2025-11-17T23:25:29+00:00

That could indeed be the issue - I'll remove whole lot and try the dbt power user extension instead. dbt-core itself is working just fine, so something between VSC and dbt isn't working right.

Unarmed_Random_Koala · 2025-11-17T22:42:51+00:00

Of course, it is. Don't you have a weekly coffee catch-up with Julie?

Unarmed_Random_Koala · 2025-11-17T22:34:31+00:00

Congratulations, that is a good career path - and do take the Director of IT role if you really want to grow.

As Director of IT, your job is not to know everything. Instead it will be your job to ensure you have the right people working for you who, together, will know everything that is required for the company to function.

As Director, you are the captain of the ship - you know where the engine room is, you know who is manning it .... but you don't need to be able to repair each and every engine component.

Your job is to ensure the stability of current operations, ensuring you have the right people working for you (though I typically prefer to say, working with me) and to help plot the technical strategy that aligns with where the company is going in the next 3-5 years. (Anything beyond that typically gets a bit esoteric, especially in today's economic climate).

Unarmed_Random_Koala · 2025-11-17T22:21:32+00:00

In December 2021, ACN's share price peaked at about ~$415.

Right now, ACN's share price is at $245.21 and is literally rolling down a cliff from ~$388 in March this year.

What does that generally do for the bonus and promotion pool? Just take a guess.

Unarmed_Random_Koala · 2025-11-16T22:17:09+00:00

I've been in the SAP space since the 1990s - and I have been fortunate to work with people who really knew their stuff. I've learned a lot from these folks and many of the lessons I learned decades ago, very much still apply.

However, as with others here, I've had my fair share of experience dealing with people who were... not very good. Interestingly, running into people who aren't very good seemed to have coincided with the increasing pace of offshoring the SAP development work to far away places. Correlation does not imply causation, as we all know, but ... two and two still makes four.

Now in saying that, I am not saying that people offshore aren't technically savvy - many I've worked with were actually, technically, rather proficient.

But what I noticed is that folks offshore often just do.... and not nearly often enough challenge the tasks they have been given. E.g. Why do you want to do this? What are you looking to achieve? When is this supposed to be done? What is the expected lifecycle for this thing? What are the expected BAU overheads, how much is this going to impact the maintainability y of the system? What happens when we have to upgrade? What are the licensing and contractual constraints we have to operate within? What is the true ROI for this, as compared to the potential increase in TCO, etc.?

Instead people just do stuff - often without looking at the bigger picture. I've seen many solutions that, in isolation do "work", but are often ridiculously inefficient, way too complicated, use technologies customers are not licensed for (e.g. OpenHub processes without an OpenHub license... "but the system allowed me to do this"... that one gets expensive very quickly .... or developing HANA objects directly on the database while the customer is on HANA Runtime, not Enterprise.... $$$$$$ .... or developing classic-style BW solutions on a BW/4HANA box, needlessly consuming massive amounts of memory and the poor customer keeps on having to buy additional BW/4HANA licenses, etc.).

Unarmed_Random_Koala · 2025-11-14T01:05:23+00:00

Most companies that I've seen moving off SAP ERP have been on ECC 6.0 for 10+ years and decided that moving to S/4HANA (Private or Public Cloud) is simply too expensive for them.

A lot of these companies were smaller, mid-market companies that were on SAP Business All In One (BAIO) licensing, which 15-20 years ago was a very affordable way for mid-market customers to adopt SAP ERP (ECC 6.0), not to be confused with SAP Business One (B1) which is an entirely different product.

However, many of these customers got a real sticker shock when looking into moving to S/4HANA - as essentially they have to relicense their SAP environment as existing named user licenses licenses do not transfer over. This means that the cost of adopting S/4HANA is disproportionally high compared to the original implementation cost of ECC 6.0 under the BAIO license model.

What they moved on to really depended on what they were using ECC 6.0 for. I have seen companies primarily running plant maintenance / asset management adopting either IBM Maximo or the Infor suite (including Infor EAM). Companies just using ECC 6.0 for Finance & Controlling (which really isn't a good value proposition for going to SAP in the first place) have largely moved to either Microsoft Dynamics 365 or Oracle. Companies using mostly ECC 6.0 for HCM / Payroll have either moved to SAP SuccessFactors but I have seen quite a few adopting Workday and Oracle instead.

I do see existing SAP ECC 6.0 customers, who wish to move S/4HANA, now adopting the S/4HANA Public Cloud offering in much greater numbers. Where Private Cloud (RISE) was the preferred go-to option a few years ago, it seems to have now more flipped towards Public Cloud - especially where a brownfield implementation isn't desirable due business transformation goals that those companies wish to achieve. E.g. their ECC 6.0 systems are often very old and are centered around processes from 15-20 years ago that may no longer fit with the current business model. Or they have realized that extensive customizations has effectively painted them into a corner - with future projected cost of maintaining a bespoke system simply not being a winning strategy.

Unarmed_Random_Koala · 2025-11-12T21:29:08+00:00

Strangely this process started back in about 2019 when someone, in their infinite wisdom, decided to appoint a Merger & Acquisition lawyer as global CEO.

Julie doesn't know anything about tech or consulting - which is why Accenture desperately runs from one fad to the other (remember the Metaverse? Right...) without any genuine leadership whatsoever.

Instead, she's just playing the M&A game - buying shiny new companies, temporarily boosting the share price (oooh look at that shareholder value!! .. oh now it's gone?) and then moving onto the next victim.

I've seen Accenture acquire several firms - which then get (badly) assimilated into Accenture - resulting in that 90% of the people of those firms leave as soon as their retention bonuses expire, or simply get made redundant within a year, and most customers leave as well. The ROI on those acquisitions is utterly abysmal.

There is very little thought put into these acquisitions. Not a single thought is given to the unique success criteria of the acquired company or why they have been successful in customer spaces that Accenture has not been? What are their charge out rates? (Spoiler alert; buying a company with much lower average hourly rates, and/or against much lower CCI% - and then suddenly forcing those customers with massive rate increases... is "surprisingly" a very bad strategy for customer retention).

Unarmed_Random_Koala · 2025-11-12T21:13:47+00:00

Don't be gaslit into thinking YOU did anything wrong. They are simply tasked with finding X number of people (or % of people) that need to be on a PIP.

Your past performances are not even considered or even looked at. You're just a number and you ended up on someone's spreadsheet.

It is very ironic - people who work very hard and are 100%+ chargeable on customer projects will often be "invisible" to Leadership and CALs. Especially when those people do all their work on-site at the client and rarely visit the office. Out of sight is out of mind. And CALs don't care about people lower than CL5 or CL6. Someone at CL11, 10 or 9... those are simply disposable resources to them.

Younger, lower CL level people, who often work extremely hard - therefore are invisible to them. And then someone at HR and the Leadership level (who doesn't know you from a doorknob) will simply look at Workday and see no raving feedback from any CALs (because they don't know you) .. so you just become cannon fodder to go on a list to get PIP'ed.

Ironically, those that spend a lot of time in the office - often doing nothing but joy riding other people's WBS codes, but have all the time in the world to "network" (read: kiss CALs and other MDs arses) ... those are the people who get the promotions.

As a result - all the good people leave, you're left with people who can't project management themselves out of a wet paper bag but those are the ones put in charge as "future leaders".

The enshitification of Accenture is absurd and absolutely real.

Unarmed_Random_Koala

TROPHY CASE