Sage struggles in subdued market Software specialist for small and medium businesses Sage said the weak pound had helped offset a subdued market for its products. For the three months ended 31 December 2008 trading was in line with expectations. Sage chief executive Paul Walker said: “We are pleased to report that, despite volatile conditions in many of our …
>The company employs 14,500 people
There's the problem. I mean, Sage, right? Payroll, ledger, accounts payable, that sort of stuff?
Can anyone explain to me why it takes 14,500 people to manage a software product that could be entirely managed, by, say 4 or five coders in someone's shed?
WTF?
Is it me?
There use to be the couple of days of, oh look IT is impervious, yeah right, IT is always the first to go, because no one inside of management really understands it.
Sure, IT is more important than marketing but not in perception, only in reality.
Remember kids, never study for IT or Comp Sci., it will get you nowhere, it is not a sexy job, it is not an easy job, it is all consuming, abandon all hope ye who enter here should be the IT mantra.
So, now we have the job cuts, good good, same old IT boom, bust cycle, sure they will be some opportunity in the market place both on the way down, and the way up again.
More will be muttering about turning to the dark side, and hey there is a lot more info already for you to embrace that side of things. And those with the light bent, well there is always doing your own project and selling it to the Iranians, when the embargo gets lifted :)
Except that with the sheer volume of customers that they have (about 750,000!) they'd need a few support techs and implementation dudes, let alone the sales bods and managers.
Happily, their stuff behaves as if it was made by five blokes in a shed. Which keeps the likes of you and I in a job.
They're all support people. The product itself sucks, and is extraordinarily confusing. It takes months to learn the idiosynchracies, such as why you can't select a past pay slip from within the normal payslip report screen, instead you have to navigate somewhere entirely non-intuitive (I can't even remember it now without my cheat-sheet in front of me) . The upgrades routinely don't work, but fail silently. Basic usage requires administrative permission. AND the basic version doesn't run under WINE, and the 'native linux' version is WAY TOO EXPENSIVE ! I can't understand how they stay in business personally.
A big thumbs down to Sage
I'll cut and paste your response since you refrained from putting a little * in 'c*nt'. You're welcome.
uk086242
Ridiculous hysteric eh?
That the poster chose to include their former manager's origin within the comment seems to infer some issue with that place of origin, otherwise why chose to state it? 'Fat Militaristic c*nt' would have sufficed I am sure you agree. And yes, you have indeed demonstrated that you can be offensive in more than one way (whatever the hell that means).
*
To which I'll respond - nope, you've failed to convince me. But you can take it up with him, because I stand by both my original moderation and my subsequent comment.
If you can't figure out how making a direct comparison between the word 'Welsh' and the word 'Paki' is offensive, then I've got nothing more to say to you.
Unlike Carol Thatcher, I would like to offer an unreserved apology for any offence caused. I was careful to add another word between "Welsh" and "c*nt", but I fear you're right - the word Welsh still came across as pejorative, even though it was certainly not meant as such.
I do think it was a bit of a leap of imagination to compare Welsh with the P word or the N word, but given (upon re-reading) my poor gramatical construction I can see how this leap was easily made, and you are quite right that I would not have replaced the word Welsh with P... or N... (because those words are almost always offensive and I am vehemently anti-racist) or even Asian/Pakistani or black if they had belonged to those ethnic groups.
Right, enough apologising (it seems somewhat narcisitic)...he was the total c*nt, entirely irrespective of ethnicity, and I never got an apology from him.
Paris - because she's more careful about what she inserts.
...the company whose software can simultaneously bring a strong man and a strong computer to their knees. We made the mistake of buying a few seats of Act! - it added minutes to boot times, was horrifically complicated, and so difficult to use that we ended up switching to a roll-our-own database in a hosted wiki.
Granted, we're a tiny company and in a low-volume business, so maybe if you have 14,400 employees it's different. But that still doesn't explain why the software was such an unholy resource hog.
@"welsh"
Excellent scrap - thanks. We could play a game deciding what words one could/could not substitute for "welsh" in the comment. Personally, were I a Taff (some of my best friends are Welsh), I would strongly object to the lower-case "w". Apart from the you-will-fry-in-hell N- and P- words, you would not get away with "Jewish" or "dyke" or "Paddy" but "Christian", "British/Brit" and "French/Frog" would (probably) pass unnoticed. Words are weird.
And he probably doesn't mean it about the toys.
Not that this is what we are meant to be discussing, Paki is (presumably) an offensive term to Pakistanis, whereas Welshman is the proper name for one from Wales.
Taffy would probably be the equivalent for a Welshman, so uk08blahblah should have mentioned his stupid Taffy manager. Much better.
Well done again Sarah Bee. Play on.
This post has been deleted by its author
"Let's just agree everything derogatory ever said about anyone is 'racist' and leave it at that, eh? It would simplify the righteous/misguided outrage process no end."
well that would be silly, wouldn't it? however if it helps you to think about things that way, good for you.
I was being ironic, you div.
You really should try harder to distinguish (I was trying to say) between what is truly racist and what isn't really racist. You only dilute the concept if you don't and that makes things worse for everyone.
But since you didn't get that originally, I think it may be better to end our discussion here, don't you?
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
