I was tempted to feel bad for Hertz but then, on the flipside, what kind of deranged numbskull do you have to be to hire a bloody management consultancy[0] to build you a website and mobile app?
[0] Yes, yes, I know Accenture have developers and development teams, but look at their history with publicised software development projects: it's not exactly a road paved with glittering diamonds of crystallised glory. I'm not suggesting Accenture are irredeemably awful at everything they do but it's evidently the case that software development isn't really their oeuvre even though they do seem to do quite a lot of it.
Exactly. That's so many levels of poor reasoning that it's hard to feel bad for anyone, other than maybe the developers whose work never saw the light of day.
Plenty of people, including those with prestigious titles, who are detached from the reality of software development. In some cases they "hire some geeks" to solve a problem a big company already solved, and like in this case there are other times where they hire some big company with an official sounding name because, surely, they can get things done.
Honestly, it gives me hope that my job as a web developer won't be wiped out by AI too soon. There's enough foolish management types out there hiring the wrong humans to work on futile projects that I figure I have at least another 5 years before I have to resort to food delivery or basket weaving.
Scale. I know of large banks that use Accenture because they can spin up 10 scrum teams overnight when they can’t attract that much (and good) talent themselves. Hertz is a pretty big company with a big transnational footprint. It’s not a Wordpress web site. That said, 32M $ for nothing is still bad.
[0] Yes, yes, I know Accenture have developers and development teams, but look at their history with publicised software development projects: it's not exactly a road paved with glittering diamonds of crystallised glory. I'm not suggesting Accenture are irredeemably awful at everything they do but it's evidently the case that software development isn't really their oeuvre even though they do seem to do quite a lot of it.