Inside SAIC

An anonymous reader submits this profile of SAIC, Science Applications International Corporation, the behemoth defense contractor/research outfit/spymaster.

Comments

Re:SAIC is Employee-Owned - Employee-Ownership Roc

[Lebrun]

How many times I have to say it? There is absolutely no way to control a production installation from a desktop computer anywhere within the PDVSA network. Perhaps the wireless card were used to access a mail o file server, but to open valves and "cause" spillages, you have to actually be there on the spot. The crap about remote access is just an excuse for the incompetence of the traitors who are helping the Chavez government send more free oil to Cuba. About the firing of the workers, I seem to recall there is something called the right to go on strike. And even if you could through some weird, alternate universe logic (similar of that used by the Chavez government), justify the firing of those employees, the fact is after more than 4 months, not a sigle fired worker has received his severance payments, which are mandatory by law in Venezuela. This is again, the fault of the Chavez so-called administration. One final point: when talking about gas, you don't say "spillage", but "leak" instead. I think this reflects you lack of experience on the subject.

SAIC Codejockeys

[cplcap]

I can sum up every SAIC product, system and design I have ever seen:

1. Buy Cheap Compaq Hardware.

• Planned obsolescence after exactly 3 years ensures an ongoing maintenance contract. And passing 110% of the open market price on to your customers helps profitability.

2. Design with Microsoft OSes.

• Skim 10% in another two years when MS forces your customer to relicense. Make sure there will be frequent patching of the OS involved.

3. Cob it together.

• When one MS box can't do the job, do it with three. Plus 2 more for glue logic (export an Access DB to a flat file that Oracle can read, for instance). Make sure that patching any of the intermediate systems kills the entire data flow.

4. CrapCode.

• Write everything in VB. Don't document code. Make sure every piece of code that is not immediately obvious goes into DLLs created by a different team and are not documented. Rely on hardcoded versioning so that an OS patch requires a complete recompilation of the software.

5. CYA.

• As soon as a more lucrative contract comes along, spin off a bunch of techs that worked on other projects into a new company or branch and force them to support your crap.

Has anyone else had a better experience with SAIC? They're still developing for Windows NT under our contract, and still have one release to go under NT, due in a year! Mention UNIX and they go into vapor lock.

Well at least they're not Calibre Systems.