> Layered vendor relationships—where prime contractors sublease work to secondary vendors, who in turn engage tertiary providers—have created opaque financial structures that obscure accountability while enabling systematic exploitation.
It’s wild to me that big companies with all the resources would expose their IT systems in this way where they have no idea who is doing the work….
What's funny to me is that, not only is this also how the financial industry is structured, but that a) this is the currently fashionable means of reducing risk and b) it is seen as a feature not a bug.
Citation: Any book about the 2008 financial crisis, or the 1998 crisis, or the 1987 crisis, e.g.
[0] 'The Quants', Scott Patterson
[1] 'When Genius Failed', Lowenstein.
[2] 'Demon of Our Own Design', Richard Bookstaber.
Or manufacturing. Or mining/oil. (I know we are getting away from the sensitive data part of the comment though. But this is how you get children digging thru cobalt pits with their bare hands)
I only have recruiters from companies that do this sort of work reaching out to me on LinkedIn. Whole companies where you are hired based on resume keywords.
“When you have four or five layers between the client and the actual worker, each taking a cut, it becomes impossible to track where influence ends and legitimate business begins."
wow i would think that for all the money paid to ERP vendors tracking five layers of contracts would not be a major issue.
but i guess unless people in positions of authority subject themselves to some sort of financial audit then it’s almost impossible to detect corruption related payments.
When I worked for a B2B startup years ago (VR sector, hype of the moment back then), it was common to have our bid/proposal rejected in favor of a larger company that would then hire us to make the full project for a fraction of the price.
I wouldn’t be surprised to know there were agreements between this bigger company and the person in charge of selecting a contractor, it seems to be an extremely common practice.
Sounds more like covering your ass. Instead of hiring some startup, get a large company. It's not your money, and if the startup fail,s you don't have a real excuse. If a giant corpo fails the project, it's not your fault.
There’s also the “nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM” effect. If they hire a small vendor and the project fails, that might be a resume-generating event for the person responsible for that choice. But if you choose a big vendor and it fails you’re probably safe.
"Only at this point did Brady realize that it was the CEO himself who was fiddling with the numbers. The entire dual reporting system that the CEO had personally initiated was in part an elaborate spy network to guard against discovery of the slush fund manipulation, and perhaps other finagling, rather than a system to ensure financial honesty."
So this definitely sounds salacious and could be believable, but is this a reputable source? It's supposedly an IT consultant's website, a strange place for a news article of this kind to appear...
Disclaimer: The identity of the news submitter has been verified by us. However, we have not received any confirmation or verification from Walmart regarding the information provided
I take this to mean it's garbled at best, and just might be fictitious.
This (same link I believe, not just same story) was on the front page a couple of days ago and quickly flagged dead. I’m surprised to see it again so quickly. I would have thought a flagged link wouldn’t be possible to submit again and get to the front page.
When I did contracting at Siemens in Germany, the son of the CTO ran a staffing firm. He took around 30-50% of what Siemens paid. We did a rough calculation and concluded that the guy must make millions for not doing much. It’s hard to understand why countries are contracting with staffing firms that take a high cut but they do.
I always find Germans as a collective weirdly naive about the top-level corruption that goes on in their country. Don't get me wrong, I don't claim that it exceeds the US in anyway but Americans don't have any illusions about the possible corruption the top brass can be engaging at any point in time. Germans seem to be way too ocd about following the rules at the individual level themselves and policing those around them at an individual level that they don't seem to have much energy left for contemplating top-level or systematic corruption. German pride seems to also discourage them from engaging in devil's advocating when it comes to auditing German darling companies. I'm guessing the VW, Deutsche bank, and Wirecard scandals have at least made a healthy little dent in that collective psyche.
If this did happen, you would think this would be better substantiated by now. All the articles I'm finding on it are very clear at the top that it is an 'unverified' report - you'd think they'd be able to find atleast one of the 1200 engineers willing to talk to them.
Perhaps I'm too cynical but I'm not sure I believe this until a credible news source names the exec or has it substantiated by an engineer.
Readit News
It’s wild to me that big companies with all the resources would expose their IT systems in this way where they have no idea who is doing the work….
Citation: Any book about the 2008 financial crisis, or the 1998 crisis, or the 1987 crisis, e.g.
[0] 'The Quants', Scott Patterson
[1] 'When Genius Failed', Lowenstein.
[2] 'Demon of Our Own Design', Richard Bookstaber.
I only have recruiters from companies that do this sort of work reaching out to me on LinkedIn. Whole companies where you are hired based on resume keywords.
Source: 1st hand experience being a provider of such services.
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If this was a sourced article, it'd have the name of the exec.
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This thread isn't going anywhere, you can feel free to discuss. But it doesn't belong on front page, flagging was the right move.
wow i would think that for all the money paid to ERP vendors tracking five layers of contracts would not be a major issue.
but i guess unless people in positions of authority subject themselves to some sort of financial audit then it’s almost impossible to detect corruption related payments.
I wouldn’t be surprised to know there were agreements between this bigger company and the person in charge of selecting a contractor, it seems to be an extremely common practice.
- Moral Mazes (1988), Robert Jackall
(and sometimes it's by design)
https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/former-netflix-executiv...
Disclaimer: The identity of the news submitter has been verified by us. However, we have not received any confirmation or verification from Walmart regarding the information provided
I take this to mean it's garbled at best, and just might be fictitious.
Perhaps I'm too cynical but I'm not sure I believe this until a credible news source names the exec or has it substantiated by an engineer.