Alan Lenton: Avoid this company like the plague!

[16-1-2007] Azzurri Education were recently certified for an educational procurement process for schools software in the UK.

In an article about the process the managing director, Gerard Toplass, said that the certification process was very stringent and boasted, 'We had six programmers working 15 hours a day for six months."

Toplass seemed to think that this level of incompetence was something they should be congratulated on. Why didn't they just hire a second six programmers, so that everyone could work eight hour days and still have some left over? Or was their software so badly written that only six programmers could work on it?

So, if you see job adverts for this company - avoid it at all costs, since they seem to believe that working six months worth of 15 hour days is not only acceptable but a sign of how good they are.

If you find software from this firm, think before you buy it - do you really want to use software written by programmers who were dog tired and had been working for over twelve hours when they wrote, say, the routines that will save out the work you've done over the last few hours?

I think not!

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/01/08/becta_ec_complaint/