The Orthodoxy of Fools

I've been five years long out of the world of work now; content with the self-imposed strictures of writing this daily scribble versus the constant struggle against idiots who think they know better, despite their own piss-poor performance records. Whatever, I often mull on all those slights and knock-backs that we all experience in our work lives, most often from little Hitlers who choose to hide their own pathetic inadequacies behind your supposed 'inferior' performance, by belittling you and doing you down, despite clear evidence that you've actually done a good job. I think I've mentioned before that in my first 'proper' job after leaving college, I went from newbie salesman to the third best in the UK for the chain that I worked for, in just three months; only to be told by my manager that I was selling too much(!): how that computes in a retail environment, I really don't know. I've often wondered whatever happened to him after the entire chain's business went into free-fall and ultimately into receivership a short time later.

Latterly - the last sixteen damnable years of my working life - were similarly blighted by the kind of vertical management structure, under which the orthodoxy was one of stick for the good, deliberate indifference to the bad; based on some cockamamy US business practice theory that had, like the early 70s doctrine of unlimited diversification [it turned out to be dilution - viz Cadburys expansion into all sorts of business its management simply didn't understand], taken on common sense and beaten it into a bloody pulp in front of everybody to great acclaim. Let's face it, the now-largely-discredited Harvard Master of Business Administration degree was founded on these ludicrous principles.

But the most egregious of my experiences was at the hand of someone I was freelancing for in the early 2000s. I was given a European project to monitor, under the understanding that the principal of the small company and his programming team would be producing the [software] goods for the project. My exact rôle was never exactly specified, but I duly went to meetings across Europe and invoiced them accordingly. However, at one particular meeting in Germany, I was made aware that the company I was freelancing for had no new product to offer the project, even though I was expected to provided a sign-off synopsis to the assembled group of partners the next day. Fortunately, the representative of the Danish partners admitted to me that evening that they also had made zero progress on their contribution.

We got very drunk indeed, in fact we saw out the evening just before dawn, agreeing in an albeit wobbly and slightly incoherent fashion, that after we negotiated the initial [very] hungover meeting of the day, we would convene and come up with a plan to rescue the situation. I was there at the first meeting of the day at 9am sharp, feeling very much the worse for wear. The Dane [lovely bloke called Søren Johanssen] turned in eventually at 10am, obviously in a worse state than I was: Cymro 1, Viking 0. Anyhow, the committee had the good grace to allow us a few hours to prepare our case for the defence, and so Søren and I repaired to breakfast and after to an ante-room to try and plan our escape.

The scheme was simple: the two companies would join forces and work together rapidly to construct a combined software/content solution that would satisfy the project requirements of both at the same time. Except we didn't have a great deal of that particular commodity - time - so we decided that Søren should come to Wales as soon as possible and that we should try and convince the company I was freelancing for that we could effect a rapid turnaround on the project using proprietary software and employing the right people to do the job [they were already on the team I'd been assembling over the previous few months]. It would take no more than a matter of a few weeks to achieve what had not been achieved in the previous year. This went down in flames. In a tediously protracted meeting with the principal, he basically touted the idea of inventing a new software architecture - which of course he had already formulated [that day?] - and which would be ready on the due date.

We knew at that point we had to take the issue into our own hands, so we convened at my house for dinner that evening and thrashed out, well, a vague plan. We would meet, Søren, myself, and Jean-Charles Boude, my friend and ace coder [late of this parish, blog posts passim], with the rest of the Danish team, in Åarhus, Denmark, the following week. After Søren had left for Denmark, I duly arranged flights for myself and JC for a few days hence. On the morning of my departure, the principal of the company rang me on my mobile as I was literally leaving my front door. His comment was staggeringly brutal: 'I hope you're intelligent enough to realise that you don't know what you are doing.' At which unfathomable arrogance I was simply stunned into an anodyne '...we'll see what turns out...' or some such. That he could treat me with such little respect was bad enough, but given his now evident track record, I thought "Fuck you!" and headed for the airport.

JC and I eventually arrived via a couple of flights, in Åarhus, a wonderful place, well worth the revisit of which I've not yet made and alas one JC can never now make; but there you go. After an evening of much food and drink - Vikings, God bless 'em! - we made our way the following day to their company headquarters for meetings with both Søren's outfit and the other Danish partner in the project, Martin Nielsson. After we had agreed on a general approach - we had just three days to get a result, including the last day, when the principle of my outfit would be presenting live via a remote feed his 'new' architecture to an assembly of project partners on the other side of the folding doors to our meeting room - we set to on coming up with 'the plan'. Except that none of us had actually, at that point, got any concrete notion of 'a plan'.

As it was down to me, ultimately, I decided to take a kind of 'facilitator's' rôle in the meeting and improvised and motivated as best I could - falteringly at first - realising that all the talent that was needed to resolve the issue was here in the room with me. I knew that a couple of the team were experts in Flash MX, a proprietary multimedia software suite. I also knew that in JC, I had an expert in server-side programming; and also in the mix were a couple - literally - of very talented graphic artists. All I needed to do was flesh out a broad concept, ask a few relevant questions and I knew that we would have a proof of concept by the next morning. Which happened: the team came up with a functioning, and to be frank perfectly usable, proof of concept by early doors next day, which was duly demonstrated to the partners as the principal of my outfit was touting his air-wares on the other side of the shutters.

We won the day, in principle. We came up with useable product in two-and-a-half days. And the end result? Ignorance. The German lead partners wanted myself and JC to lead on finishing the software for the project, but the principal of the firm would hear nothing of it, despite my having made deals in principal with all the other project partners; and so, as we were unable to replace my firm to do the work [according the project rules], we were rowed out of the project, and myself out of my contract. Suffice it to say that the company no longer exists. How many ordinary people of talent with so much to offer are passed over by the talentless who wield power and influence over them? How much better would the world be without the arrogant dick-wads who seem inevitably to rule the roost? T'n't Right, T'n't Fair, T'n't Proper, Master Poldark...