We used to be a happy family here at the technology arm of BigTelco.

After much struggle, long hours, tough decisions and lots and lots of sacrifice, we were at the point where we could take Enterprise-level apps live with the grace, coordination and flash of so many Rockettes kicking in a line.

With the exception of our User Interfaces, everything was standards-compliant, best-practices spiffy and unbelievably smooth: LDAP-ified metadata, single sign-on applications for internan and external customers, J2EE, CORBA, HTTPS and a whole charm bracelet of dazzling technology acronyms.

Big Telco had champagne tastes and caviar budgets. Everything was clustered, redundant, load-balanced, 99.9995 uptime-a-rific. We could deploy a website into complex infrastructure in a matter of hours. We could implement a complete system for on-line customer service functions in a night.

Then it all got blown away: outsourcing, “best shore,” reduction in force. Geographically, we were all split up. Since I took this position, I’ve sat in five desks in three years and worked for two different companies. Our infrastructure is rotting and the workforce support has gone fully ghetto to the point where we can’t even see into each other’s Outlook to schedule meetings. And we went from being teammates to competitors, in many cases.

I’m on a project right now that is what they call, in the business, “high visibility.” Meaning a lot of boss-type people are looking over your shoulder and asking you to “communicate status.” It also seems to bring out the worst in people.

My role on the project is Platform Architecture, which means I sort of help people figure out how to bring all the pieces together because, supposedly, I have detailed knowledge of the infrastructure, application frameworks, et cetera. Big Telco has a counterpart for me, and we are supposed to work together: he from the “high level” view, and me from the detailed perspective. We’re often in meetings together on the 37th floor, looking out over the I-75/I-85 Connector with multiple project managers, application stake holders, application developers, network engineers, system administrators and various other important-looking but silent people who don’t even introduce themselves. Now that I’m a “vendor,” they don’t really care too much because they don’t need to use honey to catch flies any longer, they simply use threats, when necessary. We are from three main groups: BigTelco, GiantOutsourcingCompany (for which I work) and BigConsultancy, which does most of the application development work. Also, there’s always a menacing-looking speakerphone emitting clicks and faint hisses and occasional “bluh-bleeps” as people join and leave the conference call.

Of course, being on the 37th floor, you’ve got to scan the horizon for stray airplanes at every given opportunity.

Let’s call my BigTelco counterpart “Mercier,” not because he’s French or anything, and not because his name is even close to a French-sounding name, but because he reminds me of this guy I used to work with in Snowmass named Mercier who used to wink at me in order to try to get me to help him do his work instead of mine. Mercier had perfectly-groomed and hipster blond hair, as does the new Mercier, a slight tan, square jaw, tailored clothes and an almost extrapolated GQ-like countenance. His involvement was preceded, by BigTelco’s management, with many adjectives and descriptive phrases: “smart,” “great to work with,” “very capable,” and “wonderful.” Anyway, Mercier was called upon during a meeting to deliver his vision of what we should do. Of course, being the “high level” guy usually means the “full of shit” guy, and what he proposed was sound in theory, but given the various in-place solutions, realities of the dollar figures and technical limits of his methods, it had to be tweaked. I let him finish, expecting to be called on to deliver my assessment or feedback, but was never given the nod. “Oh well,” I though, “I’ll just correct it in the design documents.”

The meeting made me sad. What was once a cohesive team making endless first downs toward innumerable technology touchdowns and doing elaborate end zone victory dances was reduced to a bitter, feuding, bitchfest. Particularly sad was the fact that whenever anyone from my company, attending exclusively, with the exception of me, via conference call, would speak up. It was always, “we can’t,” “we’re not,” “we need.” They never had anything constructive to say. They just threw up hurdle after roadblock after pitfall.

As the meeting progressed, we were told some more or less usual but extraordinary things: the project was “escalated,” meaning the timeframes were all subject to compression and excessive scrutiny; the engagement had been bungled so that everyone was already late to the table; the application was supposed to have gone live last week; BigTelco could incur heavy penalties from governmental regulatory bodies should it not get this application in soon; etc., etc., etc. As the meeting progressed, I began to see that Mercier was the Rock Star. He was The Man. The BigTelco managers loved him. In fact, I think the Project Manager has a huge crush on him. Mercier spoke a lot. His hands shook a little bit, which gave me some idea that he was in fraudulent territory, thinking to himself, as I often do, “I can’t believe they pay me to do this. Then it was break time.

As people filed out of the room, Mercier got out some large schematic diagrams and squinted at them. I leaned over to Mercier, to give him some information I felt he should know before he continued down his current path. As I leaned close, he said to me, “So, Steve, what is your role? Do you allocate disk storage for databases?”

“No, I do what you do, detailed view” I didn’t correct him on the name. I intended to, but I was fascinated by the way the tip of his nose moved up and down when he spoke. A buddy of mine from BigConsultancy chimed in:

“Mercier, you’re the 50,000 feet view. Scott is the microscope that make sure everything is done right in the given environment.”

“Ah.” Mercier returned to squinting at his diagrams. I put my finger on it where I noticed he had done something somewhat illegal and suggested a better way. We chatted a bit, and I had to school him a little bit on various things – nothing major, just suggested a few opportunities for improvement for his design. He hadn’t thought of them before, but liked what he heard.

“Scott,” he got the name right, “I want you to do me a favor. When Sally gets back in the room, I want you to tell her what you just told me so we can possibly pursue this in a larger way.”

As the meeting reconvened, Mercier was still studying his diagrams. People were chit-chatting about this and that. Some people with whom I’ve worked innumerable times introduced themselves to me. You see, working as we do, it’s seldom necessary to actually see the person with whom you are engaged. It’s all interactive pages, conference calls, e-mail and the old fashioned telephone – usually exchanging voice communication via voice mails. It felt good to finally shake hands with people who have put in their sweat and tears alongside you, even if only virtually by your side.

Sally began to call the meeting back to order, and Mercier instantly started speaking.

“I’ve been thinking,” he began, and started outlining the issues with his design that I had just pointed out to him. “My idea,” he continued, is to do exactly what I had just told him. It was like I was back in fifth grade or something, when you admitted a crush you had on the girl in the back row to your best friend, who then went and told everybody. But this was strictly a calculated, cold move to grab credit for what little feeble brain power I put into this project. It felt so weird. I can’t believe it even bugged me, but it did. And, of course, I didn’t say shit. I just listened to Mercier rattle off my ideas. I mean, these weren’t novel ideas, they were just the ideas one would come up with if one knew what one was doing. We moved on.

The discussion came down to deliverables and timelines. The deliverables are always the same: three documents, one for platforms and software, one for network configurations, and one for security-related information that boils down, basically, to required firewall rules. Somewhere along the way, the other two groups have managed to alleviate themselves of the ability to do their own requirements and data collection or even pay attention on the calls, and simply stated that they do not begin work until they have, in their e-mail inboxes, the document for which I am responsible. So in a compressed-timeline situation, guess where the hammer falls first.

“Sure,” I began. I can probably get you an initial issue of the document by Tuesday.” I had compressed a two week engagement timeframe to two and one half working days. I had set myself up for payment in full: weekend work, the whole deal. I knew that, but since I had worked with most of these people before and they were in such a tight squeeze, I committed.

“Steve,” Sally said, “if Scott is finished by Tuesday, how soon can you be finished.” The call went ‘round. Steve, the network guy, could finish by Friday, but only if he had, in his in-box, my document by Tuesday at noon. Jimmy, the firewall guy, could only turn it around by Friday if he had it by what they call “COB’ – close of business – on Monday. So these guys were being champions, too. They agreed to compress their normal two week windows to just three or four working days as well.

Bruce, who I guess is the “team lead” on the project for BigConsultancy, took the helm of the call as soon as one of his superiors joined. “I just wanted to update you on where we are. We are awaiting Scott’s document, then Steve has agreed to help us out a lot by turning around his document in half the normal time. Jimmy is doing the same…” As he said all this, my train of thought derailed and landed squarely on a fantasy of doing something else, anything else that would require me not to have to sit in rooms with gum-smiled, self-important, business-voice-affected slime suckers like this guy.

So it was cataloged, in just a span of a few minutes: dis number two. Everybody’s a martyr and busting their asses but me. I was beginning to think that nobody like me, but I know that’s not true. My customer feedback is unfailingly positive, my peer feedback illustrates that my only weakness in the workplace is a desire to do too much for my customers. Nearly everyone in the room had a long track record working with me, and we had all had positive results: giant implementations, huge congratulatory parties, all sorts of technical domination that just flat-out rocked. It just wasn’t adding up, but I soon realized that it’s almost certainly the fact that GiantOutsourcingCompany is seen as a steaming pile of turd, a stinking, hulking mass of it. The customers and partners (and yes, competitors) have become so accustomed to discounting anything coming out of GiantOutsourcingCompany as bullshit. As they say, no matter how much sugar you sprinkle on a turd, it’s still a turd.

Disregarding all of that bullshit, I resolved to simply do an awesome job. To put up and shut up simultaneously. Rather than waste other people’s time with ego battles and calling others out, I chalked off a day of my weekend and resolved to not only do the work, but to turn in excellent work a day early! instanity!

The meeting ended congenially enough. In addition to the document I must create, I was given several additional action items, all of them “critical path,” as they say in the business. One item was a sure-fire way to burn half a day: puzzling through massive command outputs that take up reams and reams of display space, comparing them to the effusive output of yet another set of commands, determining the facts, then comparing those facts with what other people believe to be true, and hammering out a decision while remaining political and tactful – a real corporate art at which I’ve become, sadly, quite adept. I was squeezing my document timeline even more.

I took the elevator down to the lobby so I could catch the non-express up elevator to my desk on the 11th floor. When I arrived, there was a message from a former trench battler, with whom I’ve worked on numerous “high visibility” projects and with whom, despite the fact I’ve never met him face-to-face, I’ve developed the kind of relationship that could be described as having one another’s backs, as in, “I’ve got your back.” Let’s call him Perry, although that’s not his name but the name of another former trench battler with whom I have a similar relationship. Anyway, Perry has since progressed up the corporate ladder. Having somehow dodged the outsourcing bullet, he was promoted a couple times and now probably has a desk with a door insulating him from the cubes. The message from Perry read, “I’m concerned about your timeline. Do you think you could focus on getting the portions of the document that security and network people would find most useful done first?”

It’s the next day, and I just got off of a call during which Mercier explained to me, as if I was a child, the ideas I gave him last week. Unbelievable! I’m really starting to think that Mercier is a fucking asshole.

I churned out the document on Sunday, leaving just a few items requiring clarification from various “stakeholders” to be filled in during the early part of the week. But it was thorough and well-written, and everyone else, including that bitch Mercier, can get their shit straight off of my document now. Since it was a rainy Sunday, I didn’t feel cheated. I set up my wireless laptop on the dining room table and worked in the dim light of our craftsman-era lamp. My dogs and cats curled up into little comfortable masses of warmth and tranquility on the oak floors and I wore clothes that made me feel as though I were at work to keep a productive frame of mind and to dissuade myself from getting horizontal on one of our cat-hair covered sofas. It was a wet newspaper sky Sunday.

I was on a “status call” on Monday. I explained that I was due to finish the document a full day and a couple hours ahead of schedule and that I was still trying to get the details hammered out regarding the database capacity. Bruce, being the motherfucker that he turns out to be, said, “Scott, I’m not picking on you, but the sooner you get that, the better.” I explained that I didn’t want to provide them a false sense of hope. I didn’t want to say that I knew they could leverage a shared platform, have them get halfway through implementation, and then find out I was wrong and their project was fucked.
The call ended, but I was working so diligently and quickly on creating my architecture document, I didn’t hang up my speakerphone. As all the participants left the call, Bruce called out to Mercier and Sally to stay on the call. I didn’t hang up, but I wasn’t really listening to what they had to say. Mainly, I could tell that Mercier was blaming his apparent lack of progress on his several deliverables on other people. Finally, I heard Bruce say my name. He continued, “I didn’t mean to rattle his cage, but, I mean, I don’t know what he’s been doing, but we need to pin him down on the database issue. He’s had this action item since Thursday!”
“I KNOW!” exclaimed Mercier. “I suggest that we draft an e-mail that forces him to respond and that way we have him pinned down in writing.”

So there it is. Everybody is gunning for one another. It’s not overt, yet it’s certainly not subtle. And I’ve grown to hate Mercier and Bruce. Every aspect of my work with them is poisoned like a well into which somebody has thrown a decaying cow carcass. When I page Mercier for information, I want to add expletives, such as:

Hello. Please tell me the total physical memory you have in the reporting servers, and do it now and do it faster, you fucking dumbass, cockfaced fucker.

And when he responds:

for which servers do you require the information?

I wish I could say:

For the only goddamned servers you have responsibility for on our project, you stupid fuck, what the hell do you think I mean when I say “reporting servers?” Your poorly-designed, non-standard design for a supposed “non-critical” application that will, inevitably, cause somebody to do heavy penance when it breaks. But what do you care? You’ll be onto the next disaster, and you’ll still have Sally salivating on you as you divert your responsibilities onto others.

It’s a hidden yet evident hell that is mine and just about every other corporate individual’s. The decisions have been made. Sure, courses exist that can be charted and navigated to lift us out of this mucked-up quagmire. But for now, while the economy has us beaten down, we’ll endure. At least we have jobs, we remind ourselves, thinking of all the unfortunate souls who’ve been ejected from their positions. We say a little Hail Honkey or whatever prayer we do and rub our talismans (mine happens to be a mechanical ringer phone I found in the drawer of my high tech office desk). We remember the good days, but it was an ass-wringer then, too. It’s a slow squeeze.

I know I could get up in Mercier’s face during these calls. I could say stuff like, “well, of course I understand, because it was I who gave you that idea on Thursday.” But I hate that type of behavior. I don’t appreciate it when I’m a third-party to it, nor do I think anyone else does. One could make the argument that it’s a matter of survival. The fact is that we’re all competing here, not really working together. We’re engaged in full-on capitalism with diminishing returns, but a scratch and kill type environment regardless of one’s disposition. And I could furtively get Bruce aside and tell him I don’t appreciate his method of “rattling my cage,” especially since he is in no position of authority and disregarding the fact that I’ve worked many long, long hours with these people and they trust me to get my work done without his “help.”

Maybe I still will. Who knows and, above all, who cares?

Telling the stories on our blogs makes us feel a little more human, but the fact is, we’re in a totally human situation. This is it.

UPDATE: It’s now Tuesday, almost 24 hours since I submitted my “critical” document so that individuals could read it, comprehend it and send me the “critical” information required to finish up this “critical” document within our “critical” timeline. I’ve not received one peep from anybody associated with the project. —msp