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bosses a'snappin'
Tuesday, June 29 1999
With our company now placing all its eggs in the basket of a completely unproven architecture, it's natural that some on our engineering staff would be skeptical and raise doubts. Instead of debating these issues out in the open, however, the "Navy Seal" engineers designing the system have resorted to unsupported statements of faith in the new architecture and attacks on the programming prowess of the skeptics. Dissent is not just unwelcome, it's taboo. The party line is that the system will work flawlessly and be fully implemented in a matter of weeks, joined only about a week later by a flawless redo of the front end of our site as well as a host of new, complex features. To say this whole thing creeps me out is an understatement.
Today I heard what happened to one of my engineering friends who has been raising doubts about the new architecture. He was pulled aside by the VP of System Architecture and told "Your programming scares me." This was evidently in response to a very legitimate question he had asked (about an arcane issue of database access) at a meeting presenting the new architecture. The "VP of System Architecture" went on to say that a vote had been held amongst the programmers and it had been decided that his job should be terminated. The only one who had spoken in his behalf, claimed the VP of System Architecture, was the Grand Pooh Bah himself. Naturally, my engineering friend believed what the VP of System Architecture had just told him, and immediately fell into an angry depression. He took the rest of the day off and sulked.
The next day he asked his boss, the Director of Engineering, about the supposed vote to have him fired. The Director of Engineering didn't know what the hell my engineering friend was talking about. This led my friend to thinking. "Hmm..."
So my friend confronted the VP of System Architecture and asked him again about the vote. Trapped in a lie, the VP of System Architecture hedged and said that the whole story was actually untrue and had simply been "a test."
I heard this story and was horrified. It seemed like an incredibly juvenile mind game for a VP of anything to be pulling. What little confidence I had in the VP of System Architecture evaporated at that point. To put it another way, I don't think my stock options are ever going to be worth very much.
In defense of the VP of System Architecture, the man is indeed under incredible pressure. As I've said, the company has decided to accept his claims on faith. Now, as deadlines loom ever closer, the temperature is rising. I wouldn't be completely surprised if the VP of System Architecture eventually suffered some sort of severe psychological breakdown.
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http://asecular.com/blog.php?990629 feedback
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