Defusing hopes of a second career

I can’t help but smirk when I hear glorious stories about IT professionals who quit the industry to “reinvent themselves” and become oddballs. You know what I’m talking about, deviants who become restaurant owners, landscaping designers and other bogus choices that make me raise an eyebrow. How many times did I secretly listen to a conversation where a DBA rants about his job and say something like “I’ll sell my clunker and start a burger joint, I mean could it be worse than this fucking project?”

People somewhat believe that it exists a more golden opportunity than IT, a secret place where happiness exists and where people can become better persons by doing what they really love.

Get out of town.

Working for a company, well not any company of course, but working for CGI is the pinnacle of any serious career. Here you will share our dream, help us on our mission to profitable growth and you’ll get plenty of training so that we can drop you on a lucrative gig for a fat client. Even your folks will be proud of you, because our company name is the newspaper. You can’t seriously hope for a better life than that, and if you do you’ll get njoyned.

It’s like people who quit their IT career to become “life coaches”, this is so freaking ridiculous that it has become a running gag in HR circles. When you check into LinkedIn and scan for those pets, you realize that their career has been so dysfunctional that these people must have a truckload of unresolved “personal issues”. Women especially. Probably divorced, unable to put a cap on their emotions, their new car is scratched bumper to bumper, they lose their ATM card 8 times a year, yet they advise you on how to run a perfect life.

Do you really think running a greasy spoon or giving advices on “life” to other wackos will be a satisfying career on the long run? Sure, flipping burgers sounds more fun than configuring a Windows server or checking firewall rules in a beige cubicle, but after a few hundred thousand patties reality will knock on your door. Happiness is not about being on your own or calling the shots, it is not about human contact, and it is definitely not about money. Whatever you’re doing today won’t make a dent in human civilization, hell nobody will remember you 150 years from now not even the taxman.

So why not be part of a larger group that will give your life structure and meaning? Your identity will be defined by our policies and processes, so you have nothing to worry about. It takes maturity and wisdom to become a company man. Join us today, and send me your resume.

Member's Column Day: On Fruitcakes

Dear FakeMike, my client is completely nuts and our team morale is sinking to new lows every day. We get conflicting messages from the director, vague scope of work and we get wacked for nothing. The client expects us to deliver unreasonable work within extra-short time, yet his own employees are doing literally nothing except smoking outside the building, chatting in the coffee room and bitching about consultants. I think the urinals get more attention from the organization than us. This is hell. Mike from BC.

What's your question young man, do you seek professional advice on lavatory equipment or are you just whining about a situation that is clearly outside your control?

Rest assured, neurosis is more prevalent inside today's organization than one might think. Doctors estimate that 20-30% of today's workforce run on prescription drugs, and we're not talking about blood pressure here. Simply said, people are just nuts. And nuttiness is not limited to the usual suspects, like government workers, CDO traders or whores. It's everywhere, in every corner where people work for a living. They have infiltrated every level, every field, regardless of salary or responsibilities. It is a global freak show.

If you ask me, I'm totally fascinated by the fact that society in general can hold itself together in one more or less coherent thing, considering the prevalence of loose-cannon control-freak delusional zombies. We should normally nail a few 2 by 4 on our door to prevent the crazy from entering our house and office, à la Vincent Price. Seriously. It's a miracle that we not enter a devolution stage and go back to the ocean where we came from in the first place. Clams do not use Sharepoint or Lotus Notes, this might be why they're so happy.

We also must understand one important aspect of being a consultant. Consultants are like whipping boys (and girls) inside a company, directors can whack them just the fun of it, they can persecute them just to make their day more enjoyable and have something to gloat about at the next meeting. Cruelty is within human nature. Project goes out of rail? Blame the consultants. Why is that so? It’s because consultants cannot complain to their union leader or HR because they are “external” resources. They are literally powerless, and nothing brings more fun to dumb people than to exploit smart people with no possible administrative rebound. It’s like crushing a cricket with your boots and saying, Oh I’m sorry little fella and then looking for more crickets.

Like I preached to you before, you must leverage from this illogical out-of-control state and leverage nuttiness to increase your billing rate. What you deliver is irrelevant, even you run in circle for years, even if the client crushes you as long as the fucker pays the invoice we send. Money talks and PSA manages. The situation won’t change. So why not build profitable growth on it? It's like manure, it stinks but it can be used to great benefits.

So pinch your nose young man, take a shovel and bill 40 hours a week. The firm will take care of the rest.

Roach out.

Dealing with competitors

When I was a young lad distributing newspapers in rural Ontario, I used strategic advantages to dominate my competitors. For instance, Jimmy my neighbour used a 3-speed bike to distribute The Globe & Mail along Bell Street, and my bike was just a single-speed rusty thing.

I knew Jim would trump me on the long term thanks to his better assets, so I used my screwdriver one night to loose up some of his bike components. Poor Jimmy, he and his bike ended up in the river one morning with a fresh load of newspaper. Jimmy was fine but wet, but he lost his job because that big burly Globe & Mail guy - Frank if I recall - thought he was pissed drunk that morning, how else do you end up in the river anyway? So I was awarded Jimmy's run in addition to mine because Frank knew I was a pretty square guy.

Today's business environment is no different, sometimes you have to be a little creative to crush your competitors. Here's an excellent article in the Telegraph Journal about CGI's ambition to dominate the IT world.

Let me outline you the best part:

Roach noted that in 1976 - the year CGI was formed - the company brought in about $138,000 in revenues. Today, the firm makes that much in less than three minutes.

I didn't end up billing 2 times your salary in 3 minutes because I'm a compassionate guy with a lot of "emotional intelligence" whatever this crap means. It's because I play to win, and winning means buying and milking competitors for what they're worth. This is called consolidation, and it sounds just like Jimmy barrelling down the street that morning toward the river.

So whenever there's a smaller firm in town that use unfair advantages to win lucrative contracts, I use an arsenal of tactics to undermine their position. For instance, I ask my local directors to spread the word that this smaller firm has difficulty paying its monthly bills so that its own employees start to worry about their job. It's usually sufficient to hire the more insecure ones at a lower salary, therefore reducing the headcount of the smaller firm. Which in turns diminishes the odds for them to win big contracts.

It would be negligent to disclose here all my tactics, but you get the idea.

We've always dreamt big, and while some of you have have difficulty grasping the full meaning of "big", you need to know that working for CGI is your path to greatness. Send me your resume today.

You can't always win

When you're the best, sometimes you have to fake a defeat in order to come back later on and beat the sucker and humiliate its board of directors.

And then we acquire the sucker, strip it from its clients and then lay off the unproductive workers. Productive workers are offered a 15% reduction in salary as a token of goodwill.

That's business, dear members.

How are you going to fuck me?

I know, I know, I haven't been much present here for the past few weeks, things are been extremely busy even a humble top-shelf CEO like me. Rest assured, I'll continue to serve wisdom to the people and guide members through the unknowns.

Today I'd like to introduce you to a way of thinking that has served me well so far. Whenever I deal with partners, customers, government officials, whatever legal entity with which I want to expand and deepen relationships to pursue profitable growth, there's this phase which I call "the zone".

The zone is this time and place where for instance our company and a potential client with deep pockets talk about the benefits of outsourcing their IT. We had a few meetings before, we know each other at some level, and everything leads me to believe that we'll soon have a deal. There is a sufficient level of comfort for any CEO to put his guards down and ease the negotiation tactics. This is the "zone".

Whenever I enter the zone I mentally challenge myself with the question, How are they going to fuck me?

It might be crappy planning on the customer's end that lead them to believe we'll do better. Might be that their IT infrastructure is a huge clusterfuck that is just waiting to be dumped on our lap. Might be that their employees are dumber than Homer Simpson and our IT outsourcing process will force us to integrate these low-watt bulbs into our existing team.

Instead of relaxing days before signing the contract, I get this uncomfortable itch in the back of my brain because I know there's a big fucktrap somewhere and I haven't seen it yet.

I therefore double my efforts, well I actually delegate some of it, to find how the customer/partner/government body will try to plant seeds of unprofitable growth into the deal. 95% of the time I manage to find the flaw before it's too late.

Of course there's a bunch of long faces the day we sign the deal, as the other party discovers a collection of interesting new sections in the contract. They realize the fucktrap has been discovered, yet they sign the deal to save their honour.

Friends, we live in an era where trust is a vintage value from a bygone era. Everyone is trying to fuck someone, and whenever this happens it is a direct hit on the bottom line. Better save yourself from disgrace and negative quarters, and next time you're about to enter a deal ask yourself this priceless question:

How are they going to fuck me?