CGI to go kinda social

I'm not a big fan of social networks. Let me rephrase that. I think Facebook is a deviance whose users suffer from social problems. You see, when I want to have a grand time with a friend, we have a drink at the Queen Elizabeth hotel and we end up at my place playing bridge or watching curling tournaments. This is social networking. It's fun. You actually see people faces, not just a JPEG file. It's multimedia too, when my friend talk I can actually hear the sound of his voice, spiffy eh?

I've been pushed by Serge to go social in a 21st century way, so we created the CGI page on Facebook.

As of tonight, 2 people like this. Bill & Terry. I told Serge this was to be a failure. Sigh.

The Benefit of Sameness

Nothing feels more exhilarating than hiring a guy/gal fresh out of college, their resume is free of useful experience and therefore their mind is a blank canvas ready to absorb whatever dogma you feed them.

When you were a very young person, you did what your parents told you to do When you were old enough to attend school, you did what your teacher told you to do in order to get good grades. You may have attended church where someone in a position of moral authority told you what to do. When school gets to an end, you want to have your own place and drive a nice car so the natural thing is to look for a job.

It's only logical for an employer to leverage from the submissive situation into which many people have been raised into. Our culture doesn't push people to think by themselves, start companies or revolutionize something. Our culture pushes people into conformity, the opposite would create societies that would be unmanageable. As a result, our culture rewards unproductive tasks where our brain is shut off most of the time, only to resurface during momentary lapse of reason to enter a state of quiet desperation. When you’re not thinking, it’s the society that benefits. Why do you think a TV show like "Deal or No Deal" is so popular?

All this grooming into sameness is deeply rooted in our subconscious, so for a employer implementing strict procedures that defy logic is not hard at all. Employees somehow expect to be treated like a number, even though they'll say the opposite Employees expect an org chart with a tiny box with their name on it (or better yet – no name at all), like a universe map with a arrow titled "You are here". Employees expect a performance review from their boss because they're so fucking stupid they can't make a self-assessment of what they're worth. Let me tell you something, people do not think by themselves, Oprah Winfrey was able to figure that out and built a billion dollar empire on that.

So this week's advice to manager is this: Think about something in your organization where there is weak control, something for which employees do not ask for permission. Or maybe it's a loose process that would benefit from a standardized form. Take that weak point and enforce a strict control around it and make sure 2 people need to authorize it, just one is insufficient and does not justify enough middle managers.

You’ll be amazed with how easy it is to enforce something.

At last!

Finally someone who understands what CGI is all about. It’s not easy to find someone outside the C-suite who understands this, but I found one on RateMyEmployer.ca who reached that level of wisdom by himself/herself. Maybe this person actually read our annual report and was hit by a powerful bolt of insight, who knows.

Like any company that is accountable to the shareholder, CGI's focus is on making money. Period. It's not on delivering quality management advice or automated systems. It's money.

YES! It’s so good and refreshing to hear this, some many people have this fear/disgust of money, like it’s a taboo or some shameful disease you’re not allowed to disclose. Yes, CGI is about making money. Period.



CGI is very good at exploiting it's position as an approved services provider for the Federal Government. In many cases, the govn't has no choice but to give work to CGI and they know it. Quality of work is barely above unsatisfactory - but that doesn't matter. CGI's culture is that of entitlement. They're entitled to make money hand over fist. Ooops, is our project late? Oh well, read your contract; it says that it's your fault and now you have to pay us more. Hahahaha! (p.s. not an exaggeration).

Doing business is sometimes about banging the client and explaining to him that it is for the greater good. I like those situations where the government has practically no choice but to give us the contract because our people have been on-site for a couple for years and they are the only who know who their shitty system works. Internal employees are just sitting there until retirement. What happens if we get out of this client? All hell breaks loose because their copier has more functions than the average employee. So the client extends us for another 5 years. This is great, I don’t see the issue here. Let’s continue.



I witnessed many unsavoury practises during my years working for the Ottawa branch. I've seen companies bought by CGI only to have each and every last employee fired once the clientèle was secured. I've seen coworkers with lots of experience replaced on projects by less experienced ones and then let go. I've seen our once generous benefits disappear entirely (not unique to CGI but it was sold to us as "temporary" and then never reinstated). I've seen people laid off and then given no severance (each employee had to fight for it).

When we buy a company, what we look for are the financial assets (i.e. money in the bank) and their customers. A consultant is just a consultant, it's like a screwdriver they are easily exchangeable. Don’t give me that crap about “lots of experience” replaced by “less experienced” because it’s a legitimate way to boost your earnings. Replacing a $80K consultant with another one that makes $60K means that you pocket $20K at the end of year. The end result will be the same. 20 years from now it won’t make a single difference if John or Mike or Susan or that Chinese guy whose name cannot be pronounced did the job. What will matter is a strong balance sheet.

I’m currently reviewing the salaries at Stanley, I can tell you right away that at least 40% of them are overpaid and will have to sacrifice themselves in the name of profitable growth. They probably drive BMWs, so by switching to a used Chevy they should be able to keep their job and be proud of it.



All in all, this is to be expected when you work to make someone else rich.

Here the wisdom ends on a sour note, as this employee figured out that wealth does not exist in the employment universe unless you screw clients at an investment bank. What can I say? People are groomed to be obedient and docile and sometimes their behaviour change over time, when they realized that their CEO is making 50 times more money than they do.

My thoughts on cloud computing

Seems like every dropout asshole who was lucky enough to land a CEO job these days is talking about "the future" and where this wonderful cloudy technology will take us forward and make things magically work. Even Ballmer is banging clouds these days, which is kind of scary when you think about it. He messed up with Vista, so you can bet your pants the Microsoft cloud will be more like a smelly swamp than a clear blue sky.

Anyway, I wanted to share with you my thoughts on whatever is called cloud computing and how it may affect our customers who trust us with their most precious data and business processes.

The short version: cloud computing sucks.

The slightly longer version: this reminds me of the RISC / CISC debate many years ago where people would debate the pros and cons of processors using a reduced set of instructions. For one thing, most of them never opened their computer and try to actually spot where the main CPU was on the motherboard. Most of them never wrote a program in assembler language. Most of them could not even fully describe what a microprocessor did. But all of them could paint a bright future where RISC processors would allow us to be more efficient and do more things - whatever those "things" were - and it would be so great and so and so.

Cloud computing is simply the latest snake oil flavor for "luminaries" and sales people with mild mental disorder. It's the most up-to-date line of BS to sell you the same hardware and software that they've been shoving down the throat for the past 20 years. You can apply a fresh coat of paint on a clunker, it is still a clunker. It is just that.

Do you really think our customers want their proprietary data to float somewhere between Pakistan and China? What would be the impact of having your proprietary data into the hands of a 20 years old hacker trading sensitive information for a living?

Your PC is crashing all the time thanks to the sustained effort of those dweebs in Redmond, and those same geniuses want to catapult your sensitive data in hyperspace without a GPS.

Everyone who ever had a real job in IT can testify that sloppiness is almost a virtue, like things are all messed up and it is considered "normal". Passwords are never reset, access privileges are never audited, and expensive servers are always idle while others are always saturated. It's IT business as usual. And IT mirrors the human condition when you think about it. Cloud computing is just a positive imaging technique to cover all the crap and mishaps going on, really.

So will a fuzzy cloudy technology based on loosely-based relations will be able to address human sloppiness and carelessness? Ask your vendor.

More unprofitable and strange activities

Everyone wants to have their 15 seconds of fame, in this case a few minutes of Internet time. Some employees in Quebec City had some fun during the day, I'm making sure with the local business unit that such carnival was not done during regular business hours.

I'm also getting an e-mail from a lawyer in Belfast who says he represents Bono and they want to sue us for unauthorized use of their song. $1.2 million he says. I replied, fuck off you retard, you think I'm a 419 target or something? And then he faxed me a subpoena. Oops.

Can't people just work and bill and stop doing this kind of circus?

Us and them

Today I'd like to address one topic that I feel is the worst plague ever. Not the oil spill, not the Greek debt, and not socialism. It is one of those things that keep eroding our industry and could bring us to a doomsday scenario.

I'd like to talk about independent contractors.

Some employees - at one point of their career - decide to abandon ship and go on their own. From their twisted perspective, a large company provides very little benefit and has too much downside, therefore they are willing to break this cherished bond. I know, it sounds totally absurds and morally questionable but it is the reality. People are willing to go on their own, knowing all too well that they will be responsible for finding clients, bill them, do the work and ensure their satisfaction.

You may ask, consulting firms like CGI, IBM or EDS already provide this safe environment, so why to these renegades still go independent? How can they thrive without a precise hierarchy, procedures and annual performance reviews? What can they gain that would offset the comfortable settings of a large corporation?

I think these individuals are flawed on many levels. One, they seek pure profit by keeping to themselves 100% of what they bill. Individuals do not need that much money, in fact this increased wealth may very well be a downhill slope. Enjoying increased revenues, people start buying fancy cars, larger TVs and other goodies, but at the end of the day there are not happier. This wealth may wreck their marriage, induce alcoholism and other deviant behaviour. This is why I think a corporation has to pull the choke on employee salaries (but not executive staff, this is entirely different), people will complain about lower-than-average wages but this is for their own good. Psychologists have demonstrated this.

Secondly, independent contractors believe they can evolve as IT professionals without a structure around them, which we all know is impossible. People need to be managed in order to achieve their desired potential, very few individuals can succeed in life without a superior.

In this respect, I believe than even cavemen had a very structured society, the Homo Sapiens was able to evolve while other branches of early humans were driven to extinction because too many of them went "independent" and ignored the needs/benefits of their group. Sure, those selfish individuals could eat the entire animal that they were able to kill, but the rest of the tribe died of starvation. The independents suffered guilt afterward and threw themselves off a cliff to end their intolerable loneliness. Everyone was dead and the train stopped there. Well there was no train during that period but you catch my drift.

I hope this exposure of the reality we face has brought you closer to my perspective of why independent contractors are a scourge that we must fight everyday. If you see one tomorrow, don't talk to him/her. Ignore their existence, let them assume the choice that they made. Build a wall of brick around them. Maybe by doing so we will convince them that money is not everything and it would be highly beneficial for them to come back to the company.

Redemption is possible.

An open letter to Stanley shareholders

Sometimes the best option is to take the money and run.

Our recently accounted buyout of Stanley is creating a light turmoil that frankly I didn't expect. Some people feel that a 21% premium over market price is not enough, and I gotta say I feel offended by such unreasonable expectations. What's a fair price if not what buyers of your public shares are willing to pay? Is 31% over a fair price? Or 26? Or maybe 200%?

Sometimes I get the feeling that U.S. shareholders are getting used to free lunches, used to have their fat butt saved by the government. Americans are addicted to state capitalism, the Obama administration saved a bunch of turds from self-destruction, General Motors, AIG, Freddie Mac, all those douchebags should have sink like any mediocre organization deserve.

Point is, shareholders sometimes need to accept that their shares are worth zero, like Bear Stearns. Sometimes a company is saved from sinking by generous corporate raiders, like HP purchasing Palm - and they paid a good premium on that. And sometimes a good company is purchased by an even greater company so that a merged entity can continue its golden journey on the profitable growth path.

But what can I say, sometimes people just want more money even if they can't explain why. And don't throw yourself into the arms of C-grade lawyers lurking on Yahoo's message boards looking to rack a huge fee of Stanley's shareholders. These scumbags don't actually give a damn, I hope you know that?

So to all SXE shareholders out there, jump on the CGI ship while the stock is still under $20. Hear what Chip has to say.