How Malicious Compliance Saved a Company

I once worked at a place that built electronic gadgets — water leak detection equipment, to be exact. Black boxes with a lot of connectors. Each gadget had a built-in webserver: you type in the gadget's IP address, and the user interface appears. This was in the stone-knives-and-bearskins days, and the entire webserver was hard-coded. You know, HTML strings in the C source.

So the CEO and the VP of marketing decided that they didn't like the UI (user interface, essentially the look and feel of the webpages) in our biggest moneymaking product. It wasn't our flagship product, but it had the biggest slice of the revenue pie chart and a delicious profit margin.

Yeah, so anyway, CEO and VP locked themselves in a conference room for a couple of days and came out with a new UI design. They had designed the whole thing in PowerPoint. They told the firmware engineer (not me, but a co-worker that I admire the heck out of) to reprogram the UI and make it exactly like the PowerPoint slides.

FW Engr had a lot of credibility in the company and wasn't afraid of getting fired, so he proceeded to tell them all the reasons that it was a bad idea and wouldn't work and the customers wouldn't like it. They yelled at him and gave him the "We're the CEO and VPMktg and we know what the customers want" and the "just do your job" speeches.

So, knowing that it was doomed to fail, but since they had demanded it, and knowing that he would get paid no matter what he did, he set aside his current project and went to work. He totally rewrote the HTML so that the UI looked and performed exactly the way the PowerPoint slides said it should. CEO and VP loved it, and gave him the "see? that wasn't so hard, was it?" speech. FW Engr went back to what he was really supposed to be doing.

Just as he had predicted, customers hated the new UI. Existing customers who upgraded their firmware couldn't find things anymore. New customers who had just bought the box couldn't navigate it without a GPS and a Ouija board. Tech support got multiple calls a day complaining about the UI and asking for help.

And on top of everything, it was ugly. It looked like a PowerPoint presentation, not a leak-detection system.

Our tech support guy went to the FW Engr and told him about the dozens of complaint calls. FW Engr told him to have the customers enter a slightly different URL: instead of "ip.address", type in "ip.address/classic" , and the old UI would magically appear. He hadn't deleted the old UI code; he had just hidden it deep inside the gadget's memory, because he knew that this was exactly what would happen.

Tech support went away happy. Customers were happy. The firmware engineer had saved the company's cash-cow-golden-goose, and probably saved the company. I don't think anybody ever told CEO or VP Mktg. They were totally oblivious to what the firmware engineer had pulled off, right under their noses. 

Feeling sorry for myself: what might have been

A recent tickle from a former colleague on LinkedIn dredged up something from my distant past and sent me on a short tailspin into the Land of What Might Have Been. I'm going to feel sorry for myself, then go to bed and sleep it off. In the morning I'll go to my new job, where I am happy and content and working hard.

This former colleague "endorsed" me for a skill on LinkedIn. She hasn't seen me for about 15 years, so the endorsement doesn't mean much. So I ignored it. Then I fell into my tailspin.

In the late 1990s, I was an extremely competent engineer in my department at Hewlett-Packard. In fact, one year I was the top-rated engineer out of a peer group of about 80 engineers. I was sought after for my technical expertise, my problem-solving skills, and my communication skills. Engineers and non-engineers from other departments came to consult with me.

Our department had three engineering groups. One of the engineering group managers got a promotion, leaving his position vacant. My manager suggested I apply for the position. So did his manager.

I hadn't even considered such a move. I was happy being an engineer. But people had told me over the years that I would make a good manager, and many people had even said, "I would work for you if you were a manager." So I did some research, mainly sounding it out with other engineers and managers, even on the production/operations side, all people whose opinion I valued and trusted. I got unequivocal encouragement from all of them, including votes of confidence from all of the managers, and more "I would work for you" responses from my peers.

The managers' opinions were important to me, because some of them would be on the interview team.

So I applied for the job. I prepped for the interviews. And I did a great job in the interviews. And they gave the job to someone else - one of my fellow engineers was promoted.

Well, she turned out not to be a very good manager. In fact, seeing some of what she did as a manager, I wondered how she had ever gotten the job. I ended up sitting in meetings and on committees with her as the years went by, and - really, this is not  sour grapes - she just wasn't very good at management or leadership.

Then HP and Agilent split. We endured wave after wave of layoffs. I never saw any managers get laid off, or any executives. You would think that the Powers That Be would do the math and figure out that they could save more money by firing one incompetent executive than by laying off ten innocent production workers. Or five hard-working engineers. F#$&ing idiots.

Here's the sorry-for-myself "What Might Have Been" part:

Ten years after leaving Agilent, I am still an engineer, but I am making $10,000 a year less than I was back then, and after ten years of struggle, my personal and family financial situation is precarious.

If I had gotten that promotion, I would now be high up in the management ranks at HP or Agilent. I would be a highly respected manager and leader. I would be making $150,000 a year - or more. We would still be living in that big brick house. And my wife would still have the luxury of being a stay-at-home mom, with all the benefits that go with that. My daughters would not have had to scrimp on their weddings. My musical daughter could have gone to Ithaca College instead of the University of Northern Colorado. We would be living free of debt or other financial worries. And we could be using our time and our wealth to help our children and other people, something we have always wanted to do. Instead, we struggle.

That other engineer that got the job? She has changed employers. At least twice. She has changed careers. She has changed husbands. She has changed her last name. She has even changed her first name. And  she has changed her appearance so drastically that I don't even recognize her photo on LinkedIn. And she has parlayed that promotion into a Chief Technology Officer position in another state. I don't really know her anymore.

Phineas and Ferb - why we do stuff

This Phineas and Ferb screen grab floated through the ether yesterday, and I grabbed it quickly.

In the movie "You've Got Mail," Tom Hanks' character says: "The Godfather is the I Ching. The Godfather is the sum of all wisdom. The Godfather is the answer to any question." I think you could say the same thing about Phineas and Ferb, at least for my life.

For example, why do engineers and scientists do the things they do? Here's why:

POSTSCRIPT: If not Phineas and Ferb, then maybe Calvin and Hobbes.

Bob Pease killed in car crash

Bob Pease, the analog design engineer who taught many of us the really important parts of analog circuit design, was killed in a one-car accident on Saturday. Done too soon.

Bob was a colorful personality. He was 100% nerdy engineer and yet at the same time he did not fit the nerdy engineer stereotype at all. He was a master teacher and a master showman. His knowledge - no, his wisdom - was matched only by his charisma and his ebullience.

Those who met him in person were very lucky people. Those who knew him as a friend and colleague were even luckier. The rest of us are just lucky to have read his words.

Here's the obituary in EDN.