"I remember my first "staff" job in a big bank in San Francisco. It
was 1980. My partner Dean and I were plucked from the management
training program and put on a "special project."
The term "special project" means "All the real jobs are
filled by people who, at first glance, don't appear nearly as
incompetent as you." That was certainly true in my case. Dean was
actually pretty good at appearing competent, but he theorized that
he was being punished for something he said to somebody.
Our job was to build a computer information system for the branch
banks. We were the perfect people for the job: Dean had seen a
computer once, and I had heard Dean talk about it.
Our office was an unused storage room in the basement just off the
parking garage, big enough to hold two beat-up desks and some
squeaky chairs. It had bare white walls, an uncarpeted floor, no
windows, and an annoying echo. It was like a prison cell, but
without access to a library and free weights.
Sometimes I would try to call other people in the company to get
important information for our project. The response was always the
same: "Who are you and why do you want to know?"
I would try to sound important by invoking the first name of the
senior vice president and describing how the fate of the free world
depended on this vital transfer of information. For example, "Bill
needs it . . . to keep our great nation independent."
But somehow they always figured out I was a twenty-two-year-old guy
with a bad haircut and a cheap suit sitting in a storage room just
off the parking garage. If I was especially charismatic that day,
they would have the courtesy to swear at me before hanging up.
Eventually Dean and I degenerated into a pattern of sitting in our
little bare room gossiping about co-workers, balancing our
checkbooks, and fantasizing about whether the sun was out that day.
When we got bored we would hypothesize about the information we
needed, talking about it for hours until we were both pretty sure we
knew what it "should" be. Then we packaged it up as "user
requirements" and gave it to a woman named Barbara who programmed
the system in about two weeks.
The whole project took about a year, because it's not the type of
thing you want to rush. When it was done, the results of the system
were notoriously inaccurate. But our manager assured us that it was
okay because he only used the numbers that supported his personal
opinion anyway."