I Quit.
.
I'm a professional computer contractor. A consultant. I go from firm to firm either augmenting their existing skills, or more usually, doing bleeding edge project work that the company doesn't have the in-house skills to do themselves. And I pride myself on my professionalism. I've never left a contract early because I got a better offer elsewhere - and I've had a hell of lot of offers.

So there I was, at beginning of the decade, called in to a nameless telecoms company in the North East of England. This company had managed to snag a small part (messaging) of a massive government contract and this where where I was needed. We had to analyse the existing messaging structure, then design and implement a new, shiny one built around M$ Exchange. Normally, no big deal. But this was the Government we were dealing with....

A bit more background. As I said, the company I was working for had only a small part of the contract - the major contractor was a massive multi-national company based in Texas. Anyone who's even remotely familiar with Government IT Projects will know who they are. I don't think they've ever, not even once, brought a project in on time and under budget. Indeed, they're renowned, they're legends in the industry, for bring in projects that don't work and are massively, ball-bouncingly, over budget. How the fuck they ever win tenders is beyond me. I can see the tender process now:

GOV: "So why should we give you the job? Last time, a £100 million contract ended up costing us £300 million and it didn't work."

TEX: "Well we've learnt from that and we're here to promise that it won't happen again"

GOV: "Honest?"

TEX: "Honest. Cross my heart and hope to die"

GOV: "Oh all right then. Jobs yours"

And this happens EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

But I'm wandering again.

So there we were, responsible for the messaging system. (Actually, it's just e-mail and calenders but messaging sounds better in management-speak.) This wasn't quite as straight-forward as it should have been as, back in the dark-ages, some civil-servant idiot had procured a custom-built email system that didn't adhere to any recognisable standard. Initially, it had been designed as an in-house private email system with no links to the outside world so they didn't *have* to interface with anyone else so they felt no need to stick to standards. Then, with the advent of Internet E-Mail, rather than scrap the system then and go with a standards-based system, they'd decided to cobble together a jerry-built interface to translate internet mail to their system and vica versa. In short, it was a bastardised abortion of a system. Probably why the Texans had palmed it off onto us.

So. Pretty near the start of this project I was in a meeting with my mate Herb, my boss, The Texans and a whole shedload of senior civil servants. The Texans were explaining to the Gov why we had to scrap their email system and start from scratch. No CONTACTS, no SAVED MESSAGES, no nothing. We'd just wipe the slate clean and start from scratch. They explained that their current system was totally incompatible with Exchange that no other route was possible.

Me and Herb exchanged glances. This was news to us. We'd started our design on the premise that we'd somehow *have* to import the old data. We couldn't believe that anyone would just accept that none of the old info could be saved. So Herb coughed and said:

"Well that's not strictly true...."

He was about to go when the boss kicked him under the table and then interrupted..

"I think Herb is thinking of something else. Please go on"

So me and Herb stayed quiet. After the meeting the boss pulled the two of us. He knew what we were working on.

"So do you think you can do it?" he asked.

"Shouldn't be a massive problem" I said. "We've already figured out exactly how the system stores the data. Just a matter of extracting it, reformatting it and then squirting it into Exchange."

Herb nodded: "There's a bit more to it than that, but Legless is right. I can cobble together a VB program that'll extract the data, convert it to a PST file then it's just a matter of firing it into the right Exchange profile."

"How long do you need" asked the boss

"Err - a week?" said Herb

"You've got two. Don't let me down"

So off we went. It took Herb about three days to write the program. It took me about a week to write the import/export routines and the final week was spent testing it and making it play "The Girl From Ipanema" when it was running...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWncdiAt5M4

So we went to the boss, announced success and demonstrated the system on our test-bed. He was over the moon.

The next couple of days the boss was running around in various meetings and then told us that he'd sold the system to The Texans for £35k. Fair enough we thought. Me and Herb were on a grand each a week plus expenses so it had cost the company about £5k for us to develop it and we didn't mind them making a fair profit. We were happy. Then came the fateful meeting.

Again, it was a meeting between us, the Texans, the Civil Service and, this time, the minister in charge of the department. All was going well when the chief Texan, an oily little twat, stood up:

"We do have one little surprise for you Minister" he oozed. "If you recall, we'd gone ahead with the new messaging system in the belief that we couldn't save any of your old data and we'd have to start from scratch"

The Minister nodded.

"Well, to be honest, that's what we believed when we accepted the contract. But, we've had a team of very bright programmers working back in Texas on just this very problem. We didn't mention it before because, well, to be honest, we didn't think it would come to anything. But you know what we Texans are like. We just hate to be beaten" Smarmy grin.

"And I'm delighted to be able to tell you that our boys have cracked the problem and have produced a system that *can* save all of your old data! And we're happy to offer it to you just for the cost it took us to develop it!"

"How much" asked the Minister sceptically, expecting to be whacked with something in the tens of millions.

"1.2 million pounds" said the Texan.

I choked on my water. I was expecting the Texans to add a mark-up. I was expecting maybe a 100K but a over a million quid?

The boss put his hand on my arm and squeezed warningly. I looked at Herb. He'd gone white.

I don't remember much about the rest of that meeting. I was too busy trying to control the Fist Of Death. It was taking every ounce of my self control not to leap across the table, grab the oily little Texan by the throat and slam his face repeatedly into the wall.

Eventually the meeting ended and we buggered off back to our office. The boss came in while I was spitting nails and apologised. Like us, he'd expected the Texans to charge maybe 100K for the program. But, to me, that wasn't really the point. All right - it was part of the point. The obscene gouging of the price has really fucked me off, but the thing that had me ready to kill wasn't just the price. It was the pack-or-fucking lies that the shit had spouted about:

"a team of programmers in Texas" and

"you know what we Texans are like. We just hate to be beaten"

That had really, really gotten under my skin. The work that me and Herb had put into that program (Herb more than me 'cos he was the coding king). It was our idea, we figured out how to do it and then to see it all credited to a bunch of fucking mythical cowboys made my blood boil.

The boss could see how upset I was. Probably because I was kicking things around the room and ranting. Herb just sat there and looked stony.So he told us to go home, take the next day off with pay (the Friday) then come back after the weekend. So we went home (Herb lived in the same village as me) and got righteously pissed.

We went into work the next week but it just wasn't the same. I was still burning at the fucking injustice of it all. The joy had gone out of the job for me. So I talked it over with Herb and then went to see the boss. And quit.

The first and only time I've ever left a contract early.


Cheers

P.S. Fuck me - that was an epic. Sorry for lack of funnies.
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Mon 26 May 2008, 12:37, 8 replies)

*Click*
I'm currently fighting something of a similar sort; I've designed a system that does a very, very groovy job of optimisation for a part of the banking world that, whilst not exactly "on its uppers" is getting shafted at present.

And the credit for it's being taken by someone else. Well, fuck 'em, because I've just lodged the patent application for it. Ha!
(Eds Meds Mathskillz=1,Socialskillz=0, Mon 26 May 2008, 12:44, closed)

With Us
We couldn't claim the copyright as we produced it on company time and our contracts stated that any work we produced belonged to the employer. Standard stuff.

And it we couldn't patent it as it wasn't really new technology. We were just using existing tech sensibly.

Cheers
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Mon 26 May 2008, 12:52, closed)

Ouch
I'm kind of intrigued as to why the Texans were involved in the first place though. Why didn't your boss go straight to the Gov't with the solution?
(Captain Skippy pooed in a bag and left it on your doorstep, Mon 26 May 2008, 13:09, closed)

@Skippy
They weren't allowed to.

Our company were sub-contracted to the Texans and we weren't allowed to talk directly to the principals. Again, standard stuff.

The contract belonged to the Texans. We were brought in, by them, to do the bits they didn't want (either they thought it wasn't profitable enough or they didn't have the skills). Another reason the Texans used British companies on a British contract was that they had to. The terms of *their* contract stipulated that they had to farm out a certain percentage of the work to Brit companies.

And you wonder why taxes are so high.

Cheers
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Mon 26 May 2008, 13:15, closed)

Tell all concerned the truth and send the govt some anonymous CDs in the post?

( idonthaveafunnynickname Drink-Aware? Sure. I'm aware I want another drink., Mon 26 May 2008, 14:39, closed)

Dayum
That is making pissed off just reading about it. I know the feeling (as much as I can compared to losing out on over a million).

*click*
(Eo1spy is reversing the polarity on, Mon 26 May 2008, 14:55, closed)

Those are the kinds of Texans that make the rest of us look REALLY bad
And I certainly wouldn't call them real Texans either. I'm sorry you had to deal with pricks like that.

We too have an in-house built piece of outdated crap at the County that I have to use every day. The damn thing won't interface with any other programs. Not because it is such a piece of junk, mind....but because the IT team that built it has said it is impossible. Which is why I'm having the programmers at our collections software company reconfigure some of their stuff to extrapolate the data for us.
( flirting with badgers What? It sounded good at the time., Mon 26 May 2008, 20:47, closed)

Texans
The contractor was an anagram of ESD then by any chance? Good story but I'm guessing next time you know how to handle that sort of thing. Write it on your own time, sell it back to them.

ESD are unbelieveable tossers. Right now, they owe my company about 12 mill in unpaid invoices. If you've heard of a system called Elance, you'll know why.
( I have run out of coke is a little sweaty, Tue 27 May 2008, 9:47, closed)