About two and a half years ago, I got involved with a (Caution! Buzzword alert!) synergy project with my counterparts in Germany. The goal of this project was to develop a common operating system (IBM OS/390) platform. We had different operating system standards and that inhibited application development. We had weekly conference calls to see how we could address this problem. After the third call, we were already at an impasse. They built their systems one way, and we built our systems another way. Our entire infrastructure was based on our standards. We could move to their standards, but it would take, in my estimate, three additional programmers to restructure our infrastructure to match the Germans, and, once we had done that, an additional programmer to manage the new standards. I tried to explain to the Germans that we built our systems our way because they were easier to maintain. We managed the same workload with one third the staff. Their argument was they installed the systems using the IBM defaults and surely IBM knew what they were doing. Having talked to IBM programmers in the United States, they built systems just the way we did. The IBM defaults were just the way the system deliverable was packaged.
So every Friday, at 10:00 AM I would have to attend a conference call to discuss our synergy project which I had code named Death Spiral. At about five minutes into each conference call we would once again hit the impasse of dataset naming standards. These calls would last an hour and would essentially waste one hour of my time every week. We would try to explain to the Germans exactly why we did things our way and that IBM US did it that way. They would then ask why IBM packaged their system deliverable differently than we installed it. Six months into the project, I overslept (I had had a tad too much to drink the previous night) and got in to work at 10:00 AM (and I was hungover) so when I dialed into the call I hit the magic five minute impasse mark. I asked if we were once again discussing dataset naming standards and having been told that we were, I went off on a five minute diatribe about how we did things the easy way because we were understaffed and they did things the hard way because they were a socialist country and had a bloated programming staff and contrasted our economies with our 5% unemployment and their 10% unemployment and how I was tired of wasting one hour every Friday on a project that was doomed to failure because they were booger eatin' moh-rons and slammed the phone down and hung up.
My manager punished me by kicking me off the project for the next two months. Oh please B'rer Fox, don't throw me in that briar patch! But, alas, my good fortune was not to last. Two months later he put me back on the project and as part of my job objectives for the year, I was supposed to make it work. Yeah, like that's gonna happen. I tried to explain to him, using logic (wasted on a manager) that we were at an impasse. There were three possible solutions:
I told him the only solution was for a manager to make a decision. A German manager had to tell them to do things our way or an American manager had to add the staff to do things their way. Fat chance! So, the Death Spiral project went on for another year. The one change was the conference calls were moved to every other week. Even though I was supposed to make this project work, I only checked in every month or so. I hate exercises in futility.
One of the reasons I was replaced as team lead (Same pay. Less responsibility. Less bullshit. And the downside of this was ... ?) was my inability to make this project work. Another reason was I had become a grouchy old man and called one of my users incompetent. He had gone to my manager who, in typical management fashion, said whatever it took to get this asshole out of his office. He then called me and said there was a policy change. When I sent out a note to all the appropriate people to formalize this policy change, which was in total contradiction of our policies, my manager went ballistic and claimed he never said that. So now I was on his shit list. The user, in the meantime, got fired. Guess he must have been incompetent.
So our new team lead came on 18 months into this project. At this time we had a skill rebalancing action (layoffs) which eliminated two of our headcount. It only took two conference calls for him to realize that the project was doomed. We agreed to table it and revisit it in 2002. We conveniently neglected to revisit it until about a month ago.
My team lead and I (we share an office) were sitting around fat, dumb and happy about a month ago when our manager came in all excited. This was a bad sign. It seems Europe (That is, the Belgians who control the purse strings for Europe) was wondering why I/T expenses were higher in Germany than they were in the United States. (Three times the programming staff might be one reason.) I asked my manager if this meant we were gonna have to go through the synergy bullshit again? He said this time it would be different because it was the financial people (bean counters) who were involved. Yeah, that really gives me a real warm fuzzy feeling inside.
Fortunately, I had been left outside the loop until last Thursday. It seems our counterparts in Germany outsource their hardware and software support to another division of TCIDNN (The Company I Dare Not Name) in Germany. We used to do a similar thing here. We outsourced our hardware support and did our own programming. We discovered, that due to the overhead markup, we could purchase our own hardware and do everything ourselves. We saved so much money we were actually able to increase our hardware capacity and still spend less money. The outsourcers in Germany are raising the prices and the German manager is screaming breach of contract. Here's where we come in.
The Germans are coming to us and asking if they can outsource all their I/T support (both hardware and programming) to us. We figger we can probably do it for $1 million less that the TCIDNN outsourcers in Germany. Now wouldn't you think, if someone was in the position to save you $1 million per year and started asking requirements you would be very forthcoming with those requirements? Wouldn't you think that you would want to treat someone who was in a position to cut your I/T costs by one third very nice? Nope! Evidently that's not the way they do business in Germany.
We sent the manager a note with ten questions that we needed answered to help us determine hardware requirements and additional staffing. We needed these questions answered before our first meeting (conference call) which was at noon last Wednesday. His response to almost every question was to get it off their website. So, we spent one hour and twenty minutes on the Wednesday conference call getting the answers to only the first three questions because the arrogant asshole wanted us to get the answers rather than giving them to us. And, no, the answers that we wanted were not on their website. What a dickhead! What gets me, is he is negotiating from a postition of weakness.
In talking to my team lead today, he told me that our manager wanted him to drive this project, but he has entirely too much on his plate right now. Our best programmer is retiring this month and he has had to pick up her workload. So then my manager suggested me. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! My team lead said that would be fine, but I would be a PR disaster. Yeah, I have this annoying habit of speaking the truth and I have a serious problem dealing with booger eatin' moh-rons. So, what we did is assign our most bureaucratic project manager to it. We had our first meeting Wednesday (in which I spent most of the meeting biting my tongue) which accomplished next to nothing. There is another meeting tomorrow. Oh, what's this? I'm off work? Too bad. That meeting will accomplish next to nothing but will lead to another meeting. The nice thing (for us, not the Germans) is this project manager's solution to every problem is to call a meeting. So, if there is a problem in any of the meetings with the Germans, he'll simply schedule another meeting. I figger it will only take about another month and the arrogant German asshole will be screaming for mercy and will give us any information we desire. Stop! Stop! I'll talk! No more meetings! I can't take it any more!
Now lest any of you think I hate Germans let me say that on my mother's side of my family I am 100% German. My sister is real big into genealogy and has traced all of my mother's ancestors back to Germany. Here are some of the names: Breitschuh, Weber, Neudeck, Eisele, Dreiling, Gruner, and Yaeger. Can't get much German than that.
Our network guy was on the call yesterday and he waited until almost the end of the call to ask some questions about their network since we will have to pick that up also. He pretty much got the same bullshit. He complained to me that he had Kraut for lunch, since this call was over his lunch hour. It was at this point that I told him, that he had actually had sour Kraut for lunch.
But we'll have the last laugh. After dealing with this particular project manager for the last four years I never thought I'd ever enjoy hearing him say, "We will have to hold a meeting on this".
Music to my ears.
Posted by denny at December 12, 2002 10:17 PM