My Boss Tom and why MGMT404 is so important

Date: May 9, 2007
Time: 21:32
Place: Swankadero 10044

I've often described myself as computer Amish, by which I mean I'm a mainframe programmer using skills I picked up at the You-Too-Can-Be-A-Computer-Programmer school back in 1982. The IEEE will confirm that it's not just my little corner of Citibank, but 95% of financial industry DP is "still" done on the mainframe. There's many reasons for this but it boils down to the fear of replacing or tampering with an audit-certified system when there are so many other less dangerous ways to build a career in these giant organizations. It was best summarized by George Kramer, a chain-smoking, privates(his own)-scratching, peri-retiree when I joined the bank. Talking to my current boss Tom about career advice, he said "Never f*ck with the financials".

Tom is retiring at the end of this month. He and I joined the bank on the same day, June 3, 1983. He came out of the government and took the "more demanding" job to distract himself from a fatal cancer diagnosis he had been given, which he has long since beat beyond the charts. It was my first job after the "You Too" school. After about 6 months we were hanging around laughing about how our perceptions about "the land of the giants" had turned to "where did they dig these people up"?

Tom built a career being one of the few people competent to "f*ck with the financials" though his respect for George Kramer continues unabated. He has always kept those who worked for him somewhat shielded from the usual goings-on in our organization which is something like the upper-middle rungs of Dante's inferno set to "Yakkety Sax", since as one of the few people capable of discerning bullshit, other managers avoided him. We'll miss him.

That's why MGMT404 is so important. If you can work MS Project, you can have a well-paid sinecure as an ignoramus who manages lists and commitments. That's where the industry is headed.