In Corporate Amerika

Let’s call them the Mercenary Computer Corporation (MCC). They were a family business, maybe 30 employees, counting administration, manufacturing, shipping, sales, programming, and me–a technical writer, in his first full time job at the age of 25, with no previous experience. The year was 1976 and the computer industry was still quite primitive. The MCC hardware itself (technically a “minicomputer”) was a little bigger than a dishwasher. It had 8 kilobytes of memory. You read that correctly. All MCC software had to run in 8 K. If you needed more, you wrote the contents of that memory to disk and loaded an overlay program. Even in these extreme conditions, our programmers were able to write payroll, general ledger, and accounts payable applications that did what they were supposed to do and provided reporting and check cutting and backup. The programmers were smart and loved their work and were always available to help each other solve a tough problem or explain something to a novice tech writer.

I wrote and printed the manuals on a device the size of a small refrigerator. I then xeroxed the printed pages and bound them with pre-printed covers and prong fasteners. The printer didn’t have a visual interface. There was a keyboard and a continuous sheet of paper. You talked to the printer by typing commands onto the paper, and the printer printed its responses on the next line. You couldn’t see more than a single line of the page you were working on as you typed. What made this monstrosity invaluable was that it recognized upper and lower case. This capability was virtually unheard of in 1976. The big chain printers automatically converted everything to upper case before they spit it out. There was only one of these documentation printers in the office, and it was cranky. Keeping it going—like the writing and printing and copying—was part of my job.

MCC was in the process of expanding. They had just hired a vice president from–let’s call them the Electronic Kitchen Appliance Company. EKAC had just failed due to incompetent middle management. After MCC hired its first EKAC middle manager, he in turn began to bring on all his EKAC cronies.

I was in a unique position. I was a contractor and had been hired by my predecessor, who shortly thereafter moved to another job. I didn’t really report to anybody. I talked to the programmers to figure out what needed to be done, and I did it, and everybody was happy with it.

But that’s not how corporations work. If somebody is doing a good job, somebody above them needs to take credit for it. Enter another of the EKAC gang. We’ll call him H. As far as I could tell, he’d been hired–and given his own secretary—with no other agenda than to manage me.

That meant that he had to demonstrate how important his management was to my success. Which meant that we had to have metrics to measure my progress. We needed detailed plans and extensive approval processes, and of course, lots and lots of meetings.

(This was 1976. I had never heard a department referred to as a “team” before. When I was invited to my first “team meeting” I asked if we were supposed to wear our jerseys. H was not amused.)

Before long—brace yourself for a shock—I got behind in my work. Projects were held up awaiting approval. I couldn’t concentrate because I was writing reports or making requests or sitting in meetings instead of actually doing my job.

Who could possibly have foreseen this?

It all came to head when the printer broke. We called a service technician, and he pronounced it beyond repair. A new one was hideously expensive because everything related to computers was expensive in those days. I informed H of the situation and was eventually summoned to an executive meeting, fully staffed with former EKAC managers. There I had to explain who I was, and what I did, and why users needed instructions, etc. Finally H said, “What would happen if we didn’t buy you this printer?”

The idea had never occurred to me. “Well,” I said slowly, “I guess I’d have to look for another job.”

The VP from EKAC said they would think about it. I went back to my office and called one of the old-school MCC managers who had left to start his own company after the EKAC invasion. He offered me a job on the spot.

When I gave my notice to H, he was puzzled. “We never said we wouldn’t buy you the printer.”

MCC eventually went under, its sales staff unable to generate enough income to support the huge overhead of its middle management. They were sold to a Famous Calculator Company who, when they saw what a wreckage MCC’s finances were, gave the company back.

The EKAC gang all jumped ship and probably went on to put other small, happy, productive companies out of business.

 

[Created 26 Jan 2023]