Harlan Ellison and the Death of IT

A number of times in my life I have been called "picky." The first few times it was difficult from thinking of the term as a pejorative but I gradually came to terms with it. First of all, it was never said with intent to injure (that's what I tell myself, anyway). Secondly, I realized that if one weren't "picky," a "perfectionist," or something similar, how the hell would you ever do anything excellent? I'd much rather be picky than careless or haphazard. The trick is in not letting your own personal value system turn into the basis for which you judge others.

Harlan Ellison blew that for me.

There are very few writers who I would recommend to the world as writers, as opposed to recommending certain books by writers. For instance, Ridley Pearson's "Undercurrents" is a superb mystery/thriller but unfortunately, in my opinion, he doesn't maintain that standard. I could say the same about all of the "two good books and they're out" people I've mentioned in previous posts. If I recommend a particular author and you pick up one of their turkeys, then nobody wins.

Ellison is a short story writer, a critic and an essayist of the first order. Especially in his non-fiction work, when Ellison writes something it's like he's injecting his words directly into the cognitive centers of your brain. You know exactly what he's trying to say as if he were sitting next to you and spelling it out. He puts his words together in combinations so right you marvel. I can't read anything by Ellison or James Lee Burke before I write myself because I find myself subconsciously mimicking their talents. Losing proposition.

Anyway, Ellison has a story about when he was a young and struggling writer in, I believe, New York City. At some point he decides he needs to find a "real" job and the next morning bright and early hits the pavement. He lucks into an office that happens to have an opening and he's given the job on the spot. On his way out of the office, he sees that it's filled with applicants for that same job; an ad had appeared in that morning's paper and work was hard to find. Anyway, after a morning's worth of menial office work, a co-worker told him to slow down, he was making the rest of them look bad and he'd only make the bosses expect more out of them all. That did it for Ellison. He threw the work up in the air and stomped off, unwilling to work in that kind of compromising situation. It didn't meet the standards by which he wanted to live his life.

Sadly, I took that as some kind of permission to do the same thing.

I used to work in the IT industry. It used to be a good gig but something happened to it along the way and many, many of the good people have gotten out of it. My real estate agent is an ex-IBMer. My wife and I had a dance instructor in Atlanta who was an ex-systems administrator. And on and on and on. When I began way back when at about the time the personal computer came out, the field was filled with many different kinds of people but most had one thing in common: they were good with the technology. They had to be; the industry was so new there were damn few experts. You couldn't afford to screw up too much; you had to be your own safety net.

As time went on, the industry matured and computers became indispensable to businesses of all types and sizes, demand for IT workers exploded. This caused many people to be attracted to the field; employment rates and salary levels were excellent and projected to be so indefinitely. Unfortnuately many of these people either had no real talent for the work itself (despite their academic background), or they came into it with a surface understanding and a conceited attitude.

IT is now so filled with the wrong people that it may never recover. Instead of people who truly understand the technology, it's inundated with people who are impressed with their own web pages or ability to get to the thirtieth level of some video game. There are exceptions, of course; there always are. But in my experience over the years they've become more and more the minority.

Here are three examples taken from my last couple of jobs. Most recently, I was in charge of the databases for a software services company. One of the developers created an application that would require two copies of the data to be stored and maintained, a nightmare to keep in sync. In a better world, he would have communicated with me first. When I pointed out the problem, he agreed but simply put up his hands and said, "I work for David." Meaning: I don't care if it's wrong, I just do what I'm told. (I had to go to the boss, argue with him until he saw the flaws and the ease of the correction, and then go back and make it right.)

At another, I was replacing a supervisor on a job that was way over budget and two weeks from deadline. My time at the job site was limited and there was simply no way I could come up to speed on the year long project in time to be of material use. I asked the client how he felt about the job and he told me he was nervous as hell; the program HAD to be working in two weeks and he didn't see how that was going to happen. I asked him what if anything would make him feel better and he requested the presence of one of the developers who had worked on a key portion of the program. I spoke to my boss and arranged for that individual to be taken off his current assignment and sent to this one. I was later maligned for getting myself off of a paying assignment (never mind the client's concerns or the fact that they were over 300% over budget for the project).

On the last one, I was again sent to replace someone on a job that was two weeks away from a completed installation. Rather than complete the job, shake out the bugs, and then turn it over, I was thrown into the fire. When problems came up during the program testing, I was very limited at what I could do. I didn't have the client specific knowledge, gleaned by my predecessor over the previous year, to know which numbers should be added, subtracted, divided or multiplied on which of the dozens of reports. The client didn't understand why they should have to break me in, especially at that stage of the project, when the last guy could be made available. I agreed with them. It's called common sense, I think. They told my boss they didn't want me, they wanted the first guy. Surprise.

I couldn't take it anymore. I thought about having to wallow through this same slime pit for another twenty some years before I could retire and I was reduced to tears. I didn't want to be a dance instructor or a real estate agent but I did want to be a writer. So I quit IT.

One weekend I completely cleaned out my office. I didn't know if anyone would notice or not but I thought that if they did, it would send a good signal. Later that week I tried to force the less than honest people I worked for to be honest and truthful and they wouldn't. So I said let's just call it quits. They then had the grace to suggest that if I ever tried to access their servers they'd prosecute me. Cute. After two plus years, that's how much they knew me. I didn't wish them harm, I just wished me out. They'll seek their own level and if there's any cosmic justice (there isn't), they'll sink on their own good time.

See, what Harlan Ellison showed me was how the individual can compromise and be corrupted by people not worthy of doing that to you. Reading his story allowed me to sow the seeds of my own discontent. I also realized that I didn't get along very well with the pretentious people who had found their way over to IT. And while all this makes for some difficult times, eyebrow raising from relatives, and a major adjustment in lifestyle, it is all worthwhile. It has to be, unless I don't follow my passion and rise above the underachieving chaff of my former life.

Thank you, Mr. Ellison.