Email Is Fucking Evil

I’m going to veer off a purely tech topic here and write about two recent events in my life that center around email. I’ve always been a huge fan of email as a means of communication because I like to write; I think I’m fairly decent at it. It gives me a chance to formulate my thoughts and say exactly what I mean to say. Which is, by and large, a good thing. Unless it comes to arguing, which is best done face-to-face. It’s way to easy to say exactly what you mean to say in an email argument, and that’s not a good thing. There’s no chance to temper what you really want to say with the reality of watching the body language and facial expressions of the person you’re saying it to. OK, this is too vague. Here are my two cases:

Case 1: The Family Friend

I’ve known this guy since we were kids – let’s call him Sam. I can’t say we’ve been friends exactly, but it’s more like and older brother/younger brother relationship, with myself being the older brother. He’s gone through some tough times in his life. Watched his dad die. Mom was an alcoholic (she’s better now – sober for 10 years). I don’t think it would be an understatement to say that due to these things, he’s poorly socialized. The whole thing started when a family member (not me) put Sam in touch with a politically connected guy in order to get him a job with a gubernatorial candidate. He was going to be the driver for said candidate – pretty decent gig. The problem started because he blew the interview and they never called him back. Not one to be deterred or to pick up on the obvious brush off, Sam kept calling them. And calling them. And using *70 to block his caller ID so they wouldn’t know it was him calling. It got to the point where the politically connected guy (he and I are friends) called me and asked me to intervene. Basically, they wanted this guy to stop calling. His behavior was alarming them. Travis Bickle got mentioned. So I called Sam and told him, as nicely as possible, that he needed to stop calling them – and he did.

Fast forward one year and I find out that Sam is mad at me because he thought I was the one who screwed up his job opportunity. So I sent him an email apologizing and saying that I probably could have handled the situation better, but he needed to understand that his behavior was scaring them and that he needed to back off. He wrote right back and thanked me for writing, but said he was mad at me because he thought I should have done a better job defending him and his character. At this point, I got pissed. So I wrote back (stupid, stupid email):

Were you younger, then I would agree with you. My role would be to act as your defender. However, you're a man now and have been for years. My role, as I see it, is to try to help you. I'm not going to defend you when your behavior doesn't warrant it. Obsessively calling people, not leaving messages, calling back and using *70 to block your caller ID is stalker behavior.

The reality is that you're a 27-year-old man who can't hold down a job, has never had a steady girlfriend, and lives with his mother. The only constant in your life is you. You can choose to continue to believe that other people are the problem. Until you decide that the problem might be with you, then you are correct: no book can help you.

The book I was referring to was “How to Win Friends and Influence People”, which I had given him after the incident. This caused a huge shit storm with threats of violence on his part. Needless to say, the relationship is irreparably damaged.

Would I have said those things in a face-to-face conversation? I don’t know. I think so, but maybe I would have picked up on something and tempered my approach. It’s simply too easy to put it in an email.

Case 2: The Political Friend

I’ve known this guy for about 5 years – let’s call him Tom. Tom and I like to argue about politics and religion. The discussions get pretty heated at times and aren’t always the most civil. I moved to another city a couple years ago, so we’ve had most of our exchanges over the phone and email. I really love this guy: he’s the kindest, most big-hearted guy around. But he also has a terrible temper. He once kicked his own brother out of his apartment at 2:00 a.m. over an argument about religion. I know this about him and I’ve always tried to temper my discussions with this knowledge. Easier to do in person than over email. The strange thing about Tom is that he’s a rabid atheist and a rabid Republican. It’s a weird mix, but one of the things I found so compelling about him.

Earlier this month, I sent him an email about Sarah Palin. Basically, Palin scares the utter fuck out of me. She’s like the female version of Martin Sheen’s character in “The Dead Zone”. Because Tom is such a rabid atheist, I wondered what his take on Palin was. When she was asked if she believes in the End of Days scenario she said, “Yes, I think I will see Jesus come back to earth in my lifetime.” I wondered what Tom’s take on this was. We exchanged a few emails of increasing intensity. Two other things you should know about Tom: he likes to use drugs and his best friend is a prostitute. The final salvo on my part was this:

My main point was the hijacking of the Republican Party by the religious right. It sickens me and, I think, it ought to make you furious. These evil "christian" fuckers would happily lock you in jail and stone [your friend] in the town square. Shit, at least you could count on the Republicans to show some fiscal responsibility, but that seems to have gone out the door too. I'm really angry at the Republican party. I think they've betrayed their Lincoln and Goldwater roots.

I think that pissed him off. He called me a racist because I had said previously that I thought it would be good for the country to have a black man as a president. Tom ended his email back to me with this:

Remember, you started this bullshit with your shivering fear of Sarah Palin. Oooooh, she's scary. Well you scare me, man. The conversation we had that morning where you believe in the afterlife is the scariest fucking thing I've ever heard.

Anyway, put me on your spam list. I'm putting you on mine as soon as I hit send. Good Luck with Eternity. I hope there's Universal Health Care up there.

And that was the end. He’s refused to take my calls or answer any of my emails.

So, what’s the point of all this? Is email to blame for these two destroyed relationships? I think it is. It’s simply too easy to say something that you wouldn’t in person. It’s too easy to get all worked up and hit the send key. But email also destroyed the phone as a conduit for communication. Both these guys have refused to take any of my calls. And the strange thing about it is I was calling to apologize.

I'm a "light bulb" kinda guy

The overwhelming response I received to my previous post has led me to believe that I struck a chord with a good chunk of techies working in CA. This makes me happy. It also makes me sad because that means a large percentage of you are as fed up and dissatisfied as I am, and that sucks. Anyway, onto the post.

I'll probably be accused of constructing a straw man here, but of the folks who disagreed with me, their reasoning went something like this:

Everyone knows techies are notoriously lacking in social skills and therefore do a poor job communicating their ideas to the business. If the techies could just learn how to speak businessese, they would get listened to. If the idea saves the company money, the business will adopt it.

Well, I call bullshit. I've never understood where this notion came from that techies, as a group, lack social skills. Sure, there are a few weirdos like Hans Reiser out there, but he's no more lacking in social skills than O.J. Simpson. We may be a slightly more idiosyncratic bunch, but that doesn't mean we lack social skills. If you don't believe me, spend some time reading the comments section of Hacker News. Trust me, it'll boost your faith in humanity. It's the most erudite, courteous place on the internet. By and large, we're probably a more introspective and thoughtful group, and somehow that gets mistaken for bad social skills. Seems more of an indictment of society than of hackers. Besides, it's always the business guys who are screaming into their cell phones while sitting on the crapper. I don't know how you can get any more poorly socialized than that.

Techies don't speak businessese for the same reason we don't write apps in COBOL anymore: it's a horrible language. Businessese is full of clichés and Orwellian doublespeak. “Problems” became “Issues” which became “Challenges”. I remember sitting in one unspeakably spirit crushing [and mandatory] meeting while some guy from Franklin Covey rambled on for two hours about “Wildly Important Goals” or “WIG's”. I felt like an anthropologist on Mars. How could any normal human being with an IQ above 100 buy into this crap? At the end, some older tech guy stood up and said that he's seen this kind of thing come and go and asked, “Will we still be talking about WIG's a year from now”? “Of course you will,” Willie Loman answered. “Upper management is very committed to this program.” Guess what? In less than 6 months time no one was talking about WIG's any more. I knew it. Every tech guy/gal I talked to knew it. But God forbid you actually say it.

Programmers learn as much about the business as they have to in order to do their job effectively. Can you say the same thing about the business folks? Do they learn as much about computers as they have to in order to do their jobs effectively? Of course not. You'll never find a group who wears their ignorance of technology more proudly than the average business person. “I'm not a computer guy,” they'll say with a big smile on their face. Well gee, the personal computer is only the most significant invention to come along in the past 100 years. You'd think one might be mildly curious about how it works. If you went around saying “I'm not a light bulb guy” people would look at you like you're nuts. You may not be a “light bulb guy”, but you know how to identify one that's broken, right? Presumably, you've mastered the skills necessary to change a light bulb. Granted, computers aren't light bulbs, but I think you get the idea.

The final point, that the business will adopt a change if it's proven to save the company money, is based on a false assumption; namely, that businesses behave in a rational manner. Other than Ayn Rand, I don't know anyone who believes this. I worked at one place that decided to use Siteminder over Sun's SSO solution because Computer Associates gave them a discount on COBOL runtime licenses for the mainframe. Never mind that Sun's solution would have been cheaper in the long run, those mainframe licenses will look great on this quarter's budget! For more evidence, read Some Creep's tale:

I recently watched the tendering process for a fairly simple development project. Maybe 5 pages all said an done, all implemented inside an existing sharepoint solution.

Provider 1 quoted about what it should cost. $6000 - cost of the work involved, and a mark up for the hassle of having to spec and bid for the job, and deal with a bureaucracy on completion.

Provider 2 and 3, having had relationships with the company before, quoted 335,000 and 425,000 respectively.

Provider 1 was excluded. Obviously their quote was so low because they were a mickey mouse company that didn't understand what was required. Provider 2 was questioned closely because they were so much lower then provider 3, and eventually after much reassurance from the sales people of Provider 2, they were selected.

One of the techies from another department saw the quote and asked to see the rest of the spec, assuming there was more to the job then what he was seeing. After the project manager confirmed that no no, that was the spec on which the company had quoted 335,000 - the techie expressed his concerns that the quote was vastly too high. The project manager called back and said 'One of my advisors thinks this price is really too high' - the sales monkey put him on hold, came back about 90 seconds later and knocked the price down to 235,000.

Project Manager thinks he got a bargain. Techie got a round of congratulations. And the company spent 40 times as much on the project as they should have.

That sound rational to you?

I quit my job today, oh boy

I turned in my two-week notice today. I was working for a fairly large company doing WebSphere Administration and Java development. My new job is IT Director for a much smaller organization. It'll give me the chance to put into practice my own take on IT on a (relatively) clean canvas.

It's bittersweet leaving my current job. I enjoy the camaraderie of my fellow developers, but the IT department itself leaves much to be desired. There are some very smart folks, but they don't get the opportunity to demonstrate it on a consistent basis. Over the past couple of months, we've been hemorrhaging people. Today alone, 3 people turned in their resignation. In the past 6 months, they've lost 6 other high quality employees. Without going into too much detail (in order to protect the guilty), I'm going to use this post to explain why.

IT in Corporate America (herein after referred to as CA) doesn't have to suck. But by and large, it does. Why don't the smart people who work in CA get the opportunity to show how good they can be? Part of it comes by being saddled with inferior tools: bad version control, bad testing tools, bad test data, bad languages, bad platforms. However, these are technological problems that have good technological solutions. Why aren't they embraced? Why use Serena or Harvest for version control when there's svn and git? Why does it take 4 hours to find a user id in development to test a change that took you 30 minutes to implement when a daily refresh of test data would solve the problem? Why buy expensive monitoring software that accomplishes nothing more than sending out snmp messages to a blackberry when you can use nagios for the same thing? And finally, why do the people who propose these changes never, ever, ever get listened to?

The facile answer is to blame management. And, there's something to that. IT Management needs to bear the responsibility for allowing the organization to dismiss their smart people as "friggin nerds" or pie-in-the-sky dreamers. But the problem runs deeper and these phenomena are merely symptoms. The underlying problem is CA's addiction to business-centric IT.

In CA, IT costs are looked upon as necessary evils. CA needs computers and email and Web sites, because that's what CA needs to function and be profitable. Other than that, the IT department can kindly piss off, thank you very much. But oh, before you do, can you add that new feature I discussed to our Web site by next Thursday? Then go piss off, until trades get botched on Friday night, whereupon I'll need you to spend the next 48 hours figuring out what the hell went wrong and why we lost $150,000 dollars.

Most CA IT shops try to solve this problem with processes. They develop SDLC's and design documentation and have change control meetings. These processes do a decent job of mitigating damage caused by rogue change. What they don't address is how change gets introduced and, more importantly, who drives the change.

The majority of changes in CA IT are driven by the business. This has the effect of turning corporate IT into an order taker for the business. The corollary of this is that IT doesn't have the ability to create and drive their own changes. IT infrastructure changes don't immediately (or obviously) fit into any specific business goal – at least from a business perspective. Why should the business care about getting new servers or having developers waste their time rewriting already functioning code? It's anathema to them – at least until IBM stops supporting that version of WebSphere. Unfortunately for the business, this strategy works in the short term. You don't start to see problems until you're well down the path of no return. The code base increases in complexity and redundancy because the entire thing is one layer of band aids on top of another. Now that “simple change” becomes a nightmare of an ordeal because it's impossible to identify all the interaction points. And, without a repository of automated testing scripts, the developer is forced to wonder what all he might have broken. We've had instances where a change introduced on Friday is accused of breaking production on Monday only to find out that it has, in fact, been broken for the past 6 months.

Corporate IT needs the ability to run their own internal infrastructure projects without needing permission from the business. The business has managed to survive this long without that change in the vesting page to convert dollar values into euros. Seriously, what's the difference if the change goes in June versus September? Why not take that 4 month period and refactor the common code base? Or convert those Windows machines running Apache over to Linux? Or research Drupal as an alternative to your current, multi-million dollar CMS that's constantly breaking? Or use nagios to get real metrics on Production uptime?

Most people in corporate IT want to do a good job. Most people in corporate IT are capable of doing a good job. Every developer I know is driven crazy by crappy code; they want nothing more than to get in there and make it better, stronger, faster. Most of the time, however, they are actively stymied from doing a good job because they can't act on their own, best instincts. Sorry pal, but that's not in the business plan.