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Thursday 25 May 2023

Unprincipled Spivs

Moving from the public to the private sector was something of an eye-opener. It was a very different culture. I had not expected to be working with such an unprincipled set of spivs.

Previously, I had only worked in the accountancy profession and universities where the main considerations were thoroughness and accuracy. In accountancy, we checked everything to the penny. There was no short-cut sampling and rounding as now. It was similar in universities. We aimed to review and understand all previous work in a field before attempting to extend it. Where I did have dealings with the private sector, it was either with audit clients wanting to demonstrate compliance, or with the research arms of large companies governed by quality procedures. You could say that things were done properly.

Then, along came nineteen-eighties ‘Thatcher’s Britain’, when competition and cost-cutting were king. You could say that standards began to drop.

Universities were driven to seek commercial partners. By then, I could bullshit pretty convincingly about ways to make computers easier to use, so when a systems company with problems came along, I was sent to talk to them. It was not supposed to be part of the plan for them to offer me a job on a lot more money. Feeling near to burnout with university work, I took it.

It was a medium-sized systems company driven by sales and profit, with an eye on what things cost and how long they took. The computer system they sold had been developed for an equipment maintenance business, but as the system expanded to handle more and more business functions, other companies wanted to use it too, and it became valuable in its own right. By the time I joined, there were around seventy computing staff, and the system was used by some of the biggest firms in Europe, from cash machine operators to telecoms companies. It had become immensely complicated and few fully understood it any more.

I identified problems, improved the information provided to customers, and began to take on consultancy roles, as they said I would. I can’t complain about that. But I disliked the prevailing ethos which was aggressive, competitive and sales-led rather than professional.

It oozed down from the owner. He had left school early and chanced upon the opportunity to lease and maintain office equipment, such as internal telephones and fax machines. He was a first-rate wheeler dealer and could spin a good yarn, and the business grew rapidly. He was also arrogant and ruthless. I cannot repeat all the sexist, racist, homophobic and explicit things I heard him say. In one meeting, he complimented a non-white staff member on his wonderful sun tan, and asked where he went on holiday to get it. In another, he likened a map of Scandinavia, “where our biggest customers are, Ladies”, to a “penis and testicles”. I suppose he thought it humorous; the sort of humour I had not heard in years. His attitude was that if customers were not complaining, we were giving them too much too cheaply.

This brand of arrogance pervaded company culture. Many of the staff, especially in sales, went along with it. They were paid ‘loadsamoney’ to drive around in company sports cars. There was pressure to go out drinking and socializing with customers. I did not feel ‘part of the team’. I don’t know if others felt uncomfortable too, but if so, they hid it well. The promise of more money and a company car tends to keep people in line, even when they never materialise.

The owner did not tolerate dissent. If you wanted to keep your job, you kept quiet. Those who crossed him were sacked, sued or both. One employee broke his leg playing football and was dismissed because “the injury was his own fault”. Another left to set up his own company and foolishly solicited business from his ex-employer’s customers. He was brought to the brink of bankruptcy.

The firm took on large numbers of new computing staff to redevelop and modernise the system. When they had served their purpose, 50% of the systems division were made redundant. I was tipped off by my manager that it was coming. He said that even if I survived I should get out as soon as I could. The phrase “unprinciples set of spivs” was his. I survive but he didn’t.

In all, I stuck it out for nearly four years. As I said, it was well-paid. The crunch came one Friday morning when I had to drop everything to go to Stockholm to sort out an urgent problem. I popped home to pack a bag and leave a note that I might not be back until Tuesday. It began to look as if more work like this would come my way. It might sound exciting, but it was all work. There was no free time to see the places you visited.

Newly married, with a family in mind, this was not the kind of life we wanted. It was a relief a few months later to find another university job. Although on a lower salary, I reasoned that the public service pension benefits compensated for that.

25 comments:

  1. Sounds horrendous.
    I had the opposite experience I suppose. Working in the private sector, always expected to work long, unpaid hours achieve targets or else .. etc...
    Then I was eventually made redundant. I found a job I enjoyed in the local hospital's IT Department. A totally different culture and so much less stress.

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    1. Both accountancy and higher education (at the times I worked in them) treated the staff with respect, with good conditions. Those who worked extra hours did so out of a sense of vocation. The computer company kidded employees that working long would be well-rewarded, but it never was. Those who went home at the contracted time were frowned upon.

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  2. I too have worked in both private sector (bulk pharmaceutical manufacture) and public sector (NHS hospital trust) and have seen significant differences between them. Yes, the bulk pharmaceutical business was profit driven, but with the US FDA inspectors able to turn up any time it was also very much quality driven, and timely response to events was essential to stay in business. Conversely the NHS appeared to be oblivious to any sense of urgency in delivering systems, so long as the relevant procurement boxes had been ticked. A classic example being Blair's National Program for IT - 10 years down the line and £12billion later still nothing significant in use for a project launched to revolutionise NHS IT within 3 years.
    Another factor that I found in the NHS was an entrenched hierarchy that anyone with any kind of patient-facing role was always treated as a first class citizen, whereas all other staff were very much second class, however much what they did was essential to support patient care.

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    1. That's interesting. What I think happened it that over-the-top accountability was brought into the public sector to control those who took advantage. In universities, most had a strong sense of vocation and saw themselves as self-organising professionals, and worked extremely hard, but it was stamped out of them when all the box-ticking came in. I guess it depends on what era and what level one was working, but my experience was that the private company had few principles compared with my experience of the public sector.

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    2. My very brief time in a consumer goods company R&D department echoes some of your private sector experience - everything was driven by presentation and selling to management, and one of my colleagues was, in all seriousness, told not to confuse the issue with facts. My last recollection of that company was participating in a presentation whilst working my notice - we junior staff had been told in no uncertain terms that we were to be seen and not heard during a presentation to the European head of R&D. This gentleman, surprisingly for the company, was a very sharp cookie and started asking questions about the project that none of the local management could answer. After a few minutes of meaningless waffle I had had enough and answered the guy with real information, and we had a good discussion that left all of the local management out in the cold. As I was on my way out of the company I never did get to hear the outcome though.

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    3. I wish I'd spoken out more despite the possible consequences, and that includes in universities too. When one bully said to us all, "Gone are the days when you could spend five hours preparing a lecture" I should have asked what kind of crap did he expect us to present, and when he said that some of us were paid twice as much as others for the same job, I wish I'd said "and four times as much in your case".

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  3. rhymeswithplague25 May 2023 at 21:55

    My 40-year career in the world of computing sas split among three employers: the US Air Force, IBM, and AT&T.. The first was "public sector" I suppose and the latter two "private" although they couldn't have have been more different cultures . They wee both huge, monolithic corporations in which I was just a little cog in a great big machine. One was very profit-driven with an emphasis on excellence, meeting schedules, and winning over the compeition;. One was monopolistic, answering to virtually no one. You live and learn, you roll with the punches; you get out while the getting out's good. I will say no more except that I left the rat race in 2000 when I perceived that the rats had won. (hyperbole, tes , but only a slight exaggeration)

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    1. Sorry, I thought I responded earlier. I think I said that the rats always win in the end. The move I made turned out to be entirely right. I would have ended up redundant and unemployed.

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  4. Almost everything is sales-driven now and the only people happy about it are those at the top of the heap raking in the profits.

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    1. And this firm manipulated people to maximise profit, although some years later they ran into problems and were taken over by a competitor.

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  5. This rather struck me and I wonder if it is a real factor nowadays for many businesses.

    "His attitude was that if customers were not complaining, we were giving them too much too cheaply."

    The concern might be about how many complaints there are rather than there is a complaint and how to address the complaint.

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    1. It seemed to me that they did this balancing act rather well. Some of the customes thought the system was awful, and their employees were not slow to tell me when I went out to help or train their advise them, but it did not go down well if you took their concerns back to the office.

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  6. I suppose businessmen like your former boss, with all their attitudes that seem so unacceptable now (and even irked us then), have always been around. You did well in leaving there, saving your family life and probably your sanity at the same time.
    For a few years, I worked in sales. My customers were systems companies who set up point-of-sales systems for their customers (all sorts of shops, restaurants, but also things like ticket machines at parking garages etc.), and my part was to sell them the appropriate hardware - everything from barcode scanners to printers to cash drawers to touch screen computers now appearing at more and more tills and counters.
    I enjoyed my work but never saw myself as a typical sales person. I was genuinely interested in selling good things at prices that would allow us to make a resonable profit but be fair to the customer. Getting to know my customers mattered to me, and it was amazing what they sometimes confided on a personal level.
    Instructions or tips for sales staff often sounds aggressive and/or manipulative, treating potential customers (people!) like "targets", and "hunting" them as if they were prey, or catching them like fish. That was NEVER what my customers were to me. It was always one person talking to another person for me, establishing good relationships where we could trust one another.
    Now that I am not in sales any longer, I am rather glad, because there really is quite a lot of pressure in that world.

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    1. That enhances my understanding of what it is like working in sales. I think it requires a certain temperament, for which I would be too much of a worrier and perfectionist. You clearly gave your customers good service, which I am sure they appreciated.

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  7. What an interesting experience! Seeing Thatcher's Britain from the inside. Civility and compassion replaced by arrogance and the greedy pursuit of filthy lucre without much restraint. One of the things that drew me into teaching was the knowledge that I would be somewhat removed from that go-getting culture.

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    1. An extreme way of putting it, but it how things were in very competitive markets and I was pleased to be able to escape to where you could feel you were helping to make the world a better place, even if it meant working evenings and weekends for free.

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  8. I had to go back and check my blog because the ruthlessness and, in many cases, the outright immorality of many of those in 'Big Business' has always been a fact and, unfortunately, always will be because it is the nature of people such as you have mentioned to do these things to survive. It used to be very different in government and, probably, is in most places below 'the top' but the blatant immorality and lying of some of our leaders now is reminiscent of the 'Days of Empire' when Government and Business were intertwined and we ruthlessly ruled so much of the world.

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    1. PS The point about checking my blog was that I thought I'd done a post on the subject but discovered it was a long-ago draft I'd started and never finished (along with so many others!).

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    2. Unconstrained competition leads to the kind of sleazy things you allude to, and I am also of the view that it is not what I think of as civilised behaviour. I don't have a solution because much of it is caused by international factors, but it ought to be possible to have a fairer society. The firm I was with was at the start of things, and I had not encountered it before.

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  9. You were no doubt right about the pension... The public and private sector each have their vices and virtues - each can be brilliant or terrible, it's the dominant culture that shapes them which determines this I think.

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    1. Pension-wise, it was definitely a good move, even though I get nothing like a full one. From your and other comments, I can see that the virtues and vices depend very much on the situation and organisation.

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  10. Oh my goodness. That sounds awful. I have never been part of the corporate scene, but I do have to tell you, probably the biggest shock of my life was to find that a field that I had supposed to be client driven was not. It was ruthless, and about justifying your job. It was about cliques. I didn't fit in. It was horribly disappointing, and I felt like a failure for an awfully long time. Certainly was a waste of a college education.

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    1. I think ideally we all like to feel that we are doing something worthwhile and making a contribution rather than simply having a job to earn money. It certainly did not feel good where at I was, but I was fortunate in being able to move where it did. Sadly, not everyone can, even though it's often sold as a myth.

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  11. Your former boss sounds like a top-ten a-hole, pardon my French. Four years under his employ must have felt like an eternity. Sometimes a cut in salary is good for one's overall well-being and this would have certainly been the case for you.

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    1. That sums him up. He responded best to hero worship. One of his worst insults was to describe someone as a failed businessman. Fortunately, I only had to interact with him directly on a handful of occasions.

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