How to succeed at IT, sort of

It's the mid-1990s, and this pilot fish is involved in a large rollout of internal online forums at his company. "They allow widely scattered engineers and programmers to discuss various issues," fish reports.

"They were used well and were generally effective in keeping people up to date on corporatewide technical problems and issues."

Fast forward a year: An empire-building VP of IT decides to replace all the Macs and Unix workstations with Windows PCs.

Unfortunately for the new IT boss, all the reasons he's giving for the switchover are provably false. The people using the internal forums know the business intimately enough to know they're being lied to, and the forums soon devolve into detailed dissections of why the ROI, support cost and other arguments are bogus.

But nobody is willing to raise the issue with senior management. Nobody, that is, but fish -- he's fed up with the new boss and figures that getting fired will just reduce his stress levels.

"The forums had become unusable, and I figured there was only one way to get the forums back: ask the questions and get an answer," says fish.

"I compiled a list of the 'top 10 concerns' that had been bandied about on the forums. Some were technical. Others were based on rumors. I was very careful to document which was which, and why I was sending it."

Fish sends the list of concerns to all the executives involved, including the CEO. A week later, all hell breaks loose. Fish is denounced as insubordinate. A director flies to fish's location and rants at fish for an hour -- at the end of which, fish points out that the director can fire him or buy him out to make him leave, but to fire the fish, the director will have to prove fish is acting from anything other than professional concern for the company.

In the end, none of fish's questions are answered, though fish does post the unrelated replies and veiled threats to the forums. Within a few months, the forums are usable again. The empire-building VP gets a huge bonus for the "successful" PC switchover -- then leaves a year later, so he doesn't have to deal with the aftermath.

"And I wasn't fired," fish says. "I don't know why. Instead I was promoted, and I even turned down an offer of management. Eventually, I left for greener, or at least more ethical, pastures.

"The company almost went bankrupt, in part because of the extra costs associated with the very ill-advised switchover. And last I checked, most of the senior execs were charged with a variety of offences, but those had nothing to do with that particular choice.

"I don't know if I learned anything, other than developing a real distaste for senior executives."

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