Corporate America

J.P. Morgan -- The Deadly Memo

May 11, 2004

by Uriel Wittenberg (uw@urielw.com)

This is one in a series of letters from Uriel reflecting on Corporate America. See Corporate America Index for full list and subscription info.

Words, words, words. As we know, they generally speed straight into the stratosphere without leaving a trace in the world we know.

But sometimes, against all odds -- especially if the writer has remembered to c.c. widely -- they repay their birth's labors with worldly effect. The potency of simple truth is often quite surprising -- and serves to remind us that openness and clarity are the antidotes to many of the world's ills.

I fondly recalled one of those occasions recently, as I reminisced with a friend about my corporate days. She was a mere memo -- a modest little email message -- yet she dispatched a J. P. Morgan vice president (the same who'd brought about my own demise).

The memo's existence has been documented -- I referred to it in the last letter in my Enron-inspired "Corporate America" series:

July 10, 1998 was to be my final day at Morgan. On July 8 I retrieved my prepared message and pressed SEND, then went for a coffee break....
Minutes after my return, I had Steve Katz on the phone in a state of high frenzy. "Where do you get your information??" he demanded. "Can you just answer the fucking question? ... No, that's completely inaccurate, we do not sell this product internally."
Moments later Bob was at my desk. I'd have to return my security pass and leave the building. "You've done much more good here than otherwise," he said. "I'm sorry you have to leave like this. I've got everyone, from Peter Miller on down, calling me."

But what had I SENT? I withheld the "prepared message" from my readers in the calm certainty that in short order I would be hearing a very noisy clamoring indeed, as they implored me to produce it.

Over two years have passed. I'm a bit older, a bit mellower. And the question occurred to me: Is it necessary to await the actual onset of the sound and fury before salving my faithful readers' anxiety and yielding the precious memo?

Good news: I have come to the decision that no, it is not necessary.

So here, without further ado, is The Deadly Memo, with which I finally bring my "Corporate America" series to its close:

Date: July 8, 1998 10:37:09 AM

From: Uriel Wittenberg

To: William Green

cc:
Steve Katz
Marc O. Becker
Millard Brown
Peter A. Miller
Michael Ashworth
Lisa Marie Casey
Mark A. Coughlan
Pamela Huttenberg
Edward Keenan
Dan Mailick
Jim Mazarakis
Michael Poser
Michael J. Reilly
Vittorio Severino
Thomas B. Ketchum
Douglas A. Warner

bcc: Robert Zolkiewicz

Subject: Harmful software product promotion within Morgan

As a consultant to J.P. Morgan, you have been promoting a proprietary product that you sell internally within Morgan. To bolster sales, you have misrepresented Morgan policies, creating a false impression among software developers that Morgan policies mandate the use of your product. In pursuing this business you have enjoyed the support of a Morgan Vice President, Marc Becker. On an occasion when I objected to your promotional practices, Marc complained to Pinnacle Alliance management and, I am told, urged the termination of my contract.

As a technical leader within Pinnacle during the past year, I have set myself the straightforward agenda of promoting software development techniques that I know are efficient and that lead to success. This has led me to recommend against the use of your product, which greatly complicates software development and increases the risk of project failure, without offering commensurate benefits.

While the strength of Marc's past support for a product of dubious benefit to Morgan has been difficult to explain, he has now been presented with a detailed and specific criticism of the product. His willingness to accept your non-response suggests that his support has been consciously independent of the product's benefits to Morgan. This raises questions about his allegiance which warrant the attention of Morgan management.

You say you do not have time to respond to criticism of the product. Yet, you and your team members have posted over a dozen messages on the electronic forum facility I established, demanding that I justify, and "debate" with you, my recommendation to Pinnacle developers that they not use the product. At one point I was obliged to shut down discussion of the topic in the forum; when I did so, your protestations persisted via email.

At the time, I had no mandate for what would presumably be a time-consuming exercise. But you now have what you were asking for, since my manager recently asked me to review your product. My brief (two-page) initial analysis focuses on a significant aspect of the product and thoroughly explains how it unnecessarily complicates the software development process.

Your practice of misrepresenting Morgan policies has persisted despite Marc's knowledge of my concerns. One of your public messages states:

I want to be very clear as to why you recommend against a Bank Strategy (Reuse and the Use of Libraries is a Bank Strategy).... The firm is comitted to reuse as a strategy with several libraries in use. The PowerBuilder library has been one of the more successful at the bank, and is still a "buy" technology internally. ALL PowerBuilder project teams are urged to look very closely at whether they should use the library or not. If not, we STRONGLY urge that they use a library, possibly the PFC. In my opinion, after being here for 3.5 years, is that MOST PowerBuilder applications use a library, and about half use the official Bank library (BCL or EBPFC).

A subsequent post by one of your associates, Millard Brown, explicitly refers to the product as a Morgan "standard" (while you call it "the official Bank library"). After I directly questioned this, it was established, and acknowledged by you, that your product is not a "standard" and that no Morgan policy exists mandating its use.

Your associates have continued to describe your product as a Morgan "standard" in public messages despite your acknowledgement that this is incorrect. Another of your associates, Steve Katz, subsequently posted a message stating that your product is "one of the 2 standard, supported, and encouraged base class libraries here at JPM for both JPM and Pinnacle projects."

Public messages such as these by your associates, seemingly offered to Morgan developers as neutral, helpful advice, have been phrased in impartial terms that give no indication of the writer's financial interests or involvement with the product. It was my request that such interests be disclosed that led Marc to complain to my management that I had questioned his team's integrity, and to press for the termination of my contract.

Your advice has also given rise to the misconception that Morgan policy bars developers from taking advantage of new and improved releases of the PowerBuilder development tool until they have been "certified" by your team. This has created delays in advancing to improved product versions, since what you describe as "certification" of a PowerBuilder release includes upgrading your own product to be compatible with the new release.

Marc has shown direct, personal interest in the promotion of your product within Morgan. After a Pinnacle technical meeting in London in which a participant reported negative experiences using your product, Marc sent me successive emails seeking to identify the developer who had expressed the criticism.

It is worth noting that a decision to use your product in developing an application is practically irreversible, since everything is built "on top" of it. To remove the product, one would have to rewrite the entire system, a costly process which is all the more infeasible since it would involve the admission of serious misjudgment.

Since my recent analysis was based on only a brief examination of your product's current version, it does not begin to adequately describe how severely your product damages a development team's productivity. My knowledge of the product's overwhelming defects derives from direct experience during the few months I worked as a consultant at NBC. I was there as an employee of the consulting company that originally created this product, Icon Solutions, Inc. Icon principals were unresponsive to my oral and written attempts to raise quality issues.

Another consulting company engaged by NBC produced an evaluation of the product which reported conclusions very similar to my own: "The complexity of the current architecture adds a multitude of layers to very simple tasks.... Single PowerBuilder commands are implemented using tens and sometimes hundreds of lines of code. This not only complicates the development and maintenance process, but also contributes to a degradation in performance.... The declarative programming technique that is now a part of the class library unnecessarily forces the developer to code hundreds of lines of declarations. This not only dramatically increases the potential for mistakes, but also creates havoc when trying to debug.... This type of development is not only a contradiction to object oriented programming techniques (none of the objects stands by itself), but also creates additional maintenance overhead when any changes need to be made to any object.... [etc.]"

Icon Solutions did not merely create a mediocre product. When I left them, they also refused to pay expenses and salary that were unmistakably owing. I ultimately sued and obtained a judgment that upheld my claims on all counts (New York Civil Court, #SC 5783/97). A month after Icon's deadline for complying with the court's order, their attorney phoned to urge me to settle for a smaller sum, arguing that I would not be able to collect from an out-of-state company.

Somehow, this unethical consulting company has succeeded in inserting its inferior product at J.P. Morgan, rendering the application delivery process substantially more difficult and risk-prone than it is under normal circumstances. Unaccountably, a Morgan Vice President supports misleading promotional practices for the product within Morgan. I do not believe this situation can be known to IT leaders within Morgan.

I am prepared to provide further information and documentation upon request.

[This email message included the correspondence history shown below.]

Date: June 23, 1998 12:59 PM
From: William Green
To: Uriel Wittenberg
cc: Steve Katz, Robert Zolkiewicz, Marc O. Becker, Millard Brown
Subject: EB4PFC

Uriel,

We will not respond to specific criticisms, rather we will wait until the complete "Gap-Analysis" is delivered. My team does not have the time to respond to individual criticisms.

This is not intended to be an evaluation of BCL or EBPFC, but an Analysis of where the libraries differ from an ideal library.

Please make sure your focus is on this gap,

thanks,
Bill Green

From: Uriel Wittenberg
Date: June 23, 1998 12:26 PM
To: Steve Katz
cc: Robert Zolkiewicz, Marc O. Becker, William Green, Millard Brown
Subject: EB4PFC

Since I'm leaving July 10, I'd like to offer you the opportunity to respond to specific criticisms as I document them, prior to completion of the entire evaluation.

Home > Master Index > Corporate America Index > [Last]