J.P. Morgan 2

Corporations often have an Orwellian language reflecting the line of thinking that has been laid down for the troops. Consulting firms particularly like to create their own peculiar jargon to project a semblance of differentiation to the marketplace. At Andersen each software project was allocated to some "HPT" (High Performance Team, naturally), which might comprise 10 to 20 people, and each HPT had a designated "AA" -- Application Architect, Andersen mumbo jumbo for technical leader. There was also a sonorous term I now forget signifying HPT boss.

On a small number of occasions an AA would reluctantly call me for a consultation session, obviously at the behest of a superior. But paranoia ruled, and my straightforward questions ("What's the app for? What does it do?") would strike terror deep in their hearts.

Once I was dispatched to Morgan's London, England office for 10 days to assist with a terrible crisis involving a system called "Opera." The unutterable chaos and inanity I saw there led me to a newfound respect for American business methods. One thing that was emblematic was a type of screensaver that possessed all the PC's. It would abruptly fire into activity ... not when the machine was idle, but while one was in the midst of typing. This seemed to be beyond the control of the PC's own user because (as in many U.S. firms) PC's were centrally controlled by some admin group and developers could not configure their own machines. Developers lived with it, since it was easier than dealing with the bureaucracy.

My trip was almost exclusively a political exercise, likely a strategem to enable somebody senior to extol the fantastic synergy that existed between the New York and London people. They contrived a few minor tasks, but really there was little for me to do there.

I continued to offer occasional help to the Opera project as needed after my return to New York. Some months after my trip, on May 5, 1998, I emailed several managers in New York and London. Excerpts:

My sources have provided a status refresh regarding London's OPERA ordeal:

First, they discovered they were using a defective version of SQL Server that had been recalled by Sybase (v. 11.03 without the patch). They don't know how this version was ever acquired in the first place, since it has never been released internally at JPM.

Next, they learned that the version of Open Client they are using is not supported by Sybase.

They have succeeded in obtaining Open Client 11.1, but they don't know how to set it up, and apparently none of the London support groups is willing to accept responsibility for the task. The Sybase group says Desktop Support is responsible, and Desktop says it's the Server Management group. London would be expected to have some Sybase expertise, since they maintain about 200 SQL Server db servers. An additional difficulty is that the London support groups are hard to reach and do not answer their pages.

The inclination seems to be to use Open Client 10.0.4 rather than 11.1 (or 11.1.1) because someone at Sybase said it offers better "backwards compatibility".

Backwards compatibility, I gather , is an issue because the application still uses the DBLIB-type of db driver that is intended for use with SQL Server 4. It is not clear to me why there is a hesitation to move to the db driver intended for SQL Server 11, since that is the db server the app is communicating with.

About half the London users of Opera are affected by the problem behavior. Currently they deal with the problem, when it arises, by logging off and going to someone else's pc to do whatever it was there once the pc is available. Apparently this problem varies according to which pc is used.

My "sources" for that status refresh were a consultant named Ian Gitlin whom I'd spoken with via Morgan's internal phone network just prior to my email. During my London work I'd enjoyed his refreshing ability to acknowledge reality.

Only ONE DAY after that email I tried calling Gitlin, but his line was not working. On checking the online phone directory, I found no number listed for him. I didn't give it much thought, since the general chaos of the London office could easily explain messed up phones. But a month later, on receiving an email from someone else in London, I asked: "What's happened to Ian, by the way? I left a message some time ago, never heard back........"

The emailed reply was: "Unfortunately Ian's contract was not renewed so he left the Alliance about a month ago."