Prisoners of Our Own Device

I knew in my gut that there was something wrong with a system that couldn't fire its incompetents. - Luke Ford

A dark cloud hovered over our heads today. A man disliked by many becomes the head of our project. That seat was empty for several months since the “old man” retired and went home to Germany. His replacement, a man who takes pride of his Canadian passport, who speaks the local language, mastery of sucking up to the higher ups and other “ka-éclat-an”. He has no experience what so ever to manage a project or handle personnel. But it doesn’t really matter as long as our company gets its percentage of the salary allocated for that position. We were hired by the Ministry to maintain and operate this project. Our over-all performance must have been satisfactory or they won't renew our contract every 3 years for the past 15 years.

The guy came here 5 years ago. Sent by his company to “maintain” a system we sub-contracted to them. The problem is they short-change us by sending a Visual Basic programmer when the system was done in C++. He became unpopular when he refused other department’s request for modifications or add-ons in the system. Citing alteration of software is not within the scoop of his contract. The real reason is his afraid to modify a language that is way beyond his understanding. He joined us when he convinced our bosses it’s much cheaper to hire him than paying "retainer's fee" to his former company. That’s the problem with “profit-oriented” companies. They’ll readily sacrifice quality if it increases return by a few thousand riyals. Even if its detremental to the project's health in the long run.

Staying in one place and doing the same thing for so many years can make a man jaded. I don’t know yet if a change of environment or transfering to another “sandbox” is a good idea. I still have a year and a half left on my personal contract. If things get bad or I’m no longer happy, I have plenty of time to gather and balance my options.