I have been asleep for too long. Well, not sleeping in the literal sense, but sleeping in the figurative one. The solution to the problem before me was so dastardly simple that when I finally came upon it, I had to slap myself in the forehead in disgust when I realised how dumb I had been.
But I should backtrack a little and explain quickly what the problem was.
I had been working for a small business for the past four years. Nothing fancy, just a simple dev-shop helping other small businesses create web sites and portals for their use. I was a programmer that wrote and interfaced all the stuff relating to the servers, and we had designers who handled all the user-interface objects. We had a solid reputation for the most part, which explained how we managed to stay afloat in the business despite the general cutthroat nature.
The first three years were the best years in the company. The owner was the boss, and he was ``one of us''---he pitched in to get the deals, and joined in to help us with the coding when the going got tough. And when there were last minute changes that the clients wanted, he would stay with us as we worked on it, supplying us with food and other sustenance while we worked on getting the changes made. Everyone liked him, and with him, everyone's fortune, though small, seemed made.
Then the boss had a stroke. It came from out of the blue. The boss wasn't exactly an athlete, but he was in good shape compared to some of us. That he suddenly had a stroke was something that no one could have foreseen. It knocked him out of the day-to-day running of the company. This was when He showed up.
He was apparently a partner of the business, except that He never really showed up ever at the office. Some of the old-timers who had known the owner from earlier said that they knew of the existence of Him, but the last time He showed up in the office was so long ago that they forgot all about His presence, until now.
He had a management style that was effective antithetical to what the owner had. He was always sitting in His room behind His desk; He never mingled, never smiled, and never tried to learn anything about us, the employees. He was most interested in tabulating all forms of statistics, and every change from the clients and any change really had to be submitted to Him with strict dollar-costs spelt out in full.
It took us nearly a year to get used to such a fastidious person. Then the performance review came up, and everyone was suddenly confronted by reams of data condensed into charts which He would use to point out how inefficient everyone was working, and demanded that standards be met for the upcoming work year. The drubbing received was a rude shock to our small group. Someone even thought of communicating with the owner about the seemingly unfair treatment, but the owner was still fairly incapacitated by his stroke. It wasn't that everyone was slacking off---it was just that work such as coding and interface design were in essence creative endeavours which required a good mix of ``down'' and ``up'' time to ensure quality. The metric that He was using was biased towards people spending nearly all their time in front of the computers, complete with weekly update meetings even if there was not enough information to hold one.
Many got upset and wished for the owner to return. Me too on that---the camaraderie with the owner was something that I was missing. Moreoever it was clear that we weren't getting any new customers as the year went by since much of our time was spent on maintenance for our existing client base. When asked, He merely dismissed it all and said that it was pointless to get new clients on when our production efficiency was still low.
All of us were despairing at the situation, not sure what to do.
That was when I suddenly realise that I could always quit the job.
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