Confessions of an IT Manager_Phil Factor

Section IV: Hiring, Firing and other acts of Villainy 211
When the extent of the duplicity became apparent, we became objects of
pity in the wider world of IT. It even got a mention in one of the computer
papers that we'd lost an entire 'year' of graduate entrants to the other bank.
Still mulling over this dramatic turn of events, I retreated to one of our
favored City Pubs, where I was sipping a pint of fine ale, and enduring a certain
amount of good-natured ribbing from one of the managers from the Imperial
Bank's IT department.
It was at this exact moment that it dawned on me what Kishor had done. I
suddenly recalled, with complete clarity, walking through the City streets one
evening that summer, just after the training course was announced, and
catching sight of Kishor in this very same establishment. The grey-suited
customers spilled out into the street clutching their beer-glasses and talking
loudly. In the thick of the mêlée was Kishor, surrounded by IT people. Here
and there, like jackals around a campsite, I had noted the sharp attire and
haircut that marked out an IT employment agent.
Kishor had 'accidentally' let slip to one of these IT agents the fact that he
was sending all his most talented staff on a training course, knowing full well
that the agent would subsequently inveigle the list from one of the more
'malleable' of the light arms candidates. From there, it was but a short hop for
the list, into the hands of the agent's best client – the Imperial Bank! I smiled in
awe and wonder at the subtlety of Kishor's plan, and its implications. Suddenly,
the pint of Landlord Bitter in my hand, bought for me by an Imperial Bank
manager whose conscience had been troubling him, tasted twice as sweet.