Confessions of an IT Manager_Phil Factor

Section IV: Hiring, Firing and other acts of Villainy 215
After the meeting, I apologized to the IT director for letting him down,
though I admitted to not quite understanding how, or in what way, I'd done so. I
offered to waive my notice period if he wanted to be rid of me. He was
horrified and begged me to stay. To mollify me, he showed me his holiday
snaps from visiting his parents in India, and even read me one of his own poetic
compositions.
The IT department was a shambles and the working day of a DBA was
defined by a frantic, desperate urgency. Management were snatching systems
out of our hands before we could finish developing them. The sacred division
between development and production ceased to exist in the scrabble to keep
things afloat and get that vital information. I remember literally running down
the corridor grasping the latest report.
Despite my best efforts, however, my mauling at the hands of the MD
proved not to be a one-off. I'd be summoned and, as soon as I stepped into the
room, accused of all manner of professional inadequacies. I would never argue.
I would just adopt a vaguely contrite demeanour and drift off into my usual
reverie of working out how much they were paying me in order to harangue
me. The IT director would look solemn and agree with the MD with discreet
nods of his head. After the meeting he would be paradoxically friendly, and
appreciative of my efforts. The only upside to this, I noticed, was that the MD
no longer practised his bizarre and distasteful incursions into the IT department
to harangue the team over their shortcomings.
I soon realized, moreover, that the theatrical aspect of my dressing-downs
was much more pronounced when visitors or particular directors, or managers,
were in the room. It slowly dawned on me that I was being used as a ritual
'whipping boy' for all the sins of IT. Of course, this being an IT business, I was
effectively the whipping boy for the whole enterprise. When royalty went to
school, they were not free from punishment. However, in view of their exalted
rank, the punishments were carried out not on the little princes of princesses but
on poor surrogate children whose job was to accompany the royal scholar and
receive random and unjustified punishments in their place. As the pay and
conditions were, for the most part, good there were no shortages of volunteers.
Once I understood my role, I hammed it up a bit more, much to the delight
of the MD and IT director. We would head off to a restaurant together after a
session and the MD would buy us expensive meals in gratitude. He used this
'whipping boy' technique for impressing visiting shareholders, distracting
prying government officials, withdrawing bonuses from the sales force, and
sacking staff. Somehow, the targets of this neat psychological device, both
visitors and staff, found it a huge comfort to see the representative of the IT
department getting a dressing-down, with a look of suffering on his face.