Confessions of an IT Manager_Phil Factor

66 Going It Alone
I had it working, and was pretty handy with assembler code. I was so
pleased with it that I gave it away free to the CP/M users group.
I quickly realized that it was very popular.
I had stumbled on a simple secret of success. This program had all
the virtues of successful utility software in that it solved the problem of
guys in a crisis with a thick wallet. I was also the first to turn this
particular, simple process into a product that anyone could use.
Quickly, I tidied up my public-domain code and started to market it via
a friend who owned a local computer franchise. In those days, it was a
simple matter of buying advertising space in the PC magazines; there
were only two of them in the UK at the time.
The resulting success of this code kick-started me into an IT career,
and very soon I had a software house with a staff of twenty, writing and
selling all manner of software products such as payroll systems,
customer databases, and accounting packages. It all seemed terribly
easy.
It wasn't.
Have you ever played a computer game where you stand there and
ghastly slavering monsters come charging at you out of nowhere, one
after another, making blood-curdling noises? You are required to stand
there killing them one after another. I can't play them: it is just too
much like the real life experiences of a successful software vendor.
These slobbering, warty monsters come with ghastly inscriptions
such as VAT Inspector, Solicitor, Competitor, Employee, Journalist
and Taxman tattooed on their receding foreheads. Nobody really likes
success in others, least so the public-sector employee. These creatures
employ subtle malice to cause stress and create havoc.
On top of that, one has to contend with the notoriously cyclical
nature of the IT industry. Everyone remembers the good times in IT.
The good times are wonderful. I shall never forget, at one Computer
Exhibition, looking up from our stand at the sea of faces, cheeks aglow,
firmly intent on buying our software. We had to press friends and
relatives into manning the stand to take all the money.
Few people, however, remember the bad times. But they come with
the inevitability of the grim reaper. At the same exhibition centre, a
year or two later, we had to pretend to talk to each other on the stand to
maintain the illusion of vibrancy and cheerfulness; the occasional