The saddest moment I experienced at recent conference came from sitting outside the gig at a boozer with a Barclaycard developer. You’d think that working in consumer finance would be fun. The opportunity to develop new services as derivatives from stuff like Wesabe for example must be huge. Apparently not. It seems the compliance police are all over Barclaycard web development. The net result? Nothing gets done.
I know compliance is important and have said enough about controls for regular readers to know where I stand. But when a function gets in the way of innovation then something is seriously wrong. Power misused is an ugly thing to behold.
I was struck by the profound sense of frustration experienced by this person. Geeks invent stuff. They solve problems. They love puzzles. Stifling the ability to engage in those activities is anathema. It’s like sucking out the oxygen they need with which to thrive. Any time organizations do that to anyone, productivity plummets.
The good news is that this particular developer knows when he’s beat. If our paths cross again, I expect he’ll be all smiles at a startup somewhere. Like the beaming ex-Merril Lynch developer I met the following day who was bouncing with energy.
As an aside: who said employee satisfaction doesn’t matter?
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