Project achievement

This was the broad transcript of my reaction to a competitor (a PIO) who has been taking away credit from us, treating us like were immigrants of no value, from third world countries and discriminating us at every step, often misrepresenting himself as our manager and treating us as though we were temporary workers over whom he has complete authority, when all he is, is our business competitor.

This reaction, coming after half-a-day long client demo, got me fired from my current project, but I'm glad I gave this arrogant PIO a piece of my mind.


"You don't have the basic courtesy to introduce the people who have developed 95% of the system?"

"In future please note down issues yourself. I am not your secretary to order me to note down issues."

"All your requirements have been hopelessly inadequate. We've done half your work for you, and you don't have the basic courtesy to so much as introduce us, talking to clients as if you've built the whole system?"

"I know that you've filled in 80 hours of time under FE when you had no work on FE. We've been working all along and this is what we get? Nothing's business. It's all personal."

"I've known consultants like you in the past. You guys are insecure."

"Everybody has issues with you. Ask *** or ask ***."

"We're not here to be treated like s**t by you."

"You are not my boss. You are another consultant just like us. ** is my boss. ** is my boss. I have spoken to them."

"I'm disgusted working with you. You are sick. "

Business Case

1. Discrimination based on immigrant status - You guys have just come here and have seen nothing. We have been living and where for many years.

2. Discrimination based on false representation of status in the organization. "You guys (ritesourcing, etc) don't have to attend the town hall (with Jan). We need to..." During the records retention week, "Its not relevant to you guys. Its mainly for us".

These constant reference to "you" and "us" are designed to discriminate. Considering that he is also a consultant like us, this may be treated as fraudulent impressions designed to discriminate.

3. Discrimination based on our technically predominant work content. Disparaging comments based on technical nature of our work, despite personal technical incompetence. Disparagingly calling us "these workers", as in "All these workers need to be taught those processes.", "All these IT workers from Tata and Infosys ... ". Representation of "coding" or "programming" as a menial profession as in "I shouldn't be doing all this coding"... Considering that the government of the United States of America has permitted us a non-immigrant visa based on specialized knowledge of technology and/or leadership/managerial capabilities in managing people with strong knowledge of technology, this I believe is a severe act of disrespect.

4. Intentional Misrepresentation - Misled us to believing that he is our supervisor/manager - "You guys are reporting to me in a way". Creation of a non-existent superior-subordinate relationship with unsuspecting vendors.

5. Thanklessness and a deliberate, complete eclipse of our pivotal role in the requirements gathering, design and system development, during customer interaction. When demanded an explanation of why we weren't even introduced to the 15 users of our system, the response was - "You weren't invited to the demo in the first place". By totally eclipsing our role, customer visibility of vendors has been completely eliminated. Not critical, but extremely disappointing.

6. Misrepresentation of work deliverables. Claiming requirements are "100%" complete without any benchmarks or validation, when they have often been hastily done, not thought through, directly passed on from the customer, and often incomplete.

7. Unsatisfactory performance as far as we are concerned - As far as we are concerned, he is our business analyst, somebody who is paid to interpret the customer's business and pass it on to us with value addition, producing as technical work products, clear, explanatory and updated specifications and/or documentation, enabling downstream personnel to do their jobs effectively. As far as our role is concerned, gifts of chatting up with customers are simply not of any use to us. Therefore, as far as we are concerned, performance has ranged from average to poor, though chattability index with customers about traffic conditions on I-75 might be significantly high. This poor performance is not due to ability which undoubtedly exists. I attribute it to unwillingness to work.

8. Unwillingness to accept responsibility for issues - It is a proven fact in any software system that up to 40% of defects can be traceable to the requirements and initial analysis processes. However, in his case, all defects are the responsibility of either the customer or the software developer. This is pre-CMM talk.

9. Hypocrisy - Raising concerns about utilization of our teams given that the person has himself claimed complete utilization on a business area for months when a business analyst's role is not more than 15-20% of any software project. Also, frequent unflattering comments about clients and other staff with words such as lazy, dumb and good-for-nothing, have raised doubts about personal integrity.

10. Deliberately subordinate treatment, both verbal and non-verbal, during managerial or customer interaction. Physical actions such as insolent gestures to note down items during client discussions are uncalled for and designed to "show us our place in the pecking order".