I promised it. I’m gonna give it to you. It might seem exaggerated, but it’s not. At all.

How my capitalist job turned out being soviet hell

I’ve been working in the computer’s departement of this insurance company for 20 months now. This insurance company is a subset of a large French bank, which is owned by a subset of the Banque de France (sort of). This insurance company makes warranty on money loans ; banks all over France pay this insurance company to be sure the money they lend to small emerging companies will be back in the safe eventually. To put it bluntly, the insurance company makes (a lot of) money over money made over people willing to earn money by people whose main interest is money.

It should be a very capitalist job, even for a computer engineer. But the last half-dozen months have been quite disturbing. In a totalitarian way.

The head of the IT department has been fired, sort of. It has been replaced by random consultants (from a big French computing company) whose methods are rather unexpected.

– All of what has been made before was crap. All of what is going to be made now is going to be made differently, even if it implies loss of efficiency and productivity. (also known as « the 1917 revolution »)

– You are not allowed to know what the head thinks and wants. You just do your job. You aren’t smart enough to understand the System. By the way, you shouldn’t be able to do various tasks anymore. You’re a specialized worker from now. (aka « the proletarian revolution »)

– If a mere (productive) worker leaves, he/she won’t be replaced. His/her job will be atributed to another worker. Moreover, if the Board says you must achieve three tasks in the same time, all of them share the same level of priority. (aka « the quinquennal plan »)

– You are not asked to work better ; that would probably imply changes in the dogma. You are asked to work more. (aka « stackanovism »)

– It’s the Board’s job to make things work better, to make people happier. You ought to feel better thanks to the presence of the Board. Why wouldn’t you ? (aka « the russian army in Prague, 1968 »).

– The Board is always right. The System is always right. If you prove things are different from what the dogma says, you’re insane and will be eliminated. Anyway, even if you agree with the dogma, you will be eliminated sooner or later. (aka « Moscow’s trials »)

– Delivering the software to end users is a bourgeois ideal. Only the Board knows what is good for everybody. (aka « stalinism »)

Everybody understands why I leave ? (all of Milan Kundera’s works and Hannah Arendt’s The Totalitarian System were my main sources of inspiration).

Speaking of soviet union, here’s the Tetris Taxonomy.

Bye.