It is not every day that you get to argue on topics like Prisoner's Dilemma and Logic and Propositional Calculus, especially if it were between you and the other person is a Cognizant senior manager.
Before I go into our argument let me explain the situation at hand.
The times were hard, we all commit mistakes in our life, we screw up things that is of utmost importance to others. And we committed a terrible mistake, after nearly getting stranded in the office for over 18+ hours (which started 10 Hours back at my colleague's home) on a failed billing cycle on credit card processing (again a wonder Cognizant software created for free and hence you can guess the way it worked) and about 2K+ Credit card records to be updated we commited a mistake in the query we ran, because of the lack of knowledge on the business rules of the system that we dealt with. We stayed in the office without even burshing our teeth and even forgetting about hunger and thirst because we needed to finish the job or get grilled. And with an asshole manager on our back who demoralizes us more than encourage us we were left with little choice.It seems that the word of my acts reached the ears of my senior manager. Later that day my colleague and I were down at the cafeteria having some dinner (sitting late nights in this shit job is something I had to get used to), we were discussing on the events that happened and my colleague was also surprised by the fact that I had raised my voice against a Manager.
Little did we knew that the query we were about to run was about to change our lives. About couple of weeks after the presumed successful completion of the much hyped billing cycle (due to the new Cognizant Credit Card Processing software implemented) the problems came up. It seems for every rejected credit card we deactivated every single user for the credit card account instead of checking if the user was actually applicable to such a deactivation. The company commonly called the "Big Red" was pissed off by our actions decided to sue my client for 1M $, well this figure was told to us do not know how true is it, but this is what I heard from the Managers (seasoned liars). Anyway things do not end there, it seems one whole weekend was spoiled on this. And to add to the agony we were shown as criminals and black marked.
Then we even had one of those reprimanding speech from the Senior Manager. Who said "Our Application is Money and Other applications are just felt money", Hell yeah, who the fuck cares about human beings under going suffering without sleep to complete the job you asshole. And if this were not enough we were all made to stand in front of all the other teams in the same account and made to publicly apologize for the Mistake we committed (as though we had killed a human being) just like we were punished back in school.
All of this was a bit too much for any profession for that matter, but nothing hurt me more badly than the next event that came up. It seems that there was an incident "Post Mortem" report send to my client. They did a big mistake, they showed this report to us. In this report they mentioned the name of a colleague who left the company and put the blame on this particular person. The whole team raised their voice against this, I did not stand down either, I had for the first time raised my voice against a manager and fought with them fiercely for the injustice done to my colleague. This was the last of what I expected from a company that preaches high level of ethics.
I was telling my colleague how the situation was very similar to the problem of Prisoner's Dilemma. In this scenario the Prisoners where "my team" on one side and "managers" on the other, the form of punishment here is the client not providing us with the projects or proper pay is the punishment, of course the punishment to the one of the parties is less if the opposing party is trying to put blame on the other, with us given no say on the topic, they got the lesser punishment.
In comes the Senior Manager, and this guy is not a complete idiot compared to the other two. He was an opportunist and business minded individual who "Does things to get things done", it seems that he wanted to have a chat and this is where our story begins.
Senoir Manager (SM): So you guys having dinner?
Me & my Colleague: Yes
SM: Let me also order a dosa.
Me: OK
(SM leaves to order a Dosa)
Me: This is going to be very interesting (I said to my colleague)
(SM Gets the Dosa and comes back, My Colleague and I are half way through the dinner)
SM: So tell me what is going on?
Colleague: Well the report did mention
SM: OK, what else?
Me: We need not have blamed the incident on one single person, you should have mentioned all our names as responsible persons for this incident.
SM: Ok
Me: Also the learnings from the incident were not right. We did not have adequate knowledge of the system, we cannot test a system that is out of our scope and the team was under fatigue. These were not mentioned.
SM: OK, I have understood that we have some disagreements.
Me: I never thought a Cognizant company that preaches so much ethics, will do such unethical activities.
SM: In this business when we say ethics we have to take it with a pinch of salt. That is how things are in this industry.
Me: OK, but I have never seen such a scenario where in we blame a person was non existant.
SM: All I can do is take in your consideration make the appropriate changes in the document and redistribute it.
(This was a lie, I knew it, Managers are good Liars)
Me: But then this has already been shared with the client. So how will the change be reflected.
SM: See I have come here to talk with you guys, to make you understand this situation and if that will smoothen things out then that is what I am here to do.
(I told you this guy does things to get things done)
Me: You see this is not the place I have seen software development being done, in OSS we do have such scenarios but we never blame the person this is not in the picture.
SM: You guys were shown a document that in other circumstances would have never been shown to you at all. Most companies hide such things and you should appreciate the fact that you are being shown this document.
Me: We do appreciate it...
SM (Agitated): you guys are not trying to appreciate it.
Me: We do...
SM (Even more Agitated): No you are not...
(Ok you wanna play hard lets get things rolling you little pip squeak)
Me: But this is not the way this has to be done. Can't you see this is the one of the best case of Prisoner's Dilemma.
(By this time we both finish our dinner wash our hands and meet at the exit, all 3 of us take a walk to the car park).
SM: See you should understand all decisions are not simple. They are not some case of prisoner's Dilemma or Logic.
Me: I am a programmer and I always see problems from a logical perspective and to me all decisions are pretty much logical decisions derived from conclusions. You just need to evaluate the situation correctly.
SM: It is not as simple as it seems. Ok let us take an example here.
(This is where things get real interesting and trust me I know it his hard to corner this guy in an argument)
Me: Well ok.
SM: Suppose you were the owner of a Hotel in a city and you have the best chef in town. And most of your income comes from one regular client of yours.
(Ok this guy just applied Pareto principle, on my hotel business).
Me: Ok
SM: One fine day, there is a food poisioning in the hotel and unfortunately it also includes this client of yours too. What would you do now?
(OK, this is where he wants to put forward the argument, he has stated the conditions and constraints)
Me: Now the first thing I would do is to get to know the root cause of what caused this poisoning. It could be bad food or water, we wouldnt know unless it is investigated.
SM: Why couldnt it be the chef?
Me: Well he is the best chef he possibly cannot make a grave mistake like this.
SM: But what if he did and your client demands action to be taken?
Me: Action like fire the Chef?
SM: Yes
Me: I wouldnt do that.
SM: This client brings you most of the money, if you lose your client you loose your business.
Me: But firing the Chef wouldnt solve the problem now would it?
SM: Then what would you do?
Me: I will try negotiating with the Client, as of now I do not know if the Chef delibratly poisoned the client, if he did so then I will have no choice but to fire him, but if it were due to some other reasons then I need to reconsider my decision.
SM: But then you will lose the client, and then the client wants an immediate action and you do not have time.
(This is where he was trying to corner me, a typical answer would be to blame it all on the Chef's assistant and fire him, show an action has been taken, client is happy, Chef is getting the pay and I am happy. But then is it worth putting the blame on an innocent? Like what my former company did?)
Me: I will keep the chef and lose the client
SM: Then you run out of business
(According to Pareto Principle yes I did, but then...)
Me: If I fire my chef I lose the best chef and since any chef I hire will not be as good as my current chef (as he is the "best") I lose my whole business instead of one client. I can live with this loss, my Hotel is run on reputation of my chef's dishes not by one client who bosses me and tells me how to run my business.
(This is what I love about Discrete Mathematics especially on Logic and Propositional Calculus)
SM (Stunned...): But...
Me: As you said he is the best Chef and I believe no one else can replace him in his skills, so I would not let him go unless a full and through investigation is completed.
(The guy stands there searching for words)
SM: Now Imagine that you have your Sister's wedding on the line in the income is very crucial
Me: As I said I have nothing to lose by losing the client, I stand by my Chef assuming that he did not delibrately poison the food, I will not hold my Employee as a scapegoat. It my Chef that actually gives reputation to my Hotel.
SM: I really appreciate you for the decision you have taken, if you were ever to start a company I will join that. And I am not joking about it.
(Must have been another lie)
Me: But that is what I would do, as I said to me it is just a simple logical decision
SM: Unfortunately in Business the decisions aren't that simple, we are in a corporate ditch and we all get dirty.
Me: I can see that.
SM: You did not have to go to your Manager and fight for this matter.
Me: We never did actually, we just send a polite mail stating these matters and this was not the way that things had to be done, it is they who called us for the meeting.
SM: I see...
(We bid goodbye, it was nearly 9 PM, he was going home and my colleague and I were walking back to our cubicle.)
Well I still do not know if the Hotel Example was a good representation of this scenario as another one of my Colleagues told me in another discussion. But it was certainly something that did make an interesting conversation.
