As I write these words, I look with amazement at a very smart-looking 305-page book; the 2nd Edition of The Confessions of an IT Manager, the complete collection of ‘Opinion-pieces’, both articles and blogs,  first written for Simple-Talk and Business of Software over a period of three and a half years.

Whenever anyone accuses me of not being a real person, it takes me by surprise. What else could I be: A committee like Shakespeare? The ubiquitous Al in ‘et al’ of scientific papers? No. I just have to use a nom de plume for my writings, but I still feel as real as anyone else who has used a different name for their literary output. After all, Mark Twain or Lewis Carroll both felt that when they banged their finger with a hammer, it hurt. They didn’t consider themselves at all fictional. I have to use a nom de plume for two reasons: Firstly, the publication of amusing reminiscences of life in the workplace is usually seen as a negative point on a CV, especially if one is taking a rather satirical view of one’s colleagues’ morals and abilities. Secondly, I would hate anyone to mistakenly identify themselves or a colleague in one of the characters from my stories. I aim to make general points about the bizarre working lives of IT people, not to make hurtful remarks about individuals, or to attack people who can’t fight back.. The Individual characters are all entirely fictional participants in the stories.

Having made that clear, I have to make a small confession. Phil Factor is, in a subtle way, a different person from me, his creator. In a sense, he soon took on a life of his own that is quite distinct from mine. He escaped from me: Phil’s reminiscences  are autobiographical, because I find it very difficult to write fiction, but they are stocked with fictional characters and disguised locations. Phil’s independent streak is so strong that he soon struck out on his own and became his own man. We all now speak of him as if he has taken on a separate existence. Like me, Phil is a comical figure in that he, like most people who are working in IT, cannot really understand what is going on around him. We work in an insubstantial universe of shifting realities, where certainties turn out to be illusion. Phil shares quite a lot with Conan Doyle’s hilarious creation ‘Brigadier Gerard’ whose autobiographical adventures are based on his quite false premise that he is a great and admired figure rather than a buffoon who causes chaos wherever he goes. Conan Doyle’s brilliant twist to the stories is that one ends up realizing Brigadier Gerard’s essential nobility. I hope that Phil shows the same virtues. He is a cynic and a survivor, but he is strongly guided by his conscience..

Although Phil is recognizably British, the single most important inspiration for this long series of articles is not a British book, but Mell Lazarus’ brilliant American novel ‘The Boss is Crazy Too’. This was based loosely on his experiences, early in his career, as an apprentice cartoonist working for Al Capp and his brother Elliott Caplin at their Toby Press, which published a range of comics such as Shmoo. He is now famous as the creator of the ‘Miss Peach’ and ‘Momma’ comic strips. For some reason, his experiences resonate with my own experiences of work in IT. There is a lot in common with all office work, and it transcends national boundaries and language. My other inspirations amongst American authors are are Philip K Dick, Don Marquis and Dorothy Parker , but also a brace of British comic writers such as Stella Gibbons, Auberon Waugh, Evelyn Waugh, P G Wodehouse, A A Milne, G K Chesterton and A P Herbert. Stylistically, my greatest influence is an Italian writer who didn’t even write in English: Giovanni Guareschi. .

Why should you read the book? It is because it is written for anyone who struggles to find the comic aspects of working in IT. You will find that almost every story and article in the book has a subtext, a hidden message: they are constructed like fables. The stories start with a theme, such as the way that we misunderstand our real role within an organization, and then I bring my own experiences to illustrate that theme. I see the book more as a textbook on how to survive in IT, and how to thoroughly enjoy the experience. If you have already achieved that goal, then you do not need the book, but you will still find it amusing to read, I hope. If you haven’t, then read it carefully, for Phil, though absurd, opinionated and gullible, is a cunning and tough character who disguises the medicine of sage advice, gleaned from others over the years, in a sugar coated pill of humour..

The Contents

• Contents
  3
• Introduction
  7
• Foreword
  9
• The DBA’s Demise – a recitation
  10
• Section I: On Learning to Love your Manager
  12
• Training Your IT Manager
  13
• The Septic Tank
  19
• The Yancey Men
  23
• Bunnikins!
  29
• Betting on Promotion
  35
• How to Prevent Initiatives
  39
• Irregular verbs for IT managers
  45
• Phrases with which to discourage ideas
  47
• Initiating a project with a Strategy one-pager
  51
• Looking Busy
  55
• Doing things – The Manual
  59
• The Incident of ‘The Two Johns’ – an IT Manager confesses
  61
• Section II: The Strange Business of Software
  64
• Going It Alone
  65
• The Walrus and the Manager
  69
• Click-A-Crematorium
  75
• A Chilling Prophecy
  79
• Talking Technical
  81
• The Diary of a Microsoft Marketing Man
  85
• Microsoft Boy announces his School Homework
  87
• The March of Technology
  91
• Clinging to the Flotsam. A Survivor’s Tale
  97
• Section III: Software Projects: the Good, the Bad and the Pitiful
  100
• Secrets of successful IT projects
  101
• Confessions of an IT Strategist
  109
• The Technically Minded Subclass and the Fog of Misperception
  113
• The Data Dialog
  117
• The Joy of NAD
  121
• Smoke and Mirrors
  127
• The Acronym Playpen
  131
• The Writing on the Wall
  135
• The Ghost in the Machine
  139
• The Sticking Page-Down-Key Incident
  145
• The Escape from Developer Hell
  149
• The Time Bomb
  153
• On the Trail with the Cowboy Coders
  159
• When the Fever is Over, and one’s Work is done
  163
• Section IV: Hiring, Firing and other acts of Villainy
  174
• Bogus resumes and unblushing lies: navigating the database hiring waters
  175
• IT Agencies and the Devil
  181
• The Stepford Geeks
  187
• The Terror of Technical Tests
  191
• The Interview with the Psychometric Test
  193
• Brown Shoes Don’t Make It
  195
• Technical Interviews and Tests Have Got to Stop!
  199
• Two stops short of Dagenham
  203
• The March of Time
  207
• Fired With Enthusiasm
  209
• The Whipping Boy
  213
• Hens that Crow
  219
• The New Man
  223
• Section V: What If …?
  228
• Had IT been responsible for the Creation
  229
• Had offshoring been responsible for Hamlet
  233
• Had Tennyson been a Technical Author
  239
• Had God been a Technical Author
  241
• Had the Sistine Chapel been Created by Committee
  243
• Captain Codd and the Simple Proposition
  249
• Section VI: Hiccoughs in the Working Day
  254
• I could do it in my Sleep
  255
• The Pub Lunch and Programming
  259
• At half-past three, it’s time for tea
  261
• Cha: Tea-drinking for IT Developers
  265
• Survival Tips for PowerPoint Boredom
  269
• The Joy of IT Meetings
  275
• Why do we call them ‘Bugs’?
  279
• The Ballad of the Tuple Relation
  281
• Common Law, and the Need for Restraint
  283
• Phil Factor on the Law
  287
• Santa’s SLA
  291
• Tomorrow will be our Dancing Day
  295
• The Data Center that Exploded: A Halloween Tale
  301

The Ebook of the second edition of Phil factor’s ‘Confessions of an IT Manager’ is available from here and the printed version is available to buy from Amazon.