Peter Cudmore wrote:
>Thanks Ken
>
>With EDS's history of expensively fouled-up ICT projects for the British
>Government, there's something apt about a bunch of cowboys who don't know
>what a cow looks like...
>
>Cheers
>Peter
>
Don't start me. <pause> Too late, you did. H. Ross Perot founded EDS
after he left IBM, where he was the top salesman in their history and a
champion sales director: no mean trick. He knew how to herd cats but he
was a mad dog while doing so. That may give you a hint of the kind of
ship he ran when he was operating EDS, a consulting firm. Back in
'85-86 I was a contract analyst and procedures writers at AT&T during
its effort do create its own billing system. I worked for a then-small
(now very large) shop in central Jersey. A lot of consultants on the
billing project were EDS people. They invariable overdressed. They
were the easiest people to find even though the had instructions never
to share information, even if we were on the same project. They were at
their desks all the time because they had to sign out to get a bathroom
break.
They also had to live in community. It was like sicko religious order.
EDS would lease whole buildings in the area and warehouse their
employees. All of them were young, first job, highly paid, and made
quickly miserable. Stories filtered down about what happened in the
Perot-owned buildings from Friday night through Sunday: drunkenness and
at-will sex orgies where the only qualification to sleep with someone
was that you also worked for Ross Perot's 3-piece-suit concentration camps.
I don't know if the EDS people knew any more about what they were doing
than the guys who worked for smaller local shops. I know that the
turnover at EDS was fabulously high and fast. Even a lot of weekend sex
didn't compensate for a horrible job where the boss was a goon who
reported to a fink who reported to a member of the Texas Cheka.
EDS was the main reason I thanked God for Bill Clinton in 1992 when
there was that three-way race for President. If Bill hadn't been there
I'd have to have voted for Bush Senior rather than that little Dallas
bootclicker.
Ken
--
Kenneth Wolman
Proposal Development Department
Room SW334
Sarnoff Corporation
609-734-2538
I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.
-Douglas Adams
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