2

 

November 15, four months earlier

 

“It’s insane!”

Lee pounded the desk with his fist, knocking his outstanding-performance award to the floor. When he swiveled his chair to pick it up, his gaze caught the brass nameplate on his cubicle wall, Lee Brandt, DEDS System Architect.

It sounded impressive. He thought so, too, until his boss at National Aerospace, Barry Lafferty, had made the announcement a few minutes ago. The Digital Engineering Data System, DEDS, was about to become the Digital Engineering Data outsourced System.

As Lee grabbed his award, Dave Rothermel, a fellow worker on the DEDS project, stepped into his cubicle. “Did I just hear the word, insane?”

Lee studied him.

Dave’s pursed lips replaced his usual smile.

“Yes, it’s insane.” He used what he intended to make the catchphrase of his evangelistic campaign to save the soul of the project.

“If it’s any consolation, I agree with you, Lee. That’s partly why I intend to move on.”

Of course, Dave would bail. Like all hard-core programmers, Dave’s work philosophy was simple, write code, or shrivel up and die. Writing specifications and doing acceptance testing—that was not Dave.

It wasn’t Lee, either.

“Other than being insane, what’s your take on the outsourcing of our system, and what do you intend to do?”

“For now, I’m going to stay and try to prevent the management of National Aerospace from selling national security down the drain.”

Dave frowned. “Isn’t that a bit melodramatic? I’m leaving because I want to write code, not functional specifications. Why all the gloom and doom about national security?”

“We have everything from publicly available data, to proprietary data, and even classified data. Of course, we maintain separate commercial and military environments for the system, but we can’t give Bangalore Business Technologies access to all that data.”

“No, we can’t. But we’ll define all of it for them in the functional specs.”

“My point is…that’s not enough.” Lee’s voice sounded harsh, even to himself. “You can’t develop a working system—one that is so data-driven—from only a specification. To test their code, the BBT developers will need the actual data—all the data anomalies for all categories: National Aerospace proprietary, NOFORN, ITAR, and some of the classified data.”

Dave shook his head. “We won’t put that data in the development and test environment. We might dummy it up, but we’ll never give them the real stuff.”

Lee clenched his teeth. “Not until all heck breaks loose, like it’s sure to do when the new DEDS fails acceptance testing. Do you know where the system is going to break, Dave?”

“Probably while trying to process some of our weird proprietary data on the commercial side, or the classified-data anomalies when we host the system on the defense side of the house in their environment.”

“You got that right.” Lee shook his head and stared at the floor. “When the pressure is on to fix the problems”—he looked up into Dave’s face—”what do you think will happen?”

“What else, the CEO will get involved—you know…to rescue the contract—the insane contract that was his idea, as was his misguided outsourcing initiative.”

Lee stood. “And that’s when security will take a backseat to expediency.” Lee stepped towards Dave, and his voice increased in volume to somewhere between forte and fortissimo. “There will be security breaches…mark my words!”

Dave stepped back. “Lee, I know you’re frustrated. But you need to be careful, or you could lose your job.” He paused. “But you’re right about security. Two of our competitors were hit with fines and penalties last year for security infringements on outsourced systems, ones that went to offshore firms.”

“See what I mean.” Lee’s voice dropped a few decibels. “It’s insane.”

 

****

 

Lee started preaching the gospel of insanity to anyone who would listen. A few days later, when he verbalized his catchphrase to a reporter in the parking lot, it appeared on the front page of the area’s biggest newspaper.

Barry stormed into Lee’s cubicle and threatened to remove “System Architect” from his nameplate.

After Barry left his cubicle, Dave stepped in. “Don’t forget what I said. You could actually lose your job. Barry’s the kind of guy who would fire his best friend if he thought it would get him to the next rung on the corporate ladder. But…I found a job.”

Lee sighed. “Don’t mind me. It’s been a bad morning. But about the job—that’s great. Where will you be working?”

“Over at plant three…with the Laser Technology Team. Are you still planning to stay on the project?”

“I think so, at least for now. I’ll stay, write specifications, and watch the BBT contractors like a hawk.”

Dave extended his hand to Lee. “Well, goodbye.”

Lee shook it. “You’ll do well over there. Write some code for me.”