Once upon a time...
... I went to work for a big shitty company (let's call them 'Big Tits PLC').

A couple of days after I arrived they needed volunteers to work on a project. Everyone else took one step backwards and so I, as a new graduate with no experience, found myself the only geek responsible for a product which an 8-man team had abandoned to leave the company and start their own outfit (which we'll call 'Small Tits PLC') in direct competition. Big Tits PLC could have sued them to oblivion, but as they'd just lost a similar and rather embarrassing court case, with lots of associated giggling coverage in the press, they decided not to.

So there I was, just me and *two* managers, with customers yelling down the phone at us to get the product fixed (which had been deliberately left to rot for a year while Small Tits PLC set themselves up).

I had no technical knowledge at all, so I trained myself, though *six* months later Big Tits PLC were kind enough to send me on a course to learn what by that time I already knew, and at that time they also added another geek to the team, who knew even less than I did.

Nevertheless, against all the odds, we fixed the product. It worked nicely, the existing customers were happy, and we were even getting interest from new ones. Result.

Not quite. One of the managers (the one who was senior to the other one) came in one morning and announced that (a) someone who we'd never met had taken the decision to discontinue the product and redeploy the team around the company at random; (b) in preparation we were being moved from our reasonably habitable office to a collapsing shit-hole which reminded me of Shangri-La Towers from the film 'Brazil'; and (c) he had handed in his notice.

I handed mine in too a few days later. The manager (the one who was junior to the other one) seemed surprised. Don't ask me why.

Small Tits PLC, by the way, are still going, and doing very well. I wish I'd joined them instead.
(><(((">, Fri 25 May 2007, 7:23, Reply)