How The Mighty Have Fallen

Years ago the company I worked at, AMTEC Information Services, was purchased by EDS, Electronic Data Services. At the time EDS was a juggernaut, the world's largest data processing company, the behemoth that Ross Perot had created and which made him a very rich man when he sold the company to General Motors.

EDS was a scary place to work, but I moved up in the organization at the AMETC division, from a Graphic Systems Developer to Director of Software Development, being placed in charge of the development of our publishing, typesetting, graphic conversion, graphic database and optical systems (CD-ROM) projects. I hated being a manager at EDS as my days consisted of going to meetings and writing reports and talking to developers. What they did not consist of was writing code and I am, at heart, a coder. I love the creative process that is the heart of writing great software. I eventually was asked to take on leading all of the developers at AMTEC and instead asked to be demoted to Lead Developer over the typesetting and publishing software, a role which allowed me to return to coding on a daily basis. I even got to pick my replacement, which I thought was pretty cool at the time.

I left EDS on December 31, 1989 when my wife took her first job as a city manager and it required us to move out of the Los Angeles/Orange County area. Except for some consulting with EDS to clean up some loose ends left from when I departed, I never worked with or for them again, but EDS is not the kind of place you completely forget about. They were huge and tough and really ruthless at times and you had to be pretty thick-skinned to work there because they took no shit from anyone. So, how surprising to see yesterday on the Internet how far they have fallen.

Hewlett-Packard is in negotiations to purchase EDS for between 12 and 13 billion dollars. According to the EDS website, the deal is actually done. I never thought I would see EDS subordinate to anyone, but with this more global economy, I guess the times they are a changin'.

Wow, how the mighty have fallen.