Subjectivity and the blame game, 1st Draft

For seuth!

The day that you all feared or perhaps thought would make you cheer is at hand. I am hereby stating my intent to resign from the [Anonymous Software Monopoly]. The first question that might spring into your lovely heads is "WHY? Doesn't he have it all? Is he not fabulously well-off, adored by ladies young-and-old, well-liked by his fellow man, an all-round modern master-of-his-destiny?" And verily I must answer the affirmative. My pockets are well-lined with gold and I have a luxurious and sometimes frenetic social life. I could make a compelling case study in GQ.

However I must report a sickness inside me. It's not you, it's me. Where to start, the politics, the analysis, the process of validation that is so gruelling on the soul? The pretense of friendliness and openness in a hierarchy that is essentially one-way. The two-way mirror of the evaluation and rewards process. The delegation and exhortation. "One day, when you meet this and this and this criteria, and those core competencies... Why, you might be worth a damn!". The sheer de-humanisation that one feels when somebody calls you a "[Anonymous Software Monopoloy] asset". One also must not fart without an approved request that goes all the way to the VP of your group and come back down again like a sack full of hammers.

There is also the utter lack of satisfaction in my work. Despite all the Keynesian ideas of technology infinitely improving our lives, and the waterfall model of production, the fact is that more and more of your common, work-aged people, are choosing to distrust technology. I am one of them. I would not call myself a Luddite. I am somebody who wishes to live an unmediated existence, one that is not tainted by an alienation that threatens to block out the sun and everything around us. In the absence of need for technology, we create the desire. There are entire, lucrative industries dedicated not to satisfying people's needs, as the free market will drum into you, but to creating them. So much for the efficiency of the market!

OK, you're saying, you lied. You're saying it's me. But you can warm yourself in the idea that nothing is objective, and hence that this is my perspective, that it is in fact "me and not you". But I have had some extremely worthwhile experiences here. I've met some amazing people who I can count amongst my closest friends. Sometimes I felt that some of you were going to make me kill myself in the name of the almighty shareholder, but I'm still alive and stronger for it. Kudos, arseholes.

You might say that this e-mail is ambivalent. Well this is how the cookie crumbles.

Your love cookie,
Charlie Yonder