Ah, I remember when I left my last workplace.
And they asked me how one of the access control integration features worked.
This was after I'd given them my "hand-over" time (chargeable because of the circumstances), during which they basically announced the intention to replace every system in the place with "their" systems. Which were universally just off-the-shelf products, in their default configs, losing almost all the features I'd had requested over the years and which the company were now reliant on, and each replacement system cost about 2-3 times more than the purchase price of the kit they were replacing, not counting their ongoing annual licence fees, etc. Oh, and with consultancy fees on top. If they'd had that kind of money available for projects when I was there, maybe they wouldn't be saying goodbye to me after 5+ years...
Well, I wrote the part that does that useful feature you demand, but which you couldn't find on the software feature list of your white-box, off-the-shelf junk that costs twice as much. Yep, it does basically what this story says - pulls in from AD, correlates with access control, does some jiggerypokery based on a number of complex company-specific conditions that you can't select in the interface, and then changes entries to make it all work automatically and seamlessly. A handful of SQL combined with a bit of scripting, but it worked.
Their techies didn't know how to support it.
Their engineers couldn't understand it (and, hell, it was only SQL and a script, come on!)
Their consultants couldn't match it.
They talked to the manufacturers of the system. A model that could do that existed, but required complete replacement of the whole system and software upgrades for everything, and didn't really work the same (I know, because I'd wrote integration scripts for that too), and was basically the same scripting in a prettier interface.
Then they talked to the access control people we used until they took over (who they were supplanting with their own contractors), the same people who put it in the original system and supported it. Guess what they told them?
"Oh, yes, we can do that - there's this guy who works for one of the places we support who wrote a piece of software to do that for you. We can put you in touch with him if you like, he's sold it to our customers a few times, and he's really good friends with our engineers."
(Guess who that guy was...)
For £1000, you can buy the license rights to my code so you can find ANY SQL coder to take it and do what they like with it.
For an extra £1000, I'll document that tiny little script I wrote so even non-programmer idiots can understand it (they'll try to change it and break it, obviously, but that's not my problem).
For £1000 a year, I'll provide support and "upgrades" for that script to continue to do what it currently does (new features or changes in working will cost you more, obviously).
Oh, clauses on intellectual property created as part of my work, you say? I refer you to the amendment in my contract that your predecessor put in after I insisted that they do so because that exact piece of code that I wrote was so valuable and they rescinded all rights to it. Leaving you only with "the right to use that particular version, on that system, for that company, without warranty or support, for free", which I gave them. Which is basically all you've got already - there's the script, it works.
I estimate they must have spent thousands at least fixing that, or doing without that functionality entirely (which all staff were dependent on). But it probably cost them 20x more than that to replace everything they'd seen with their white-box hardware, and they would have lost a lot of functionality and configuration along the way so it would be lost in the noise and chaos.
And, yes, every decision made while I was there was in collaboration with the bosses - when presented with "You can pay £10k for off-the-shelf that anyone can manage, or I can knock you up something equivalent for free with the caveat that nobody will support it", they always take the gamble knowingly. They saved TENS OF THOUSANDS by doing so, even if you include the above costs. Those bosses were really techy IT guys and understood the risks, but more often than not said "It can only be ten lines of code, or so, surely?" and then had me make it. We melded really well together.
When those guys were forced out, and the attention turned to trying to get me out (I was actually warned by one of those nice bosses it was going to be tried), I took on an IT audit (still have a copy of that), proved my systems were good, got them through to a good point of the year, and then when they failed to meet a single recommendation of the audit (that I aced) that was written for them, I left. And the only people left carrying the can were the "We can replace ANYTHING for less cost!" consultants that were brought in to replace me.
P.S. Had another job to walk into by that point, by word-of-mouth, via my ex-boss... Oh, he was good...
Biting the hand that feeds IT
