If you were an expert in your field and your manager was not, what would you do if your manager tried to act like he knew more than you in your subject of expertise?

Would you comply with their request even though they don’t know what they’re talking about, or would you try to argue your case?

In today’s story, one software engineer decides to comply in a way that fools his manager, but decades later, his replacement is confused.

Let’s read all the details.

Bucking a software trend in 1980

45 years ago, I spent a few months as a software engineer for a Midwest company that built industrial control systems… writing assembler for an embedded micro.

Management had gone to a seminar on “structured design,” the latest software trend, and got religion.

My manager, Jerry, called me into his office and asked to see my work.

He was not a programmer, but sure… whatever… here you go.

I handed him my listing, about a half inch thick, and forgot all about it.

His manager thought he knew better than he did.

A few days later, he called me into his office (which always reeked of cigarette smoke). “You’ve got some work to do!” he snapped, furious.

I looked down at his desk and my 8085 macro assembler listing was heavily annotated in red pencil… with every JUMP instruction circled.

“This is now a go-to-less shop. You’ve got to get these out of here.”

“Jerry, this is assembler code… that’s different from a high-level language.”

“I don’t want a bunch of God-damn excuses! You have two weeks.”

He had an idea.

Well, shoot. This is ridiculous.

I stared at the code for a while, then got a flash of inspiration and set to work.

Every place there was a jump, conditional or unconditional, I put the target address into the HL register, did an SPHL to copy it to the stack pointer, then did a RETURN followed by a form feed and a “title block” describing the new “module.”

The flow of control was absolutely unchanged, although with a few extra instructions it was marginally slower.

The machine was controlling giant industrial batching equipment, so that wouldn’t matter.

He figured Jerry would react one of two ways.

I dropped the listing, now almost two inches thick, onto Jerry’s desk, and went home.

He would either spot the joke and respond with anger, or (hopefully) be convinced that I had magically converted the program into a proper structured design application.

Some of those title blocks were pretty fanciful…

Jerry was convinced!

He bought it!

Suddenly I was an expert software engineer versed in Yourdon and Constantine principles, and the application made it into distribution.

Around the same time, I quit to work full-time on my engineering textbook and other fun projects, and forgot all about it…

…until about 3 years later, when I was pedaling across the United States on a computerized recumbent bicycle.

A new employee contacted him.

I got a message from a new employee of the company who was charged with maintenance of the legacy system, and he was trying to make sense of my listing.

I called him back from a pay phone in Texas.

He sounded bewildered. “Did you write this? What are you, I mean, you know, I don’t understand… like, what are you actually DOING here?”

He let the new guy in one what he had done.

“Ah! There’s only one thing you have to know,” I said, then went on to relate the tale of Jerry and the structured design hack.

By the end he was practically rolling on the floor, and told me they had long since fired that guy.

He now shared my secret about virtual software modules, and promised not to tell…

But it’s been almost a half a century so I guess it’s okay now.

That’s funny that an employee contacted him about this years later.

Talk about long running malicious compliance!

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

This person loves the phrasing about seminars.

Another person has a good question.

Another IT pro weighs in.

This person rants about managers.

When will managers learn to trust their employees?

It seems never.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.