Corporate Politics

For about a year, I ran the Software Development Support Group at Atari; it was about eight people whose job it was to provide technical support to programmers, both inside and outside Atari, who were writing software for the Atari Home Computers. I traveled all over the country giving technical seminars to programmers, and my seminars were very popular. Atari International caught wind of these seminars and asked me to do one in London and another in Hamburg; these were also great successes, so they asked me to do it again in Hong Kong and Singapore. Once again they were pleased with my performance and asked me to do it again in Kuwait.

At this point, I decided that it was time to share the perks of the job. My subordinate Jim Dunion had handled my responsibilities while I was gone on these long trips, and he had learned the ropes well. I therefore assigned him to the Kuwait trip, and, after assuring Atari International that Jim could do the job just as well as I could, secured their approval.

All the preparations went smoothly until about a week before Jim's departure, when my superior, John Powers, mentioned to the Vice President of Software Development, Bruce Irvine, that Jim would be going to Kuwait. Bruce was furious and called both John and me into a meeting. "Why wasn't this cleared with me in advance?" he demanded to know. John explained that he considered it unnecessary because there was no budgetary impact of the trip: Atari International was paying all of Jim's costs. I backed him up with the information that there was a lull in our schedule during this time, so Jim's absence would not be felt.

"Nevertheless," the VP declared, "you should have informed me of his trip. Cancel it!" I was flabbergasted.

"But all the preparations have been made! We can't cancel it now! This will seriously hurt Atari International, and Jim has been looking forward to the trip eagerly!"

Bruce was unmoved. "You have to learn to go through the proper channels, and the only way to teach you is to punish you for your mistakes."

It seems that Atari was very concerned about going through proper channels. Here's a similar tale: One of the first things I did in my new position at Atari Research was to set up a weekly seminar on game design issues for all the designers in the company. My plan was to begin each seminar with a quick five-minute introduction to some interesting idea or problem, and then turn the discussion loose. The idea seemed perfect; there were three separate divisions of game designers at Atari (Coin-Op, VCS, and Home Computers) who seldom spoke with each other. After putting all the pieces together, I sent out invitations to everybody I could think of. A few days later I received a call from a manager at Coin-Op. He was displeased that I had sent the invitation to his designers, rather than solely to him; he asserted that such invitations had to go through the proper channels. He had therefore forbidden any of the Coin-Op people to attend my seminars.