The Long, Hot Summer or Who set the house on fire?

I took some time off from posting anything for a few combined reasons. First, we had a long and warm summer, hence the title of my current post. Hot summer is usually associated with vacations, parties, travel, and relaxation. Then we had two great sports events: Euro '24 held in Germany and the France 2024 Olympic Games—outstanding organization and intense competition worth watching almost daily. Last but not least, I specifically wanted to understand where the IT business is going in Romania after the market Apocalypse trumpeted by some so-called experts. That being said, I am going to add a few comments about the two tragedies that marked the Romanian IT sector recently, one in Timisoara and the second one in Bucharest.

But before that, I would like to discuss the title I picked for this post. It resembles a 1958 great movie – The Long, Hot Summer, based on short stories by William Faulkner with a touch of Tennessee Williams's tone. The movie is about a drifter who supposedly sets barns and houses on fire, a pyromaniac allegedly, but in fact, wrongfully accused by the crowd. My point is that the culprit is not always the obvious one; in other words, Occam's razor shouldn’t be blindly applied.

The first tragedy took place in Timisoara at a large IT house, and I mean large globally and locally, employing thousands in Banat’s capital city. As it happens, I worked for over 9 years for that company's US branch based in Dallas, Texas. Atos is the current name of the company, formerly known as Atos Origin, which is listed on the Paris Stock Exchange. Atos and Cap Gemini are the largest European IT Consulting firms, both headquartered in France. Atos grew mostly from mergers and acquisitions, first by merging with Origin - the IT arm of Philips, then with the IT Services division of Schlumberger, and later acquiring KPMG Consulting in the UK and Netherlands. A diverse, solid, and well-run company for which I enjoyed working in the United States and Western Europe, specifically in the Netherlands. With employees coming from different backgrounds, I cannot say that there was a strong Atos culture, but more of a relaxed and enjoyable working environment. I am referring specifically to the years 1997 to 2005, when I left Atos US, moved back to Romania, and joined IBM. A completely different environment in IBM, but that is a different story.

I cannot comment much about the local Atos working environment in Timisoara, but I do not entirely believe some of the horror rumors regarding the company; first, having a good experience with the company and second, considering the quality of people living in that part of the country, which I know very well. I am not excluding the presence of a few rotten apples, but only on a small scale. What I know for sure, and I think I already shared that in one of my previous posts, is that at the corporate level, not only in Atos, top execs and HR global directors use the trick of Performance Improvement Plan to avoid paying large severance packages when restructuring actions are in place.

In some cultures, including Romanian culture, it is shameful to end up on a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP). In many cases, an employee in such a situation starts looking for a job outside the company; hence the company incurs restructuring reduced costs. Only a small percentage of self-decided exit means a small fortune considering that in some countries, the severance could be very large.

The local management must be held accountable for the tragedy, but corporate leaders, both regional and global, including global HR managers, share equal responsibility for pushing the local teams to execute such schemes. In other words, the entire company is culpable, not only the local management. On the other side, it is clear, for me at least, that the employee who took her life had some issues that should have been identified earlier and acted upon. This is a shame for the local colleagues, managers, and HR folks. Speaking from my experience, people with that level of frustration are known in the organization, and extreme acts like that could be avoided only by reacting as early as possible.

I encountered people in my organization who threatened colleagues and managers with physical violence, and others who went to HR complaining about their managers, even threatening to jump from the top of the building if we didn't replace that person.

Unfortunately, the legislation, the entire ecosystem around labor laws, and how they are applied, are still underdeveloped, basically at the level of the 1970s in the Western world. Even an excellent HR manager can't do much, is not even allowed to propose or arrange a psychiatric evaluation of the employee. In such complex situations, we looked for family and friends' support, and on many occasions, the frustrated people have a confident, colleague or a manager, who they trust, and we asked that particular person to help. But it is not an easy task to convince somebody, to make them admit they need help from a shrink.

The second case happened in Bucharest at a company that is not in the IT business but is using extensively IT skills and is more like a disruptor in the publishing business. Serious, scientific stuff they have digitally published for many years since 1996. It is headquartered in Switzerland but it sounds like the management could all be in China. From what I read, this case is a bit different from the first one. The tragedy could have been avoided if the ambulance would have been called after the first collapsing episode. Here the culpability resides more with the local management and even with the colleagues of the employee. Irrespective of the immense pressure from remote management, the poor treatment and harassment people are facing, the exhaustion, and the mandatory back-to-office ultimatum, there is no reasonable explanation for the on-site employees' reactions to what was happening. The tragedy is largely on them.

Two tragic examples, same simple question: will somebody be held accountable for these? People or companies? I am afraid not. And here is why.

Romania, as a state, doesn’t protect its citizens. Or let's put it this way, protects only a handful of citizens. We, the others are left out in the storm. Second, the judicial ecosystem is obsolete, politically controlled, and interest-driven, some call it corrupt. Labor lawyers and most of the important law companies specializing in labor conflicts get their cash from corporations, from large companies not from the IT employees who must pay legal services at 150-200 euros per hour.

Companies that are found guilty of breaching the labor legislation or GDPR or other misbehaviors are paying peanuts as penalties, 10-20k euros. Extremely few judges in the country ruled against corporations sanctions in amount of more than 50k euros. Now, look at what is happening in Western Europe or the US. penalties, for the same faults as in Romania, go up to hundreds of thousands of euros, millions of dollars, and so on. For a fine in Romanian lei, add a zero to the amount and change the currency to euros or USD—it should then be easier to understand the difference. 50 times more!

Romanian judges simply don't punish corporations as they should, so the corporations don't care. They pay minimal fines and behave as described in the two terrible examples above, all while being protected by outdated and ineffective legislation.

A good acquaintance of mine, I told his story in one of my posts, was looking for a labor lawyer some time ago. He went to the best-known and specialized labor law companies in Romania: X, Y, and Associates or Z, Z, A, B, C, and so on. Some were in a clear conflict of interest as they were defending the interest of the corporation he was against. Some others discouraged him and advised him to accept the deal because it was easier and faster. It would take years to conclude and they were not sure the result would be in his favor, they said. It all depends on the judge! That stunned him instantly. In other words, the decision is not dictated by the rule of law, but rather by whether a judge had a good night's sleep or is dealing with a hangover. Even worse, if the judge believes that his salary and benefits are sufficient compared to the Romanian market, he/she might think he was simply wasting his/hers time in court by seeking for more.

In the end, he picked a very nice gentleman to defend him from a well-known law firm. The problem is that a lawyer defending your rights should not be nice—anything but nice! However, he told my friend something interesting: that he is very happy to be on his side for this case, as most of the time, he and the company where he is a partner defend the rights of corporations against employee. This is very much an exception he enjoys. Initially, my guy was very pleased about that statement, but only later, toward the end, he realized that the lawyer’s experience and that of his company were not at all in my friend’s favor.

Together with my friend I had the pleasure, after this whole story ended, to be introduced to a true lion-lawyer, who is very active in social media and pretty well known. Unfortunately, I think us discovering him came a bit late in the game, but I am happy that labor-specialized lawyers like him exist, lawyers who can make corporations pay big bucks unveiling all their wrongdoing. When they win, of course!

At the end few thoughts about the status of the Romanian IT market based on my late entrepreneurial exposure.

We all recognize and LinkedIn is full of statements claiming that the Romanian IT market is suffering, but it is not collapsing. The reasons, internal and external, have been detailed by many, I am not repeating them. The GDP out of the IT business dropped 15% year over year and the job market lost, only in Bucharest, 500 to 1.000 jobs in 2023 and probably over 1.000 in 2024. How much is this? 2% of the overall mass of IT-skilled people in Romania? Reality is that we need to get used with the idea that the days of double digit growth have ended.

Based on my own experience finding seniors and mediors on the market is faster currently, more people are floating around, looking for assignments, even for short-term projects. Second, they are more willing to negotiate the conditions of engagement including the daily rate/salary. And they are willing to learn a few extra skills if needed. Is that bad? Future will tell but I am optimistic. Personally, I think is sign of a new level of market maturity.

PS1. An Apple study indicates that LLMs are rather weak in authentic mathematical reasoning. AI provides answers based primarily on probabilistic matches derived from the training it has undergone. Even a small alteration of the training data can change its performance. As I mentioned once, the new generation of IT people is safe for the next 30 years.

PS2. I thought along the years of many negative aspects regarding the entrepreneurship experience in Romania, but I never considered the cultural and/or age barriers. My mistake for not seeing it coming! In my defense, I worked with thousands of people from many countries and various age groups. But a local 100 people shop is a different animal than a large international corporation. Other management rules apply and I just learned that.