Let me say at the outset that I've spent 40+ years in IT and Data Processing, and I have found that the veterans of our Armed Forces have frequently given me the most cogent and appropriate professional wisdom.
Back in the early 80's, I was a COBOL programmer at a fairly large insurance company. I'd write up to 1000 lines a day and then put it aside and go home. It was a carefree time mostly. However, as a young buck programmer, I had not figured out that there were no diamond ring in the bottom of the Cracker Jack, and I wholly believed that the system would work and was in the process of always getting better. Within a year, my real education of what a career in IT was to begin. A big part of that education came from my association with Jerry, the guy in the cubicle next door to mine.
Jerry spent most of the day smoking cigars and drinking coffee. He flaunted the dress code and always looked like he had been picked up at a halfway house. Jerry was there to do one thing. Somebody had lost the Autocoder compiler, and his job was to maintain the Autocoder programs by directly editing the Assembler code. The work was tedious, and no one else (probably in the city) knew how to do it. I had a girlfriend from high school that had a similar gig out in San Francisco and was getting $300 an hour.
Jerry had been destined to go to Vietnam as a computer operator. In those days, they were dropping mobile vans with an IBM 360 in it into forward positions for logistics processing. Jerry would be running one of those vans. The pictures started coming back from the TET offensive, and a Life Magazine published a picture of what happens when a VC rocket hits one of the vans. There was a 6-inch hole on one side and nothing on the other side-- just an acre or so of jungle scattered with punch cards. Jerry went to his CO and asked to be transferred. His only option was Infantry, so Jerry schlepped an M-16 for two years in the jungle. He could never crawl into one of those vans again after seeing that picture.
So one day, I was railing to no one in particular about some quirk in the bureaucracy-- I forget what it was. Today, it wouldn't matter. Back then, it was important. Jerry called me over.
"You obviously haven't learned about BOHICA, my friend," said Jerry.
"What's that?" I asked.
"I learned about BOHICA within 48 hours of landing in-country. I didn't understand it at first, but after a few trips into the jungle, I learned, and the more I grasped it, the more I found happiness. What you see here is a man who has fully embraced BOHICA and I must say that I am ultimately happy."
"What is BOHICA?"
"Bend Over Here It Comes Again," said Jerry. "Embrace it, and you will find ultimate happiness."
Today, I was on a WEBEX with my boss. Monday, I submitted a ticket to build a new server at our Global Data Center. The ticket sat for 24 hours, pending approval. I asked my boss. She said she had approved it. She found out the ticket had been routed to my previous boss (Who retired in October), and she would take care of it. 24hours later, it was still pending approval. I asked her what's up, and she said she'd take care of it. She created another ticket and eventually found that there was a whole chain of non-existent people who would have to approve the request before it could be processed. We were discussing this in our 0930 weekly status meeting when the approvals finally came through. She started railing at the ticketing system and the bureaucracy in general and asked me if I understood how wasteful and corrosive this was.
"You need to embrace BOHICA," I said. "Embrace BOHICA, and you will find happiness." I then told my story of Jerry and the van and the important wisdom he had imparted to me. Boss lady is about 10 years younger than me. This is her first time in middle-management. We left the call with her still not fully grasping the wisdom of BOHICA, but at least the seed has been planted.
Happiness is BOHICA? that's FUBAR unless you're a democrat who likes it up the gerbil cave...
A good principle to guide me through life: “This is all I have come to expect, standard lackluster performance. Trust nothing, believe no one and realize it will only get worse…”
Happiness is BOHICA? that's FUBAR unless you're a democrat who likes it up the gerbil cave...
I can understand why you say that. Being a pilot, you are used to taking control and working your way out of things. BOHICA is the philosophy of the guy whose life is forever dependent on an unthinking, uncaring bureaucracy whose motives are irrelevant and its power absolute.
The best example of BOHICA that I can remember is from the Stalingrad campaign. Paulus was surrounded and Hitler ordered a massive multi-day airlift of supplies to relieve the beleaguered 6th Army. Most of the planes were shot down. Most of those that survived ended up dropping their loads on the Russian positions. One plane did get through and did make a successful drop. Many men died trying to retrieve it. The drop contained 8,000 condoms.
I had a distant cousin stationed at Stalingrad. He was a fighter pilot and got shot down over Soviet lines. By a miracle, he was able to escape captivity and make it back to German lines, where he was promptly shot by the Gestapo as a suspected spy.
Jorge: One of my favorite BOHICA stories is that of Scott Crossfield.
Scott was sitting in the cockpit of the X-15 pursuant to a static test of the rocket engine. They had finally delivered the new engine after quite a bit of trouble. The engine was the one they'd been promised originally, but there had been all kinds of issues with it. Scott's job was to run the engine up and watch the gauges while the X-15 stayed on the ground, held in a test stand. Everything was going well until the new rocket engine exploded; everything behind the cockpit was blown up and Crossfield was engulfed in a fireball. They finally got the fire out and pulled Scott out of the wreckage.
Scott was non-plussed. He stated that he understood exactly what was going on; he'd help design the craft. He figured the cockpit was the safest place to be, and he just waited for the fuel to burn off for the guys to get in with the extinguishers.
