The Stupidity Vortex

Summer 1998

This isn't a Parsons shirt, but it might as well have been. I took to wearing this during the 1998 DTC initiative.

Things got really nuts under Broderbund. One of their Great Ideas was to implement a decision-making process called "FADE." I kid you not -- who comes up with these acronyms? FADE stands for something like "Focus, Analyze, Design and Execute" or some such nonsense. I liked "Fail, Avoid, Dump and Exit."

I nearly got fired for just pointing out how dumb this whole exercise was. I argued that someone had to stand up and say it, since everyone else was just dancing to whatever tune Broderbund played over the speakerphone. BB execs claimed that eventually the whole company would go through this worthless exercise and then we'd all make better decisions. I predicted that we'd never actually force everyone to go through it. 

I was right. Before we could get past the first layer of managers the implementers of all this were fired when TLC bought the company.