Hacker Cinema
The Secret of My Success
1987 · Film · 111 min
Directed by Herbert Ross
Brantley Foster, a well-educated kid from Kansas, has always dreamed of making it big in New York City, but once there, he learns that jobs - and girls - are hard to get. When he visits his uncle, Howard Prescott, who runs a multi-million-dollar company, he is given a job in the mail room.
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7 comments on Hacker News
I’m getting there, but I was trapped in a movie that wouldn’t be made for another five years… https://clip.cafe/the-secret-of-my-success-1987/why-are-wearing-a-suit-s1/
"The Secret Of My Success" with Michael J. Fox: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093936/
It's funny, silly, totally 80s, but one of the best inspirational business movies out there. It is my go-to when in the same demotivated funk.
I'm speaking generally, about large companies in the 80s and before (though I'm thinking of a film that 'documented' it and I saw on TV when younger... "The Secret of My Success" (1987)).
The outsourced / pigeonholed employee pattern you're speaking of is something that I recall learning about more in the early 2000s; so it's been around for a while but not widely known outside of the industry.
My dad was a chemistry professor. He used to say that he could have done any job, but the idea of being a "scientist" really excited him when he was young. From an early age, I think I kind of held on to the idea that you don't change who you are based on the title of a job. You can do any job, but you are still you.
I worked as a programmer all through school (working for computer services at the university, or for various labs). When I graduated, I ended up travelling a bit and worked doing odd jobs at a travel tour company in London. If you've ever seen the movie "The Secret of My Success" with Michael J Fox, then this is pretty much what happened to me.
I got stuck in the mail room one day and was appalled at the ridiculous process they had. When a fax (or more commonly in those days, teletype) came in, you had to route it to the director of the department. That person read the message and sent it back to the mail room. Then you sent it to the manager of the department. That person read it and sent it back to the mail room. After about 3-4 rounds of that, it would get to the person who actually needed to read it. One day we got a message from a hotel that there was a problem and that they couldn't accommodate the bus that was coming in -- in 3 hours. So I photocopied the teletype, sent the original to the director and the copy to the person who could actually solve the problem. Later the managing director came down from on high (literally) and thanked me for helping. It became my job to read all the incoming mail and make sure that the appropriate person got mail as soon as possible.
You should have seen the backlash in the company. People were incensed that this young kid was reading all of the mail and was making decisions about how to route important information. Someone even told me, "I've been working here 10 years and I've never even seen the MD." -- and not in a friendly way. But after that point the MD loved me and there was nothing they could do.
Another day, they asked me to wander up to the finance department to help with year end filing. Usually it took them 2 weeks to file all of the tax related papers for the year (because everyone was too lazy to file them as they came in :-P). Of course, I'd just spent 4 years learning every stupid algorithm on earth (the disadvantage of going to a school with a crap CS program) and I knew sorting :-). So I sorted the files. I took over a whole room and started putting papers in seemingly random order. People came up and asked, "Why are you doing it like that?" and I replied, "I don't know -- that's just the way you do it". It was sorted in 2 hours. The finance team thought I was a freaking genius and soon I found myself moved up from the basement to the fourth floor (2 from the top!). I refused to wear a suit, but the MD loved me anyway (and mostly everyone else hated me).
So I was working in finance and also reading everybody's mail when I noticed that the computer department (such as it was) was having very interesting conversations over internal mail. Long story short, they were embezzling money and essentially forming a plan to hold the company hostage so that they could spin off a separate company to perform services for them.
So I sat down and started writing up a plan to replace their ridiculous system with something that would actually work (and include a system to email faxes and teletypes to people... I mean, come on). Just basically doodling around with it in my spare time. Eventually I had the plan ready and was about to talk to the MD when...
I decided that I'd had enough of business :-) I went back to Canada and farted around in school for another year. Never did give the MD my report or tell anybody about the computer division's plot. The company is still in business something like 30 years later (and I think doing fairly well), so I guess it was fine. But the key is that it just didn't matter what my "job" was.
As you say, "Over time opportunities will pop up". Maybe in not such a ridiculous fashion as my experience, but they do. I've worked as a programmer for decades, but I also once quit my job, moved to Japan and taught English in a high school for 5 years. That job was also fun. There are hidden depths to anything you can do. Just keep in mind that there are some organisations and people who will just treat you like crap all the time, so avoid them. Other than that, you're as free as you want to be.
My favourite quote from Dr. Who was when someone asked who he was working for and he replied, "Work for? I don't work for anyone. I'm just having fun." I try to treat all of my jobs like that. I suppose I technically work for someone, but my attitude is that if I occupy myself with interesting things that benefit my boss, then nobody (important) will complain.
See film 'Secret of My Success' with Michael J. Fox for similiar plot. Great film.
I also highly recommend a couple Michael J Fox movies for this genre. Secret of my Success. And For Love or Money.
It's amazing how quickly things change. Paul mentioned the 70s as a heyday for big organizations, but I remember this going well into the 80s. You can see it in the culture. Remember how many movies were made that glorified climbing the corporate ladder? "Working Girl" with Meg Ryan, "The Secret of My Success" with Michael J Fox, "Big" with Tom Hanks. Those are just a few. There was an entire hollywood genre of climbing the ladder - movies that made it seem that making presentations with little arrows going up and down on a chart was the apex of human achievement.
I was in my teens during the latter half of this decade - I'd guess that at least half of the people who read hacker news are too young to have seen them when they came out. If you do watch them now, they'll probably seem as quaint as "Hair".
Don't ask.