18 June 2020
Big Bang IT
by Don Urquhart
Some colleagues from back then have offered reminiscences.
Julian Annis – The Trainee
What excitement joining a large international team building, implementing then supporting “soup to nuts” a brand new system for a growing American bank! It was 1985, and three of us travelled to New York from London, a relatively new office for the bank. We were the first from abroad, to join one of the classes of six trainees starting every two months in the Downtown office. And we had an additional interest; the system being built was simultaneously being converted from a USD based system to multicurrency, suitable for the London office.
We were given rooms in the Hilton Hotel on Times Square until we found our own accommodation, but it took time for the bank and us to organise the banking arrangements by which we were to be paid. So for the first two weeks I lived on the £200 of savings I had converted to 200 US dollars since the pound and dollar were at parity! I remember eating almost exclusively slices of pizza from local take-aways, and it didn’t help that the weather in January was bitterly cold and windy.
Following the usual American work ethic, we worked six months without a day off, four hours a day in the classroom learning programming languages, and eight hours in the datacentre, supporting the Bank’s technology throughout the world, and running the overnight batch jobs. After six months training we joined the System Development department in Midtown, then returned to London to re-join the burgeoning IT department of the London branch.
The data centre was a whole floor of an office building in Wall Street. The floor was full of IBM mainframe computers, perhaps twenty feet long, three feet wide and six feet tall. But these generated a lot of heat, so the other machines on the floor were air conditioners. In the midst of all these hot whirling machines were two brightly lit islands for us human operators. The computer operators sat in one island, a horseshoe of picnic tables crammed with system consoles and telephones, noisy and hot, with cables snaking off the back of each table. The operators watched the consoles for each mainframe, A, B C etc., and reacted to any problems or routines. The telephones would be ringing constantly during the day with people asking for systems support. Meals would be ordered in from local take aways, and eaten at the desks, adding to the mayhem. During our time in the Datacentre, a new, air conditioned operators suite was built – heavenly cool, quiet and smart. The other brightly lit island was “Tapeland”, a small space surrounded by about thirty machines, on which circular reels of magnetic tape had to be loaded. Consoles would show which numbered tape was required on which machine, and the operator would run to the adjoining tape library, bring back the tape and load it on the appropriate machine, then return it to the library when the job had finished with the tape. This area was even hotter and noisier, and Hawaiian shirts were the fashion here!
During the last two months of the training programme, two of us would be promoted to be Lead Trainees for each of the shifts in the datacentre, and I was allocated to third shift, from Midnight to 8 am. The main work for our shift was to run the overnight batch jobs. There were hundreds and hundreds of them, and the number was growing weekly. One lead and one assistant operator would monitor the consoles of the mainframes, see which jobs ended normally and cross them off the green stripe paper copy of the overnight batch sequence. Most jobs would automatically kick off dependent, following jobs, until the sequence was ended, in time for the start of the next office day. If any jobs ended badly, the assistant operator would complete a brief “Abend” report and pass it to the shift supervisor, who would read the programme notes to see whether she could fix the problem herself. If not then she would pass it to the assistant trainee to call the programmer and ask what to do with the failed job. The job required good memory and sharp focus for hours on end, so we were all wrung out after handing over to First Shift and heading out into the bright July sunshine against the steady inflow of fresh faced office workers.
To make changes to the Production system, system developers had to present our changes on one particular day each week to the Production Manager; business reason, which programmes had to change, test results. She was a formidable woman, quite short, impeccably dressed and very astute. She could smell bullshit a mile off, and would readily refuse permission for a change.
When I was supporting the Financial Controllers systems, we implemented a change over an Easter weekend. It was a popular weekend, since London and New York would be shut for the holidays. Unfortunately something went wrong when the change ran at night and I was telephoned at home, as was usual. At home we were provided an extra telephone line, and green screen monitors to access the bank’s mainframe computers. Mine was housed in a cupboard under the stairs, so I spent all Easter Saturday hunched over the screen under the stairs, on the phone with my contact in Controllers to resolve the issue.
In the late 1980s I moved to the small but growing Frankfurt office. West Germany, as it was then, did not allow financial data processing outside its borders so a cut down version of the massive New York computer system was created for Frankfurt. This is what I supported and developed for the local branch. The toughest part was supporting a weekly upload of changes derived from the teams supporting the original New York version, and applied to our system. Lots and lots of night calls from trainees and supervisors in the Datacentre!
R Vazey – The Contractor
It was my first job in the City when I walked through the hallowed portals at one of the pre-eminent bulge bracket firms in January 1986. This was just after Big Bang, so it was an era of minimal regulation and established process. I had come from the world of software development, using industry standard development and testing methodologies. Imagine my profound surprise when I realised I was in an environment where the Stetson was the main item of couture. The department was very small, with 4 or 5 permanent members of staff, supplemented by contractors, of which I was one of the first. They had engaged in a graduate recruitment drive, the first fruits of which were undergoing indoctrination and training in the New York, home of the bank. We were developing software at a fierce rate and the embedded niceties of standards, etc, had been laid aside on the altar of expediency. Code was developed on the hoof and tested in production, with us supporting teams across the product and process range. While this would cause a look of immense consternation in more established development environments, it actually worked and was a precursor to what would become Agile, though with even less formality. Over the course of time, we were supplemented with the returning trainees and the successors, a new influx of contractors and experienced hires. The team developed and necessarily split into parts dedicated to particular areas and started to look more like an IT department that one would see now. Standards and methodologies were being implemented which made the process a little more comfortable. However, I miss those days of developing stuff on the hoof and the inevitable camaraderie with people across the Firm, some of whom are still friends today.
Jim Ashton – The Compliance Guy
One bright summer’s afternoon, unbeknownst to me, a crisis was unfolding.
One of my daily trade scans had unearthed a tasty bond trade that would have raised the eyebrows of any self-respecting SFA (as it was then) inspector.
My good friend Paul popped round from Compliance and asked me to join him and Kerry for “a quick chat about a bond trade”.
It turns out that the bond trade was way into the grey zone that separates what is and is not legal. Paul was very concerned. It got even tastier when it was discovered that the Head of Bond Trading, a world-famous javelin thrower, was the author of the trade.
It was decided that Compliance would pay a visit to said Head of Trading and I was volunteered to go along to keep Paul company in case the javelin thrower had any awkward questions like, “why are you monitoring my trades?”
The time arrived. Paul and I met up and went to the meeting room. Paul was sweating and looking distinctly uncomfortable. I was there because I was told to be but was not that bothered. After all, as a contractor, I knew that one day my time would come and today might well be that time.
In total contrast to Paul’s state of high anxiety, the javelin thrower entered the room with an air of complete serenity and oneness. He was a big man. He was accompanied by a giggling woman who served no other purpose than to sit on his knee, giggle and occasionally whisper things into his ear.
Paul was asked to explain why the meeting was called which Paul managed to do. I was asked to explain how and why the trade was flagged which I did.
Paul then explained that the potential consequence of the deal was a fine, so the trade had to be unwound.
As soon as Paul had finished explaining, the javelin thrower smiled and asked, “how much for the fine?” He went on to say that there was no way he was unwinding the deal because the loss in commission was totally unacceptable. Paul had the good sense not to respond to this statement.
He then asked Paul how much the fine would be because he would pay for it from his commission. Paul could not answer the question, so the javelin thrower told Paul to go away and not come back until he had the fine amount.
At this point, the javelin thrower and his giggling companion got up and left the room hand in hand.
As far as I know, the trade was never unwound, I never heard anything more and Paul did not get sacked.
All in all, a win-win-win for everyone.
