Alex In Wonderland

A Bastion Of Middle Class-ness

Once, a long time ago, I went to the BBC for an interview for rather a nice job as Executive Producer of a series of games they were licencing from their properties. Now unlike most of the games publishers at the time there were 2 ladies that interviewed me, one with a double barreled name. Any of you who know a little of my background will know that I have worked and worked and worked, shunning the middle class snobbery of university in favour of actually learning how a job gets done and then doing it. However these ladies, whilst impressed with my technical knowledge and obvious experience of managing expensive and complicated projects were rather put off by my lack of university background. One even asked "How have you managed to cope without going to university?" at which point, deciding I did not want to work for cultural eliteist people I replied "Very well thank you. I just learned how to do everything that needed to be done and my staff respected me for it. I find that university does not encourage free flexible thinking, but that you are taught to think along lines." The looks she gave me was priceless, but as I pointed out to her (in response to another question) "All of the projects you have here seem to be over budget and very late. I have never had experience of that before. How do you manage your projects when they get like that then?"

So I turned the job down. They asked me why so I told them. I said that whilst I felt I had a lot to offer the BBC I didn't feel they had a lot to offer me in return and that, whilst parts of the job were very attractive, I felt that it would be a backward step in my career. My real reasons were more simple. I disliked the people there who had all come from comfortable upper-middle class backgrounds and never had to work for anything they got. The BBC was a hobby for a lot of them, nothing more or less. Sure there were people there who did the work but, frankly, I never saw them.

They had a creche there that more or less operated 18 hours a day for the staff (great! only most of them had au pairs or nannies so it was less than half full when I saw it) and a very good canteen serving very very good food, holidays like you wouldn't believe, pension schemes, all the whistles and bells. But it was so soulless - seriously every games place I worked in there was banter, laughter, chatting, people coming over to your desk to discuss things with you, late nights where people would eat and work and talk. Everything had to be approved in triplicate before a decision could be carried out (hello late overbudget projects, bye bye dynamisism that made games development work) and there was a 9 - 4pm culture that sat totally at odds with the type of environment I knew (you worked until you were either asleep, it was finished or your partner dragged you off).

Even now when I see the BBC's future plans it is so clearly an organisation that is completely out of touch with the majority of the population it is laughable. Their expansion plans for this type of TV and that type of technology are so driven by a need to be seen to be forward looking that money (MY money) is being pissed away because there is no focus or concept of what they want to do.

I am never sure whether I should have gone there and tried to change things. I doubt I would have lasted long. I doubt I would have changed anything. Frustrating.