In 1969 or 1970, freshly graduated from university with a
degree in philosophy, I joined PriceWaterhouse & Co as a Chartered
Accountant in the City of London, the ‘Square Mile’, located between the Bank
of England and the London Stock Exchange.
At that time, PriceWaterhouse & Co was probably
the leader of the ‘Big Five’ accounting firms that controlled the British
economy and working out of PW’s head office in the City of London, our clients
were the nation’s largest and most prestigious corporations.
As auditors, we had the legal authority to look at, to
question and to examine whatever we wanted – from petty cash vouchers and bills
of lading to the confidential minutes of the latest meeting of the Board of
Directors.
Traditionally. PW&Co and the other Big Five
accounting firms employed men who had studied accounting, sometimes at
university but more often at trade school or night studies. In the late 60’s
however, they decided to employ men [1]who
had a broader education, in the humanities, and who could therefore more easily
interact in Board Rooms with the Captains of Industry.
PW&Co wanted to understand its clients’ management systems; how and why things
worked; what were the rules and the checks and balances. It was a time when
accounting firms graduated from mere ‘number crunchers’ to being Management
Consultants. That’s why they hired an innumerate philosophy graduate like me to
be an auditor.
So, after cutting off my long hippy hair, swapping my
tie-dyed outfits for a pin-stripe suit and cutting back on the pot – I entered
the world of high finance and corporate respectability.
In my early twenties, dressed in a 3-piece pin-stripe suit
and a bowler hat, and armed with a tightly folded umbrella and all the
arrogance and ignorance of youth, I and my like-minded colleagues were let
loose upon the bastions of corporate Britain.
The early 70s was also a time when large international
corporations were switching to the new ‘computer technologies.’ Suddenly, with
little preparation and even less understanding, the multi-national corporate
clients of PriceWaterhouse & Co and other large accounting firms
were switching overnight (usually on December 31st) from Dickensian
hand-written ledgers to vast spinning disks of computer tapes. It was a time of
sheer unbridled financial and management chaos.
Into this mix of turmoil and technological anarchy stepped an
army of young, ignorant and arrogant young men who, because they had been made
moderately familiar with (1970’s) computer technology, thought they understood
and could fix everything. We were the young Gods.
For the two or three years I was employed at PW&Co,
we swaggered through corporate Britain. The established corporate executives,
bewildered by the new technologies, were hapless in the face of our superior
and dismissive overconfidence. We made impulsive and ill-informed decisions,
and our elders and betters complied meekly. We moved fast and broke things,
carelessly
The chaos just got worse, and most historians agree that the
1970s was probably one of the most disastrous decades of the 20th
century.
So, when I look at Elon Musk’s chainsaw wielding young thugs,
I catch an embarrassed glimpse of my own misspent youth.
But you know. Somehow, we survived …
So far.
Patrick
[1] I
use the term ‘men’ because women, in those days, were only employed as
secretaries and tea-ladies.
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