Written Warning

I worked for Moore Stephens, now Moore, in the early 1990's. Sometimes I wish I had stayed as I would probably be their CIO by now. But it is what it is and I've had a good life and I wouldn't have met my wife of 30 years if I had stayed in London.

I worked on a sophisticated Shipping Accounting System called Voyage Master. Unfortunately, after a while, Moore Stephens decided that they didn't want to support it anymore and they wanted their clients to move off it. And during this time, I started work 2 hours early each day so that I could go to the  7 clients and support them and write systems they needed before they could move.

I finished an MBA in 1992, and I got a big promotion at Moore Stephens into the Not For Profit (NFP) sector, where I had written my thesis and I worked in the NFP sector and in software development. I wrote a proposal which I presented to my boss and to his boss, about extending Voyage Master to become an ERP system that could be used by all their clients. They weren't interested. I made an appointment to see the Senior Partner, and was asked to come to his suite, where I was treated like royalty, given some nice coffee and biscuits, and Mr Moore seemed interested in my proposal.

Unfortunately my boss's boss (the partner of my division) didn't like that I had gone around the chain of command and I got my only Written Warning in my life. Soon after that I resigned, and my partner called me in for a meeting. He asked me to stay. He said that he would increse my salary. He said that I could write the accounting system. I was young and I left. I thought that they would support me as I developed the system by myself in my new company, but they weren't interested in this; I should have asked if they would support me. I didn't and my life changed.

Many years later, in hindsight, I realised that this was one of my regrets in life. My partner's offer was his way of apologising. I could have stayed. I could have written the new accounting system and perhaps I and they would be one of the world's biggest ERP systems by now. But like I said, I've had a good marriage. I've done things I wouldn't have been able to do if I had stayed. And I've met people that I would never have met if I had stayed.