The curse of always knowing what's going to happen next

I have a problem.  That problem is that I'm always right.  And I mean, always.  The only times when I'm not right is when I don't offer an opinion.

This rightness manifests itself in a number of ways, some quite bizarre, so uncanny I even shock myself... like the time I claimed I could predict 20 coin-tosses in a row, and did; in fact I haven't lost a coin-toss since...  Freaky stuff.  It's almost enough to convince myself I'm trapped in some Truman Show-esque existence, that there's some kind of cosmic joker out there who twists the universe so as to amuse or annoy me (90% of the time it annoys me).

The reaction of others to this power of mine varies quite a bit.  It starts off as scepticism, then open contempt ("stop being so cynical"/"stop personalising everything"/"stop being pessimistic"), then becomes an uneasy respect as they finally realise that everything I predicted has actually come true.

(My Dad has always claimed he can predict plane crashes.  I can't do that.  But I am 3 and 0 on recent train crashes... [hang on, where did that American-style sport score come from?  American sports are about the only ones I don't watch...])

That whole "pessimism" thing is a charge that gets layed at my door quite a lot.  Usually by people trying to win an argument.  "Oh, well, I was just trying to be optimistic..."  O.K. then, let's all ignore reality, whee!

At one former place of employment, back in the days when I got near universal good reviews - i.e. before Job No. 7 - I became especially famous for it.  "Hmm, we need to find the holes in this plan..."   (I'd then enter the room)  "...ah perfect, can you look at this?"  Then, one day, in my annual review, I saw the phrase describing me as "the most optimistic person in the team"; WTF?  I'm famous for being grumpy!  Explain yourself!

"Ah yes, but I've never once seen you give up on something; you always see it through to the end; you always find a way."  Damned straight, tell it like it is!  Optimists are just flakes!  Us pessimists are where it's at... (It's true that a pessimist is never disapointed, but it's also true that an optimist is never plesently surprised...)

A typical example of my prescient abilities came at Job No 5, the very last thing we did was a project that only existed due to the client faking an estimate from a well known software services company.  The client tricked my manager at the time to say "we can beat that".  We couldn't...

The team consisted of me and two "junior" developers.  I put the word junior in scare quotes because one of them outranked me, and was paid more, but still had to listen to what I had to say.  The real junior developer was a bit panicked by the scale of the doom that lay in front of him, he could see that the work couldn't be done in two days, no matter what the estimate said.  This panic manifested itself in him rushing everything, quite often duplicating things in the process, a classic case of "more haste less speed".  So far, so standard, every "enterprise" software project has the same problem; the difference here was that the client was going to directly use these components, they were visible to them, not just implementation details.

So I put on my mentoring cap (it's not a real hat, although I've often thought I should get one), and gave him the benefit of my experience.  "You see," I said, "now they want everything done in two days, but when they realise it can't be done in that time, they'll forget they ever asked for it in two days and instead will ask us, with the implication being that it's our fault, why there's so many components; the answer 'you asked us to rush it' won't be accepted."

"But that's what they said, that's specifically what they said!?"  He said, in a mild panic, as was his style.

"Mark my words, in two months time we'll all still be here.  We'll come to work one Tuesday morning, and Julie will say 'err, can you guys give us a explanation of what all those items actually do, you know, which requirement they're connected to, in some sort of spreadsheet?'"

He looked in shock, and didn't say a word.

Two months passed, we were all still there.  It was a Tuesday morning.  As soon as I arrived (I was always the last one in, no-one seemed to mind), Julie spoke.  I knew what was coming next... "Err, can you guys come into a meeting, thanks?"

Wasn't quite what I was expecting, so we went off and sat down.

"Err, can you guys give us a explanation of what all those items actually do, you know, which requirement they're connected to, in some sort of spreadsheet?"

The junior developer sat there, shaking, looking at me in a kind of fearful awe.  I sat there nodding my head, yep, not a surprise.  I'd seen it all coming.  I wasn't doubted again.

It was a proud moment, months later still, when I was predicting the downfall of the entire client engagement.  "Well, going by your record, we're all fucked."  I'd saved a soul from the madhouse, he'd truely gained enlightenment.

It was a year later that I issued a prediction which would be significant to the current problems.  I'd broken my usual rule of refusing to talk about property.  I was talking, as coincidences would have it, to the same bloke.  He'd issued the standard line about "property will always go up, it's supply and demand isn't it, the population is growing too much..."

I issued my standard rebuttal, that supply and demand refers more to the amount of available spending power than it does to number of people.  You can be as overcrowded as you like, but a £300,000 house for a £30,000 worker is never going to be sustainable, and it certainly isn't going to grow in value forever.

"Ah, but why are the banks lending, they know more than you," he said.

"The banks ultimately don't care, they fund the mortgages from wholesale sources; they make money on volume not quality."

"They don't all do that, do they?"

"No, but the ones that don't are the ones who only offer four-times mortgages; all the ones getting the press, like Northern Rock, are the ones who take the wholesale funding approach."

Here was the key issue, this was the first time I had to think about the logical consequences of all this.  By previously not getting involved in these debates, I hadn't really thought it through.  I'd known it was unsustainable, but the exact nature of the end-game wasn't on my radar.

"But as long as they can get cheap money, it's fine, surely?" he said.

"It won't last, when the wholesale funding stops mortgage lending will dramatically slow, this will cause a wider economic downturn and the fundamental lack of banking solvency will become apparent.  We don't need a recession to bring down house prices, house prices will cause a recession."

"Yeah, like that'll happen!"  What I'd said was so outlandish that even my previous accurate predictions wasn't enough to convince him.

"It's inevitable, unfortunately.  By the time we get around to 2008-2010, there'll be bank failures and everything."

(If anything I had given the banks too much credit, believing that they knew they were making hay while the sun shone; but it soon became apparent that Northern Rock - at least - didn't know that, they were funding 25-year mortgages with five-year borrowing... the moment the funding price went up... boom!  Idiots, it's the only word.)

Which, of course, raises the following question:


If you're so clever, why aren't you rich?

If I could see this coming, why did I still have money in a dodgy institution?  This is the problem, this is why always being right isn't always a good thing.  Just because you can see something coming doesn't mean you can do anything about it.  Sometimes it's better to be surprised!

In many ways my foresight has helped: my diversity in gold, and the fact that only 20% of the Plan A Development Fund was in the failed bank.  A couple of months ago it was much more concentrated.  The only reason I kept it open at all was because I wasn't completely convinced about the safety of any other bank either; far and wide was, and still is, the only sensible option.  As far as I was concerned, the main risk was the hassle of claiming the compensation, not losing the balance.

I hope the main risk still is the hassle of claiming the compensation.  But there are some significant doubts over the quality of the compensation.  The Prime Minister of the doomed country in question has said "it's every country for itself", and closed down the U.K. operations while still keeping others going.  I'm not holding my breath that there's going to be much co-operation.

Which raises the next question:  If we're going to get scammed for £5bn, by such a small country, why do we have nuclear weapons?  Can anyone tell me?

It's enough to make Santa Claus himself vomit with rage

The other side of being right all the time, is that's it quite easy to spot when someone is trying to offload crap on to you.  This happened all the time at Job No. 7, usually coming from The Puppet.  He would write a half-arsed "design" document, and pass it over.  Myself, and the "technical" minions would read it, declare it a pile of amateurish drawlings and congratulate The Puppet on graduating from crayons.

The Puppet would then usually respond with something that went a bit like: "well, of course, it's not perfect, there are a few details to be ironed out; but you guys need to be more functional aware!"

To which I would usually respond: "No, you've spent eight weeks making an amateurish play for the clients senior marketing director, which didn't work; so as soon you got something even closely resembling sign-off for this document you're throwing it to us.  You'll then spend the entirety of the four week build covering up your own errors by demanding wholesale changes.  And then, when the client is hacked off that it doesn't work, you'll go crying to Paranoid Andy, and Paranoid Andy's boss, saying it's us developers who 'don't know the functionality'."

(Actually, that's heavily paraphrased; but does summarise the situation quite well.)

The reply would be something along the lines of, "stop personalising it."  Which would be a valid complaint, were my prediction not exactly what happened.

The world is out to get me.

It's a fact.

You only have to look at recent events.  The Government couldn't fall over itself fast enough to nationalise Northern Rock; it could hardly wait to spend tax payers money buying unsaleable houses; and today it's announced it's going to bail out the banks, all of them except for the one which shall go unmentioned.  The Government is more than willing to refund speculators and reckless gamblers; but bailing out a U.K. registered savings company, regulated by the Financial Services Authority?  "Nah, go and piss up the wall of the parent company's regulator..."

(This paraphrasing I do is getting less and less literal, but more and more accurate.)

I shouldn't complain too much about the rest of the bailout, it is needed, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.  I do have other significant sums in some of the institutions that are going to benefit, but still, come on!

Rick: ...I'm going to write to my MP.
[takes out paper and pencil]
Neil: You haven't got an MP, Rick. You're an anarchist.
Rick: Oh. Well, then I shall write to the lead singer of Echo and the Bunnymen!

Right then, it's time for some new political pressure group, whoever will organise the quickest bailout to me; or, as a second best, send a gunboat to Reykjavík and bring it back full of gold; will get my vote in the next election.  If everyone else can have a bailout, why can't I?

Conclusion

It's very annoying, always knowing what's going to happen next.  Very damned annoying.  Although it's probably for the best, things would have been worse otherwise.

But, most shockingly of all, I wasn't being as pessemistic as even I thought I was!  My version of the future was much more optimistic than what so far has actually happened!

I shall endevour to be more pessemistic in future!