Mr. CIO Guy - A Speculative Retrospective

Lyrics by Pat Helland
Sung to "American Pie" by Don McLean

Performed at TechEd Amsterdam 2004 by Pat Helland
with Don Box on Guitar and David Chappel on Keyboards

VERSE 1
A long, long, time ago…
I can still remember how that software made the business play.
And my dream that I held so dear,
And worked on for my whole career,
Was that the information could pay.
But Harvard reached into its quiver,
And to the boardroom did deliver.
Cutbacks on our spending,
The IT boom was ending…
I can’t remember if they laughed,
As our department was de-staffed,
And lost the knowledge of our craft,
The day that I-T died.
So…

CHORUS
Bye, Bye Mr. CIO-Guy,
Gonna outsource every resource ‘til the business runs dry.
And MBAs count the beans going by and singing
This’ll make the P-E go high!
This’ll make the P-E go high!

VERSE 2
Did you write for M-V-S?
And transactions for C-I-C-S?
Using V-TAM to make it go…
And do you believe in middleware?
With objects calling here and there,
And can you teach me all about O-O?
Well I know that you’ve got Java-Juice
Cuz I saw your beans go flying loose
You loved J-2-E-E…
And thought you could port for free!
I was an engineer writing to dot-NET
Using V-B as my Erector Set,
When I saw there was trouble yet,
The day that I-T died…
I started singing…

CHORUS
Bye, Bye Mr. CIO-Guy,
Gonna outsource every resource ‘til the business runs dry.
And MBAs count the beans going by and singing
This’ll make the P-E go high!
This’ll make the P-E go high!

VERSE 3
Now, it’s been years since the seed was sown
And the G-D-P fell like a stone,
But that’s not how it used to be…
When the BUNCH gave way for the Old Big Blue
Which unbundled as it got the screw
And Maynard made a toy called PDP…
And as the mainframe held the crown,
The UNIX boys just went to town
Adolescence had been spurned,
Adulthood had been earned.
And Bill read a book by Adam Smith,
Moore’s Law didn’t prove a myth,
And PC’s singed the monolith
The day that I-T died.
We were singing…

CHORUS
Bye, Bye Mr. CIO-Guy,
Gonna outsource every resource ‘til the business runs dry.
And MBAs count the beans going by and singing
This’ll make the P-E go high!
This’ll make the P-E go high!

VERSE 4
N-tier, Web-sphere, could be svelter…
Dot-Net doesn’t weigh in welter…
X-M-L ain’t parsing fast…
Standards started to amass;
The vendors flirted with impasse
And customers observed it with aghast…
Oh, to Inter-op with our heirloom
To unify and to subsume,
At first we looked askance,
Then we tried to get finance!
But the ‘counters argued ‘bout the yield
“Cut the cost” was what they squealed!
Do you recall it all congealed?
The day that I-T died?
They started singing…

CHORUS
Bye, Bye Mr. CIO-Guy,
Gonna outsource every resource ‘til the business runs dry.
And MBAs count the beans going by and singing
This’ll make the P-E go high!
This’ll make the P-E go high!

VERSE 5
Oh, and there we were all in the dumps,
The dot-COM crash had dealt its lumps
But we were ready to go again…
So come on integrate and interoperate
Invest to dis-intermediate… Then
That missive from Harvard did descend…
Oh, and as I watched them turn the page
I knew their thoughts would not be sage
There was no simple charm…
To stop that specious harm…
And as pink slips caused an exit flight
Of jobs to Bangalore’s new site
I saw Harvard laughing with delight
The day that I-T died
They were singing…

CHORUS
Bye, Bye Mr. CIO-Guy,
Gonna outsource every resource ‘til the business runs dry.
And MBAs count the beans going by and singing
This’ll make the P-E go high!
This’ll make the P-E go high!

VERSE 6
I met a girl, who wrote the news,
And I asked her for some upbeat clues,
But Esther held a big soiree…
I went down to the old raised floor,
Where the MIPS had churned those years before,
But computing had become… passé…
And loading docks had tumbleweeds,
The factories stopped, the profit bleeds,
The damage wasn’t staved off,
The I-T Staff was laid-off.
And the men that I admire least,
The MBAs trained in the East,
Ensured their salaries were increased,
The day that I-T Died…

CHORUS
So Bye, Bye Mr. CIO-Guy,
Gonna outsource every resource ‘til the business runs dry.
And MBAs count the beans going by and singing
This’ll make the P-E go high!
This’ll make the P-E go high!

They were singin’

Bye, Bye Mr. CIO-Guy,
Gonna outsource every resource ‘til the business runs dry.
And MBAs count the beans going by and singing
This’ll make the P-E go high!