Vanity and Vainglory

„Shallow men believe in luck, strong men believe in cause and effect.“

 —  Ralph Waldo Emerson

A winner is a person who knows what he will do next if he loses, but does not talk about it; a loser is one who does not know what he will do if he loses, but talks about what he will do if he wins.

—  Eric Berne

Dutch has the word «Ijdelheid» [eydel-heyt], which comes from ijdel, meaning futility, vainness, and translates into Russian, depending on context, either as «sueta» (vain bustle) or as «tshcheslavie» (vainglory). And «heid» is the suffix that builds abstract concepts out of nouns. The word ijdelheid denotes the chief of the deadly sins, “Superbia”, or pride, which is the source of all the rest. Also, incidentally, in English (vanity) and in French (vanité) and in many other languages vainglory and vanity are one word, but with a certain drift of meaning. Two different meanings, you would think. But no. Here is a story about an acquaintance of mine who had a colleague named, well, let it be Ahmet El Safei. Any coincidences with real persons that someone may detect are entirely accidental. I have met enough Ahmets in my life, so the character is more of a composite. What follows is told in the first person.

Before our firm merged with a very large corporation it was in, among other things, solar energy in the industrial sector. Industrial buildings have big roofs and need a lot of energy, and about a third of the price tag on electricity is the cost of transporting that energy.

The company had a group of salespeople, project managers, the head of the firm, and me. The point of my existence was to assess the quality and the prospects of whatever the salespeople dragged in, whether we could make a sensible offer, whether the project was worth working up further, and, if it was, to work that project up to a design solution so the salespeople could go back to the client and sell that solution.

Often my job consisted of driving out to the site, inspecting the building, taking the required measurements, working out what hurt the client and how to then sell our solution as the cure for that pain.

One of the salespeople was Ahmet. Despite having long been «local», third generation, he observed the rituals demonstratively. He always ordered halal food only, told everyone he kept Ramadan and, given the chance, tried to convince me that Allah exists and why He in particular is the one to believe in. His grasp of philosophical context was thin, so taking part in the conversation by means of arguments was hard, and I actively agreed and made approving noises while glancing at my watch.

Ahmet was the only one at the firm who ordered himself a Mercedes. We were allocated a budget for a car lease, and everybody preferred to maximise the specs per euro handed out, which is why French carmaking reigned at our firm. But what mattered to Ahmet was the three-pointed badge on the bonnet, not adaptive cruise control or an automatic gearbox.

To complete the portrait of Ahmet it has to be said that he can weave lace and build castles out of words. And then he even manages to live in those castles. Fake it until you make it – that is about Ahmet, a fully grown man, married, with children and a mortgage. Any collision with objective reality, which occupied less than 1% of his life, always upset him by the fact that it could not be fixed with words, symbols and emotions.

For a salesman the skill is useful. Even though it happens that the client gets sung songs that cannot then be delivered technically. Though in bad cases that can tell on the firm’s reputation. The problems start when he builds such verbal castles for internal consumption. He can announce at meetings that «the client is definitely ours already» or «I had dinner with the owner and he confirmed», or demonstratively take a phone call during a meeting, run out of the room, then come back and optimistically report that – there you go – that was them calling.

Ahmet was forgiven this behaviour if only because winners are not judged, and over a decade his portfolio held two whole big «elephants» whose paid invoices allowed the firm to be successful and prosperous.

It was in Ahmet’s nature to believe in luck. And yes, you can only win the lottery if you believe a win is possible and therefore buy tickets. And Ahmet was not afraid of «elephants». After his first, quite accidental success he even considered working on anything other than «elephants» beneath him. Although most of the «elephants» he tried to drag into the company put a great strain on it, and on me in particular, because, broadly, «elephants» are not our clients. They run tenders, which means there is no room there for us, who bake design, engineering work and a «wow effect» into the price of the supply. And «elephants» usually have their own bureau that has developed the design, they are immune to «wow effects» and are already looking for a contractor to implement that design. There is nothing for us to do there, since we are essentially middlemen between the client and the subcontractors and suppliers, living off a very fat margin. That is, we spend several months on frantic activity, sacrificing more realistic but less valuable projects, activity constantly topped up by Ahmet’s rosy reports that «everything is already agreed», and which in the end simply gets put in a folder on a shelf. Or, as they say in Belgium, «verticaal klasseren». It is not for nothing that they say in sales that elephant hunters usually die of hunger. That the «elephants» were an accident and not a system was confirmed by the fact that when they expanded their business or looked for solutions at another site, they no longer worked with us. Although you would think.

But everything was fine and smooth until an «effective manager» got into the company. He was hired as his deputy by the director of the firm, who was already getting ready to retire. Yuri, a bloke of about 50 who had never managed to last more than two years anywhere before, and who lasted only a year with us as well, after we lost, through his direct fault, one of the «elephants» – one that was already ready to sign the contract for the second phase, but who could not stand the fact that all his communication with the company drained into Yuri like water into sand. He could not organise any sort of work at all, and the only thing he could do was sit in meetings and drop nice business phrases in at the right moment.

And so, in order to do nothing, Yuri invents a cunning plan. He tells the director that it is time to expand, that more salespeople need to be hired, and since there will be very many of them, a structure has to be created with several sales departments and several department heads. And, as a first step, he proposes formalising the existing salespeople as the first sales department and starting to look for a head for the new sales department, so that he can recruit salespeople into his own, new department.

No sooner said than done. Ahmet, for great services in the catching of «elephants», is made head over all the salespeople, and I am put under Ahmet too, although this is in fact a conflict of interest. I am supposed to be in productive conflict with the salespeople, not subordinate to them. Otherwise it turns out (and it did turn out) that the salespeople start sweeping rubbish off the market into the firm. But having me report to Yuri would have made him responsible for at least something, and he did not want that. In the end we got a vertical in which Yuri was the gasket between the director and Ahmet, and Ahmet, having stopped selling, became the gasket between Yuri and the salespeople and between Yuri and me.

Ahmet took his appointment with enthusiasm and became a boss. He spent an hour or two a day talking with every salesperson. He visited clients with them and squeezed them out of the conversation. He constantly explained how things should and should not be done. He caught people out being inefficient. He asked to be copied on all correspondence and produced a heap of comments on every letter. Ahmet tried to manage me too, switching «the boss» on in meetings, but I put him in his place in front of people a couple of times, the difference in competence allows that, and Ahmet stopped “violating” me, because he understood that it threatened his prestige. He started asking me for favours personally, and I did not refuse him, but I had no intention of doing nonsense like preparing 10 different design options because «what if the client asks». Oh yes, and then three more variants for each of the ten. Apparently the problem is also that I cannot stand idiots and am incapable of hiding it when talking to them. The intonation is off, even if you think that your obvious answer to a moronic question was given politely and with respect for the asker. And I am not arrogant at all.

And it was exactly then that we were swallowed by a big corporation and our unit became just one of its lines of activity. An unpleasant line at that, with business processes that did not fit the new company. And despite the fact that management, after several conversations with complaining salespeople, informed Ahmet that he was wrong in his style of «leader-shipping», and that Ahmet, realising this, bought a hugely expensive leadership course from some online gurus and did indeed become somewhat calmer about his work, the salespeople had scattered away from him, leaving him on his own. The whole sales department scattered in literally three months. The new director, taking over our company, did not immediately understand what had happened and even wanted to fire the inefficient salespeople himself, since he saw sales falling but did not know the context.

The new director, understanding that simply «demoting Ahmet back» meant losing him, hires one more «manager» and tries to organise a competition between them. Like, you are managers, recruit teams of salespeople and bring the nectar back to the hive. However, this is a big corporation and all vacancies are filled by HR. Well, that is, when it comes to salespeople, they are not filled at all. The search profile is sharpened for technical skills, while the people being looked for have certain, as they say nowadays, soft skills. The second manager worked for six months with no result and ran off, and only two people were left in our department: Ahmet and me. And yes, Ahmet, despite the manager title, became a salesman again and again set about «clearing the sewage of the market».

I told Ahmet my view of the situation, that the company would close our department because investing in its development means accepting big risks, and informed him that I was starting to look for a new job. Ahmet also understood that without me he would have nothing to do at all, since there would be nobody to create the projects he brings in, and got thinking about HIS OWN BUSINESS. And he even told me about it, inviting me in as a partner. Like, let us do the same thing, but on our own.

Well, and me? I actually got curious about how he would pull it off, and I agreed. After all, to win the lottery you have to at least buy a ticket, right? As a seasoned business consultant I did of course try to inject a share of pessimism into his idea, telling him about survivorship bias and that he is not exceptional in this game, and that you need starting conditions and advantages, and that you need starting capital (despite the fact that in Belgium you can make a company with 1 euro of share capital), and that without the first fool, or fools, who will pay money to a nameless startup off the street, nothing will come of it at all. All the more so since in this business the deal cycle is a year or two, and in the meantime you have to eat something. But this did not frighten Ahmet, and he went off to think, and a few days later rolled out a presentation to me which he called a «business plan». There was a company, there was a described «mission», there was a drawn org chart with bosses and directors, there were even Mercedeses described with model and trim level. There were «important steps» described, among them buying office premises, developing a corporate identity and creating a website. In short, it was a typical castle of words. What there was not: a budget, cash flow, a sales funnel, a customer profile, a market assessment, SWOT, a marketing plan and so on. But Ahmet revelled in his drawn role of founding shareholder.

To which I said that, let us assume, the website I can do right now. And about the rest I need to think. Ahmet lit up and asked for the website to be made. I answered: «No problem!»

A day later I sent him the money calculations, where it was clearly visible that there is no counting on even one Mercedes in the next five years, and that reaching break-even needs a minimum of three years and 500,000 euros, and that it would be lovely if my assumptions about the quality of lead handling did not turn out to be too optimistic. Ahmet in reply called this a «useful exercise» and again asked about the website. At the same time Ahmet recalled my thesis that he is not exceptional and expressed doubt about it, saying that he believes in himself and in us and that we are unique and everything will work out for us for that reason alone. You said yourself that uniqueness is needed? Well, here it is!

So I say to him, OK, first we ought to come up with a name for the firm, buy a domain, knock together a logo design. No problem, said Ahmet, and started inventing names and asking my opinion of them. I told him straight away that in B2B nobody cares what you are called and it would be right if the name said directly what you do. Like, you will not come up with anything better than «Solar Panels for Industry». But that looked too simple to Ahmet, and he started correcting: not «panels» but «solutions», not «solar» but «efficient», and so on. Remembering his religious fervour, I shut up and waited. Finally Ahmet came to me with the name “Elsafium”, which he decoded as Elite/Effective Solar Applications For Industrial Utilisation and Maintenance. Excellent, a magnificent name, I said, having checked right there whether the domain was free. He started telling me what a good name it is and how many-sidedly it reflects the company’s possible lines of activity. That Effective (or Elite) Solar can always be replaced with Environmental Systems, that the name breathes money, and that if we run turnovers in the millions, a beautiful stock ticker can be made out of this name. I agreed enthusiastically, understanding that Elsafium is good in that and only that Ahmet’s surname is El Safei.

Well OK, let us register the domain. I say, there are plenty of free names. There is .be, there is .eu, there is .business, .site, .pro and so on. Choose. Ahmet’s eyes went in all directions. He says, I want everything at once! Me to him: and who is going to pay for this? He answers that we cannot take risks. We will become a successful company and our domain names will be stolen. Me in reply: «Khaim, get out of the phaeton», or rather, «Ahmet, get out of the Mercedes», let us become successful first. Let us take .eu. It is cheaper. No, he says, let us take .be as well. Well, if you want it, we take it, but I do know that .be is more hassle. There you have to prove your Belgianness, DNSSEC is set by hand, the manipulations with the domain are more tedious and so on, all of which slows the process down.

We took the domain.

In the course of a day, using GPT-4, I hacked together a site in WordPress+Elementor with about 4 times more content than the nearest competitors have. Ahmet drew me logos and sent them over, telling me each time that this one is the final version and that the website has to be launched faster, because the money is already coming in, urgently! OK, the site was ready and the firm’s logo was on show on the front page.

A site like that, pumped full of bells, whistles and dynamically moving elements, took Ahmet’s breath clean away, and he demanded an email as well. No problem, one-two – info@elsafium.eu – here you go, sign here. Only, Ahmet, let us stop fantasising and start thinking about how to find the first idiot, and only then about how to take money into an account.

– And yes, what company address should I put on the site? I asked.

– Do we even need an address?

– Well, yes, any firm has to have an address. Its absence on the site will simply raise suspicions.

– Let us go without an address for now.

– Let us, I said, and thought: «You see, Ahmet, sometimes physical reality does turn up in your life after all, and it cannot be fixed or masked with castles of words»

Ahmet went off to think about where to get the first client and came running with a solution: «Here is our client, an existing one. He needs a new solution» Me to him: hey, what about the Code of Conduct and all that? How exactly are you planning to overtake your own employer on the bend if the thing surfaces? Do you understand that this is a blow to your reputation on the labour market of a very small country? To which Ahmet said that this is not competition. That our company will not be able to close this deal. – Why is that? Because the project manager we are dealing with is Abdullah, and he wants a kickback. And our firm will not do kickbacks, but Elsafium can. Facepalm. Well, that is, Ahmet sees nothing shameful at all in arranging things «under the carpet» with his ethnically close counterpart, setting up both him and himself for a violation of quite basic principles of corporate ethics. I asked Ahmet about this, to which he answered: «But you said yourself that a first client is needed. How else do we start our business».

And at that point I understood that it was time to run. Luckily, a contract with a new employer was lying on my desk, and I was already looking for a convenient moment to leave the job. And leave I would have had to. I could not inform on Ahmet, since he was very open with me and I did in fact support his zeal. But I could not stay at the outfit with a violation of the Code of Conduct on my hands, even a passive one. And what does the Code of Conduct have to do with it, when even the intention to commit such an act is simply immoral. Besides, the Elsafium website was on my personal server and anyone could have «looked up» who stood behind its existence. In general, this situation was a good illustration of the fact that in a settled capitalist society you can only jump above the «glass ceiling» by using dishonest means. Yes, there is a chance to honestly earn a lot of money and also become a capitalist, but it is much smaller than the chance of winning the lottery, and the appearance of such a chance is used by the ruling class exclusively to motivate everybody else to work more.

Meanwhile Ahmet would not let up. He understood that a successful company must have many email addresses. And he ordered from me sales@  – for sending out commercial offers. invoice@ – for issuing invoices. management@ – for conducting important negotiations. I ask, aliases or separate mailboxes?

– Separate, he says.

–  Separate for each domain?

– Yes, he says.

– OK, here are six different mailboxes, the password is the same for all.

– And how do I set up Outlook?

– Well, let me set it up on your computer remotely, I offered, understanding that the word IMAP cannot be explained to him.

Ahmet gives me access, I set up 8 mailboxes (the ones listed above plus info@) and check with test messages that everything works. Ahmet asks whether everything works and expresses a wish to check it himself. And I watch him typing a test letter in Outlook: «Dear Sirs, in response to your request for a price for the installation of solar panels on the roof of your building, we have prepared a commercial offer, which you can find attached to this letter. The total investment cost amounts to 2,430,233.00 euros. The offer is valid for 30 days. Please do not hesitate to come to us with questions. I suggest scheduling a meeting next week to discuss our offer and the possible options for optimising the project. Please let me know whether Thursday the 19th or the following Monday, the 23rd, is convenient for you. Kind regards, Ahmet El Safei». Not «test» «test». Ahmet looked and admired the fact that he has six whole email addresses.

Then, over several more days, Ahmet called me in the middle of the day and told me about the schemes he had come up with for taking money from the first client, who had not even tried to buy anything yet, and that implementing these schemes required a few more mailboxes. When he was unsure what to call a mailbox, he asked for several different aliases so he could choose later. «So what if I am being greedy, at least it is from a pure heart» I smiled into the telephone receiver and made him more mailboxes. Taking the money simply through the sole proprietorship I had set up at some point “just in case” he considered insulting to a company as solid as Elsafium.

Judging by what the counter on the site showed me, Ahmet went to the site, scrolled through it and read the sections at least twice a day. I gave him access to WordPress and said that the texts I had filled the site with might need correcting. Ahmet diligently made corrections, taking the stream of letters out of GPT-4 seriously and assuming that somebody other than him would ever look into the depths of this website.

Then Ahmet asked me why the site is only in one language. I answered that translating a site is a real pain, that, like, let us first sell something and then make a multilingual version. Ahmet had no wish to miss out on global markets and therefore listened to what I was saying and installed some plugin that makes a site multilingual. And broke the database. I had a backup, I was about to start restoring the site, but something clicked in Ahmet’s head again.

Either he talked to somebody or arrived himself at the thought that he does not control his company at all, of which there is nothing but a domain and a website. And he started from afar. Like, show me how your server works. (I showed him, yep, the Linux console). Then, like, you said it is risky to keep the domain on your own server, like I have had a look, most companies have modest business-card sites and the site will probably need to be simplified and moved onto a separate server… Let us have the .eu domain with the big site and .be with the small one, and mail only on .be, and the other mailboxes will have to be deleted. Let us take .eu offline altogether for now. And the thing is that when we registered the domains I put .eu in my name and .be in Ahmet’s, and now Ahmet was thinking about how to get control over everything, and the two little letters «.be» warmed his soul the way the savings book warmed Sharapov’s. OK, I say, let us do it. Here are the web hosting options with prices. And he says to me, let us go with this provider. At first I did not understand what made it better. But then I compared and agreed. Yes, clearly better. But the fact that he knew of the existence of such an unpopular hosting (not on the first page in Google) says that he had been talking to somebody and had been frightened. But the hosting really is a beauty, with good prices, free mail for 50 mailboxes inside the 8-euro-a-month package, a convenient interface and support in Dutch.

I took this news with enthusiasm, because these games had already worn me out and I had already got my dose of pleasure from the process of observing Homo Virtualis in its natural habitat. So, entirely unexpectedly for Ahmet, who understood that his argumentation was stitched with white thread, I agreed to do everything as he asked and did it very quickly. I only asked again whether Ahmet is ready to administer his own server, because I would not have the time to administer two servers. He said he is ready. «Best of luck to him», I thought, and moved the site to the other hosting, created three mailboxes there again, wrote out the passwords to all of it for Ahmet and wished him a good weekend. Then I raised the working version of the site from backup on my server and informed Ahmet that on the .be version of the site only the first page works, and that the whole structure fell apart because he installed a dodgy plugin without asking. That he can use the restored version, which is visible at such-and-such an address, or the backup which I sent him over Wetransfer, and repair the «new» site, if he wants to do that, of course. He asked whether I could help him, I answered that no, I am not prepared to administer two servers in a row and I had warned him about it. That it took me two hours of my weekend to restore the site from backup, as an example of what that administering would mean for me. «Welcome to IT», I wished him quite amicably, and suggested that he explore all the possibilities without the risk of losing anything. He checked whether I am angry that we moved the domain to another server, I smiled sincerely and said: «of course not. It is your business, where to host the site, as long as you are ready to pay for the hosting. My hosting was conditionally free». Ahmet, vanity and vainglory notwithstanding, is not a stupid guy and I believe he will figure it all out.

Having finished the conversation, I opened the link to the page for electronically signing the contract with the new employer, wrote to the director of the company with a request for a meeting and received confirmation of the date of the meeting at which I will tell him that I am leaving the company. Is the story with Ahmet over? Of course not. But this story is already enough to show that yes, vainglory and vanity can be described by one word.