They Should Have Called It "SUX"

   As in "Sucks the life out of a company!"

   Yes, I'm talking about SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley), the landmark piece of legislation passed by Congress in 2002.

   As I understand it, its primary thrust was to restore investor confidence in publicly traded companies (in the wake of Enron and others) by improving the accuracy and reliability of corporate disclosures regarding financials.

   In theory, I must admit, it sounds fine. The problem is that its implementation has trickled down to ridiculous amounts of auditing at an insane granularity.

   The people at the top of the corporate heap, those that travel in the board member circle of rich, old white men, are still the ones that control the bottom line. Yet while they have employment contracts signed up front that promise company-paid lawyers and guaranteed separation payouts, even if the CEO turns out to be a crook from the word "go", those of us down in the weeds are in a world of hurt if we can't prove that those of us that do systems coding in a development environment do not have access to the production environment.

   And who puts us in this world of hurt?? SOX consultants - auditors from those same old fleecers - yes, the Big Three (or whatever they're consolidated down to these days).

   Yep, I'm pretty sure they're in cahoots with both the good ol' boys network of CEO/board members AND the lobbyists that got Sarbanes-Oxley on the books to begin with.

   Am I bitter? You bet! But I'm also REALLY tired of all the bullshit this nonsense injects into my daily life..