This was several years ago in grumpy old dev’s career back when he was still enthusiastic young dev. Someone above the CTO had signed a sweetheart deal with one of the large contracting companies to buy a fixed amount of development time and services each year. And so all the technology executives were scrambling to find useful work for the contracting house to do. (This deal also lead to The One Where I Lie To The CTO)

This was several years back. Keep in mind that early in my career, my father had told me that doing a good job often meant doing what needed to be done in spite of your boss. And by that he meant that you can either make your boss successful and happy or you can run every decision by your boss. In which case no one is successful or happy. I was working at the time for a Fortune 500 company and our CTO had signed up to deliver a big project for an important client with whom he had personal connections.