Not that it helped. With only nine months left, the hardware was still being revised, we had settled on an operating system that had never been used for a control system this large, and no one on the team had ever used the tool chain.

In the end, we worked 80-hour weeks for half a year. We ate lots of nasty take-away food. We camped out in a corner of the company's office. But the product shipped on time. Sort of. When post-deployment defects began to show up, we had to place engineers on-site for months. The project, which had been way over budget already, went even deeper into the soup. Team members started calling in sick, then giving notice. The company grew more dismayed.

My reward? I was sacked with the next layoff. But I'm not sure that was so bad. My consulting business is booming, I get to see my kids, and I've had many terrific conversations with my wife. So much for being a company man. You couldn't pay me enough to go back. What dismays you?