ENTREPRENEUR do what you know is right, work to your own values and not compromise your beliefs.” Occasionally someone has proved slightly less trustworthy. What to do? “Deal with that person. Don’t change the system. If someone pushes the envelope a bit, that will normally be addressed by their peers who are covering for them.” Careful recruitment, Waterstons finds, usually pre-empts any such problem. She says: “I have seen some of our customers occasionally respond to such a problem with draconian measures for everyone. Why? Address that one person and don’t ruin life for everybody else.” Desperation drove Sally’s career initially. She recalls: “My first IT job after university was as a trainee programmer at Southern Gas in Southampton. Mike and I had just got married – we’d met at university – and Mike was doing a PhD. We’d no money. I was so lucky though. I got work as a temp for £10 a week, answering lots of letters of complaint. The bloke running this huge office of about 400 people came and said: ‘I’ve noticed you can write letters.’ ”I replied: ‘I have an English degree so it would be a bit embarrassing if I couldn’t.’ “He asked what I was doing. I told him I was desperate for a job. I had an interview and was asked if I’d ever thought of computer programming. This was 1971. I said: ‘You know, it always sounds interesting!’ In fact, I knew nothing about it but was still desperate for a job. They gave me an aptitude test. “Next day they offered me one of two jobs. I took the one with more money, I’m ashamed to say, but adored it. Probably one of the happiest times in my life was when I was a programmer. I haven’t done it for years now. So, thank you, man at the gas board. He saw something I didn’t know I had.” After a career gap and some moving around she wanted to work again. “In Darlington I contacted Coats Patons looking for part-time work. They were so brilliant. They let me work from home. I said I should start at the bottom again as a programmer because I’d lost my confidence although I’d been an operations manager. They said fine. After six months they summoned me and said: ‘Now you can do some proper work.’ She did part-time consultancy from 1986,
BUSINESS QUARTER | SPRING 14
SPRING 14
We’ll always look at an existing IT system and try to exploit it, rather than saying ‘go and buy something new and shiny’ for the sake of it
then got a two-strong operation going for six years until Mike joined the business in 1994. Waterstons was getting known. “Someone advised me to go with that name. I regretted it after,” Sally admits. “We get mixed up with the bookseller. But it’s too late.” When Mike joined a partnership was formed then, in 2000, a limited company with Mike managing director. There are now six directors including Aijab Singh who has been with the company almost 20 years – “a brilliant
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projects director” who’d worked with Sally at Coats Patons. The business relocated first to premises over a Toyota garage. Now one building at Belmont houses the bespoke developers, plus Aijab and Sally. The other building houses the business technology consultants, also specialists in infrastructure projects and managed services. Here Mike works too. Smilingly, Sally explains: “Mike and I work in separate buildings to maintain our sanity. >>