Reeling in the Yearlings

by Victor Stone

"Why do all of our products suck?" Freddie asked as he threw four blue chips into the messy pile in the middle of the felt-covered table. This question was typical of his balancing act between seriously questioning everything and asking stupid questions.

Jerry rolled his eyes. "Please, Freddie. You've got to stop treating the competition's press releases like some kind of gospel. Don't you have any other source of information? It just so happens there are more than a few customers who like what we give them." He counted off several red chips and threw them in. "I'm raising two."

"Well, Mr. Clean, I wouldn't want you to get a hair out of place, but it's just that everything we do is so... so... dull. There's no creativity."

"Creativity is totally overrated," Caroline said, her sternness only reinforced by the tension of her pulled-back hair.

Norwood, not known for complete sentences, grumbled with a Caribbean drawl, "Sign of a weak mind."

As lead feature-creep artist on Jerry's team, Freddie was used to having his dreams crushed by Caroline's obsession to cut functionality to the bone. She was, after all, test manager, and her job was to ship widgets, not mine the depths of her soul for inspirations in code. But it never occurred to him that hers was an overarching philosophy, a principle she lived by voluntarily. He had assumed that, given the chance, anybody would want a job with license to be creative.

She was leaning so far back in her chair that Freddie had to almost double over to see if she was joking. But she, too, wasn't giving an inch. "I'm out," she said through her square, opaque Oakleys as she threw her cards face down on the table.

Freddie remained taken aback at what seemed to be consensus. "Are you guys serious? What are you talking about?"

"Creativity," Caroline explained from her recline, "and 'imagination' are celebrated in the rest of the world strictly because they allow people to deny the finality of their existence. It's all designed to put off thinking about the inevitable."

Norwood amended, "The unavoidable."

"You mean shipping boring products?" Freddie asked, trying to get a rise out of the crew. "I know you guys must be pulling my chain because we're always rewarding clever and creative people with stock and bonuses."

Everybody at the table laughed at Freddie's naiveté. Even Jerry couldn't suppress a smirk.

"Whoa there, little fella," Caroline said, coming out of her chuckle. "We reward 'clever' because it's about survival. We regularly punish 'creative' because it's a very disrupting tendency. "'Clever' is reality, 'creative' is ..." and she stalled for a moment.

"...fantasy." Norwood filled in.

"Aw, c'mon," Freddie said with disbelief. "I know all kinds of creative types who just got big promotions."

"That's because they met an even higher standard than cleverness that makes up for the fact that they are creative," Caroline answered.

"And what's that?"

"They threatened to leave the company."

Freddie sat silently as he ran through all the excuses he had been given in the last two years for not being promoted. Pledging loyalty to the company and being too creative were definitely not among them.

After a minute he looked up at his boss. "Jerry, you're management, you don't actually agree that creativity is a disruptive sign of a weak mind, do you?"

Without returning Freddie's stare, Jerry reined in the chatter. "Listen, I didn't come to work today to talk about religion or politics. I'm here to play poker! Now, can we continue, please? Whose bet is it?"

Just then there was knock on the conference room door and Rob, a tall, young man with a fresh haircut and a clean polo shirt with a company logo on the chest, stuck his head in and waved his wristwatch. "Jerry, I've got our biggest clients all the way from Sydney here."

"Do they know the minimum buy in?" Jerry interrupted.

"Well, yes, they do," Rob answered quickly. "But there's one problem. They only have Aussie dollars."

"No way!" Jerry snapped. "Local currency only."

The young man put up his hand in surrender. "No problem, I'm sure I can find a game in marketing," he said as he left the room.

"Norwood, I think the bet's to you," Jerry volunteered. "And speaking of dull, unimaginative, and leaving the company, " Jerry continued while Norwood tossed in a few chips, "does Simon still work here? He owes me a boatload of money."

"And me," grunted Norwood.

Caroline finally seemed to perk up. "Wait a minute, he borrowed a bunch from me under the guise of paying off your markers. I've tried to collect, but he's constantly changing offices. I keep getting his 'out-of-office auto-email reply' saying he's on the road in Kuala Lumpur or Norway, but then I'll see him huddled in the corner of the parking garage sneaking a cigarette."

"That's what we get for hanging out with a gambler," Jerry said. "I've a flush, queen high. But we're all constantly changing offices," he said resentfully. "I've had four in the last two months."

"He's had four in the last week. I didn't want to do this, but I have a buddy in security," Caroline said with a glint of hope. "I could have him notify me the next time Simon uses his access card to get into one of the buildings."

"Make it so," Jerry ordered.

Finally Freddie couldn't stand it anymore. "For a bunch of nihilistic geeks you guys seem pretty wrapped up in collecting poker winnings. If you were really smart, you'd let Simon forfeit all his markers for letting Tripper work on our project."

"Why on Earth would I want Tripper on this project?" Jerry asked incredulously.

"Because few people write tighter, faster code than he does," Freddie said with more than a hint of respect.

Looking as though he'd just stuck his head into a hamper packed with rancid clothes, Jerry said, "Sure, but he's constantly looking for ways to improve the product."

Caroline added: "Definition of pain in the ass."

"Pain dot com," added Norwood.

Freddie looked confused. "He's a lead developer; his job is to look for ways to improve the product. Isn't it?"

Caroline got firm. "His job is to look for ways to ship the product."

"But then whose job is it to improve the product if not program managers and developers?"

"Mine," she said without blinking.

"But all you do is point out bugs and cut features!"

"Both of which greatly improve the product—especially the latter."

"Exactly how is a product improved when you cut a feature?" Freddie felt compelled to ask.

"By cutting buggy features."

"Okay, what if Tripper threatened to leave the company? Would we pick him up then?" Freddie said with a touch of "Aha!"

"In a heartbeat," said Jerry.

"I don't get it," Freddie finally admitted.

"The good news," Jerry said, flashing his best don't-worry-your-pretty-head smile, "is that you don't have to." He pulled another haul of chips toward him from the center of the table.

Freddie, fleeced again, tried to remember why he always agreed to play in Jerry's games.

For the next week or so, Freddie found himself avoiding Jerry.

"There really aren't any rules are there?" he had asked when they were first working together and he was just learning how Jerry operated. For some reason, Jerry's reply came ringing back to him now: "Oh, there are lots of rules. They're just not written down anywhere."

Freddie, remembering that Tripper occasionally wrote an article for the corporate Web site, gave his respected colleague a call and invited him out for lunch.